I have just got home from a wonderful, busy, lively, happy trip with James.
As his parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this year, they invited the family to come and spend a long weekend with them in a small country resort on the outskirts of Cork.
England
As I had recently seen my parents, we didn’t plan much for the time I was staying. Just chilling out really, and a bit of shopping.
My cousin, Emma, came for a few days as well, which was lovely!
Lots of shopping was done, and we just chilled and chatted and laughed. It was really nice. I stayed there for five days, then went over to Ireland.
Ireland
I decided to fly to Cork quite early so that I could do a bit of sightseeing alone before everyone arrived. I think this was a good idea, because with 13 people to wrangle, the weekend did get a little chaotic at times!
Cork is such a pretty city. It was very easy to get from the airport to the main city centre, and I was trundling about in no time. I started with the English Market and ended up poodling about with my camera at the Elizabeth Fort. It’s a 17th Century fort that has been rebuilt a few times and used as a prison and as the police building!
After a while I got collected by James and his sister and we drove to Kinsale to meet up with their parents. We had lunch and then drove on towards Fota, which is where we were staying for the weekend.
The weekend was lovely, we visited Cobh, which was the last place the Titanic set off from, Spike Island, which is known as the Alcatraz of Cork, the farmers market, and Fota Wildlife Park, which is like a zoo. And we ate. A lot.
It was really good to see everyone, but 13 people together gets busy and I just am not used to it. So at times I was a little overwhelmed! But it was lovely to see the family – we haven’t seen them since before we got married. James’ dad actually welcomed me to the family, which was very sweet.
England
James and I travelled back from Cork together and decided to stay the night in London so that we could do a bit of sightseeing and shopping before heading back to my parents.
London is so much fun and I am glad we made the time to go there. We arrived in the late afternoon, so chucked our bags in the hotel – which was lovely – and then went for a wander about in the area. We stayed in Battersea, where the old power station used to be. They’ve made the power station into a cool shopping mall and luxury apartments. It looks really impressive adn modern, with loads of amenieties.
We started with food at Itsu (It’s a Japanese place) and then gravitated towards Uniqlo to stock up on some clothing basics. We then went into the city itself and had dinner, before taking the last boat back up the Thames in the dark to see the city from that angle. It was lovely.
In the morning we went to drop our luggage off at Euston and then went for breakfast just off of Tottenham Court Road, in a place called The Breakfast Club. I had the most amazing pancakes, with vegan cream. I have no idea how they made it, but it was amazing. Then we had a little walk around Carnaby Street and went into Liberty London, before heading out to Camden.
Camden Market was fun, but it didn’t feel like it did when I was 16! I’m not sure if it’s because i’m older, or if its because the market there is now quite sterile, modern and formal. It’s just not quite so chaotic as I remember it being – it’s probably because since the day I used to go, there have been a few fires and the market has been rebuilt quite considerably. So I guess that fire regulations have changed and things have to be a bit more safe and spaced out…rather than just a vast number of stalls crammed together under the arches with a million ‘alternative’ teenagers trying to buy dog collars, wide legged jeans and New Rocks!
We got back late in the afternoon and finished our trip in England with a bit of pub grub and a nice evening with my parents. Oh and packing. We had to pack!
Singapore
I can safely say that I have never been so hot and/or sweaty in public in my life as I have been over the last few days. Singapore is lovely, but MY GOD it’s moist!
We arrived very early and made our way to the hotel via the tourist information point at the airport. Thankfully the hotel let us check in early and so we were able to get a bit of sleep before heading out to see the city.
Over the three days there, we used the public transport quite a bit. It’s very easy to use, and you can either buy a tourist pass, or simply just tag onto the busses/trains using your debit card. We had a bus stop just outside and we could make our way into the main area of the city and get off onto the subway to get to most of where we wanted to go.
We spent the first day just finding our bearings. We managed to find food reasonably quickly, and then we made our way to the marina area via a pretty large shopping mall. The marina area is the bit of Singapore that I think is on most tourist information. It’s the part with the huge three tower hotel that you can go up and look out at the city from. It’s called the Marina Bay Sands hotel. We tried to go up, but tickets were all sold out for that day.
We also made a trip to the ArtScience Museum, but there wasn’t actually anything on there at the moment that we wanted to see! So we went into the nearest air conditioned building – another huge mall.
Our second day was spent visiting various parts of the city.
We made our way on the bus and first tried to find somewhere to eat breakfast in Kampong Glam (or Gelam), the cities Muslim Quarter. The name comes from the Malay word for compound; kampong, and the Malay word for the type of trees that line the paths, the paper-bark trees; gelam.
Apparently the area was allocated to the Malay, Arab and Bugis communities back in the day by Sir Stamford Raffles, who was a British colonial official at the time that Singapore was founded.
Basically, Sir Stamford Raffles was a British official that sailed to the area, at that time called Singapura in the 1800’s, to organise a settlement there. It was seen to be advantageous because of its position in relation to the rest of the world in terms of trading. He organised that the British would protect the people there and this was pretty the beginning of modern Singapore. That was a very basic explanation, so you can read MUCH more online about Singapore on Wikipedia HERE.
Anyway, we went to Kampong Glam and then went off to Chinatown. As you do. It was just SO hot and sticky that I was a bit over it. But we managed to see quite a bit and had a good time around the city.
On our final day we went to see Little India. It was exactly as you’d expect it to be – full of Indian style buildings and food, as well as Indian markets.
Overall I had a lovely time on my trip, but it was over too quickly, and jet-lag was a big issue for me! Hopefully next time I go home i’ll have longer, and have more money to go shopping!
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