With our friends (Simon, Linda, Chris, Gail John and Rita) all flying out earlier in the day we were booked on the 19.05 Wizzair flight from Birmingham to Sofia on the Thursday evening so we would catch them up in the Bulgarian capital city. With a three hour flight and a two hour time difference this meant an arrival into Sofia airport at around 00.30 local (or 22.30 UK), but we were soon in a fast taxi to our hotel and in our room just after 01.00 at the Best W...

We travelled on Friday evening by train from Derby to Exeter St David's station with two nights at the Mercure Rougemont Hotel slap bang in the centre of town opposite Central station. Using some Accor loyalty points the hotel costs us a little over £75.00 for the two nights - a 4* bargain! On Friday night we enjoyed dinner at Cote Brasserie, for some French cuisine, on Cathedral Green. This was our first visit to a Cote Brasserie and we really enjoyed the ...

This is our first trip to Sicily and given we had just a few full days to explore we certainly crammed in a fair amount although we only saw parts of the south/eastern part of this island. Wednesday 28th December 2016 The journey by train from Rome to Catania took just under ten hours, our reservation in Coach 2 said it was a through service although all station display signs and announcements said the train was heading to Palermo! Once south of Naples the ra...

After a quick(ish) journey to Luton Airport Parkway we were soon at the airport getting ready to join the easyJet flight 2418 departing Luton at 1135 to Rome Fiumicino (FCO). The flight, taking just under two hours and fifteen minutes was, as expected, rather uneventful although seeing a rather unusual cloud formation following the river close to Rouen in France was quite interesting. You could tell you were in Italy from the moment you stepped into the airport ...

With our Hurtigruten ship, the MS Polarlys, docking at Tromsø at 1430 it was already dark in this northern part of Norway. With sleet and snow falling and a tad slippery underfoot we made our way to the Comfort Hotel Xpress. The room was very clean and modern and just perfect for our stay in Tromsø (although and extra few inches of walking space at the foot of the bed would have been better). Tromsø had a nice comfortable feel about it, there are plenty of sh...