I arrived in the US to meet Dylan after leaving Cuba. What a contrast to arrive in New York City. The next day was my 30th birthday, and what a great city to celebrate in. We had bagels for breakfast and spent the day shopping - exploring East Village, Soho and Chelsea. We had an amazing dinner at a French restaurant and cocktails at The Dead Rabbit cocktail bar - rated as the best bar in the world in 2016. »
About six months into this trip I was having a video call with my sister just after I had posted the blog post about Romania. We got talking about the apartment Dylan and I had in Romania and I explained how it was located in a bit of a shit hole and the problems I was having in Bucharest in general. She asked why I hadn’t written about all those things in the blog post (in the spirit of full disclosure that I had promised in one of my early blog posts). »
Cuba is interesting and infuriating. Being in Cuba necessarily involves giving way to a simpler existence. But the apparent simplicity is in fact just the result of existing in a socialist state under a planned economy. The economy is dominated by the exports of sugar, tobacco, coffee and nickel. And apart from rum and pineapples, not much else is easy to come by. Cuba’s rum — Havana Club Cuba imports nearly all of its food and of that, about 80% is rationed for the population. »
I knew from the moment I saw the iridescent blue water as our plane flew over Cancun that I’d love Mexico. And it did not disappoint. We landed in Cancun after an 11 hour flight from Europe feeling rather tired and gross. We were meeting my friend Lauren at the airport, but with neither of us having wifi, and having inadvertently failed to have a synchronous conversation about where we would meet, there was a mild amount of panic when it materialised that our broad plan to meet in the arrivals hall was rather flawed. »
After leaving Vienna we arrived in Zurich where we met up with our friends Max and Tash. They had been travelling around the UK and Ireland and met us in Switzerland to go snowboarding and spend Christmas together. We had just one night in Zurich, where we spent the evening at the Christmas market in the concourse of the main train station. It is one of the largest indoor Christmas markets in Europe. »