Do you know what? I’m simply going to bars now so that I can write about them. It used to be I’d go because I wanted a beer. Instead what I am doing in new cities and towns is I look up a minimum of 5 bars I want to visit during my few days…
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My recent travels in Northern Ireland have proved something to me – you can travel in your home country and love it, and get surprised by it. After my adventures on the north coast of Northern Ireland, I returned to my home town of Bangor, which is in County Down, just 12 miles from Belfast…
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As a handy stop over city on route from Veliko Tarnovo (a splendid city where I stayed in the Hotel Comfort) enroute to Sofia, I decided to do the obvious touristy thing for a change and stay in Plovdiv. Plovdiv is a classic Bulgarian city with a real ancient Roman feel about it. Despite the…
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Years ago me and my mates used to do pub crawls in London and even in 2014 on my return to London town we did another crawl. It’s a great spot for it. Basically London has pubs on every corner of every street. We worked our way through all the cool pubs crawls over the…
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I’ve stayed in some obscure places during Christmas and New Year down the years. I’m talking homestays in Iran, sharing rooms in Parramatta Australia, camping in the mountains of Peru or hiking in China. In 2014 however, I was in Europe at Christmas for the first time in 6 years. I decided to spend some time…
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So I ended up backpacking in Kosovo after Northern Macedonia and decided I wanted to try some local food. The thing is though, Kosovo has only been a country since 2008 and most of the locals are Albanian. So rather than call it actual Kosovan food, the food I tried is really just Albanian. Well,…
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A Thirsty Thursdays for you all from Bran in Transylvania, Romania. Dracula country conjures up all sorts of gory images. Vlad Tepes, best known as Dracula is the character who impaled his victims back in the day, before Irish novelist Bram Stoker began to write about this lunatic vampire in deepest Romanian countryside. Fictional or…
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North East England is a pleasant surprise for the backpacking nomad. After crossing the border from Scotland (where I backpacked through Edinburgh , tried haggis and stayed in the trendy Baxter hostel), most backpackers get their fix of Hadrian’s Wall, the city of Newcastle and then head to York. Something in that itinerary was missing –…
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This post requires a “wee bit” of an introduction for those not aware of Tayto. It’s a review of my tour of the Tayto crisps factory in Tandragee, Northern Ireland. First of all, I come from Northern Ireland – I grew up in Bangor and one of the joys of childhood was “getting tore intill…
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I’m pretty busy at the moment trying to go through all my unwritten posts, but it’s still nice to reflect on a top 12 travel moments of the year – something I did a similar post on in 2012 and 2013. This year I started off in Iraq on New Year’s Day and I have…
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