Updated Travel Plans 2015.

Back in the January travel linkup I posted all about my travel plans for the year and where I wanted to go! Some were dreams and some more doable. Well, the unexpected has happened, and rather than doing the doable ones, I'm actually doing the dream one...

I'm very lucky with my holiday days, despite working full time for a media agency in London, I get 35 holiday days a year including bank holidays which is a lot more than most people. This year however, I had a few extra as I rolled some over from last year. I started the year with a long weekend trip to the Slovakian High Tatry Mountains, where I went to the top of a mountain and learnt to ski for the very first time. 

Then just a week later I flew to Australia for 2.5 weeks for my annual visit to see my friends and stay with Aunty Wyn & Uncle Gray and my family.

Originally I was supposed to go to Russia for the May bank holiday, we had the hotels booked; Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and Four Seasons in St Petersburg, I was unbelievably excited, but then the rest of it fell through (it takes a while to get visas and I didn't have enough time to send my visa off as I was in Australia). So that got cancelled. One day I will get there! 

So I've had a couple of months with no travel, and I have serious wanderlust. I'm off to Paris with Air France in August, where I'll be staying at a sister hotel of Fraser Suites Perth, which I stayed at for my first night back in Aus, so I have high hopes as the Perth one was incredible! Then I might potentially have a much bigger trip with them in October if it all gets signed off (fingers crossed!). 

I'm then off to Cornwall with the family in September, and two weeks later is the big one...I'm flying to St Vincent and the Grenadines. Yes. The dream trip I told you all about in January is actually happening. This incredible opportunity is very kindly being given to me by the amazing team at the Palm Island Resort. I fly to Barbados from London with Virgin Holidays, where I'm meeting my best friend from Australia, and then we fly to Union Island, before getting a boat to the private island of Palm Island.

Our plan is to spend the week relaxing, reading books, drinking cocktails, and exploring the islands. There are some excursions we're planning on taking; one to swim with the sea turtles in the Tobago Cays, and another to the main island of St Vincent where Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed. It's been a dream of mine to swim with sea turtles since I was about 8 years old - my favourite dinner lady at school did it and told us all about it! I told Rach I might cry when we finally get to do it, so she assured me she'll be there to photograph me 'ugly crying', she's such a good friend.

Words can't even describe how excited or grateful I am; Rach and I only get to see each other once a year these days due to work (when I was at Uni I used to go back twice a year for 4-5 weeks at a time), so to see her twice this year is such a treat! She also loves the blog and basically being a general camera whore, so I'm super excited to be able to take thousands of photos and videos with her and not worry about her being camera shy! 

So, what about the other places I wanted to visit? 

Ukraine/Chernobyl won't be happening for obvious reasons (why can't everyone just get along and be nice to each other?), also, you'd expect it to be cheap given the current 'war' situation, but the hotels are really expensive! Estonia isn't happening because the flight times are super awkward and I'd have to spend an extra day there which I don't have the holiday time for. Russia, see above. New York I'm going to save for next year and incorporate it into a much bigger US roadtrip. Iceland I'm potentially doing early next year with my brother. Morocco I'm potentially doing this year for a weekend with the girls. Croatia/Montenegro/Bosnia - *sigh* who knows, I'm not sure I'll ever get there at this rate. There are just too many places to visit and not enough time! 

So, so far this year I have 20 holiday days booked in/used up. I have 8 left to use (I need to take a few over Christmas obviously!), so at the moment the very loose plan is to do a long weekend in Morocco and use one for that, a long weekend in Croatia and use two for that, and then use five for the bigger trip with Air France. 

What are your travel plans for the year?