La Rioja is a province in the north of Spain renowned for its local wine industry. We spent 3 days exploring and wine tasting in Rioja, staying in a hotel in the capital of the region, Logroño. The region is best known for its use of tempranillo, which is considered native to Rioja. Tempranillo is one of my favourite wines so going here was a bucket list tick for me. »
Today we are heading to Spain after spending 5 weeks in Sweden. We’ve travelled all around Sweden, visiting its two largest cities, Stockholm and Göteborg (Gothenburg), while staying in the third largest, Malmö, as our base. All of them were cool cities — we stayed in great places (both Airbnb and hotels), saw the sites, ate at some amazing restaurants and, of course, went cocktail bar hopping. We found the most incredible G+Ts at a bar in Göteborg called Steampunk Bar. »
We landed at Copenhagen airport after a short flight from Paris, navigated our way through the purchasing of train tickets and caught the train to Malmö: our new home for 5 weeks. Daffodils in bloom The trip from Copenhagen airport to Malmö is an easy 25 minute train trip across the Øresund Bridge: an 8km combined railway and motorway bridge linking Sweden and Denmark. It was then an easy 10 minute walk from Malmö Centralstation to our quintessentially Scandinavian Airbnb apartment, which is right in the centre of town and aptly fitted out with all the Ikea essentials. »
Paris is addictive. This was my fifth time and each time has been a very different experience. This visit was an opportunity to live more like a local — to eat and drink in local restaurants and bars, to have picnics in the gardens, and to explore the less trodden paths. I never grow tired of seeing Paris, nor eating French food. And naturally, we ate croissants every morning for breakfast, baguette, cheese and wine every day for lunch and more wine, bread and cheese with dinner every night. »
My first impressions of Singapore were that it is a clean, organised, accessible, environmentally conscious city (more accurately, city-state) and the people are friendly and welcoming of tourists. We stayed at the Marina Bay Sands hotel, which was, predictably, very impressive. However, for the price, it is what you would expect. But it was worth it to swim in that pool! It is quite an experience swimming 200m up in the air, looking out into the high rise buildings of the city. »