There’s more to discover in Europe than you might think. From historic cities to lush green landscapes, Europe is home to so many beautiful places. Take a slow travel trip to Barcelona, get lost in a maze of streets in Granda, explore magnificent lakes in Macedonia, immerse yourself in Bulgarian history, and go by train across Poland.
Arabic architecture, Middle Eastern food, cave houses, snow-capped mountains, free tapas with every glass of wine… The more we heard, the more irresistible the idea of visiting Granada became. So we abandoned our winter sun chasing in Seville and booked ourselves a cheap ticket on board the next bus to the mountainous town of Granada.
Oh my sweet Alhambra. You absolutely cannot miss the Alhambra if you’re visiting Granada. This enchanting Islamic palace, named “the Red Castle” because of the reddish hue of the walls, is set high up on a hillside above the city.
Amidst the backdrop of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountain range, the Alhambra looks like something straight out of a storybook.
Seville is one of those beautiful historic cities that you can’t not love, but if you’re a vegetarian in Seville then prepare to be assaulted by huge pig legs hanging from the ceiling of just about every restaurant. Sevillians adore their jamón and they won’t let you forget it.
Being vegetarian in Seville, you can easily end up relying on the big bread basket and small ramekin of olives that comes with every meal. While bread and olives are pretty delicious, after the fourth or fifth time of them appearing on the table, you’ll be craving some variety and veggies.
Seville isn’t the most vegetarian friendly of places, but it’s not completely in the dark ages when it comes to meat-free cuisine either. Being a vegetarian in Seville takes a bit more effort and forward planning. Here’s our guide on how to survive as a vegetarian in Seville without just eating bread.
Unable to bear the cold weather crawling into the UK this November (we’re such wimps!) and with our insatiable love for slow travel trips, Luke and I were adamant that we had to get some winter sun on our faces. Well, you can hardly blame us, right?
With temperatures at around 21’c, beautiful buildings wherever you look, and that laid back Spanish culture that lends itself so well to slow travel, we decided that Seville would be the perfect slow travel destination for the winter.
Now that we’re approaching the end of 2015, lists of the top countries to visit in 2016 are cropping up all over the place. The most prominent among these has been Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2016, featuring countries hand-selected by Lonely Planet’s “travel experts.”
But just how were these countries selected as the best places to go in 2016? I wrote to Lonely Planet to find out.
The vegetarian restaurants in Barcelona are some of the best we’ve eaten in. As a country that loves jamón and paella, Spain isn’t known for its vegetarian restaurants. But Barcelona is an exception to the rule. You won’t even believe your eyes (or your belly!)
With my family’s new home base being in Dorset, I set out on a hunt for delicious vegetarian and vegan cafes in and around Bournemouth. The area isn’t exactly known as a vegetarian and vegan scene compared to more alternative UK cities like Brighton and Liverpool. But there are some real veggie-friendly gems to be found.
I never got round to sharing my birthday weekend from back in August. Now that autumn has well and truly overtaken in England, I’m really missing the long summer days that we had. That’s not to say that autumn here isn’t incredibly beautiful, but everyone likes the sunshine right?
There was no exotic destination for my birthday this year – but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any travel for me at all! Instead of just spending the weekend at home, Luke and I dug out my family’s tipi which hadn’t been used for years and headed just half hour away from the house to the Dorset coastline.
In England, it’s not unusual to take a family holiday to the same familiar seaside town, often just the closest one to where you live, or one of the really popular ones that actually have sand rather than pebbles.
Every year you pack up the car with too much stuff and a bag of Starburst. You go, you build sandcastles on the beach, eat Mr Whippy ice creams, probably eat fish and chips too, walk along the pier and play on some penny machines in an arcade. That’s what family holidays were like for me when I was growing up.
Like most people in the UK, I have a lot of nostalgia about seaside holidays.
I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a more rugged coastline than in the south of England. The Jurassic Coast, which stretches over 95 miles between East Devon and my new home county of Dorset, is characterised by it’s grassy cliff tops, sheer drops of jagged white rock cliff sides and spectacular geology.
I first walked along the Jurassic coast when I was much younger. Back then, I was enchanted by Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door because they were just how I imagined many places from fantasy novels to be. All those memories washed over me again when I recently hiked along the coastline.
Even after travelling across different continents, I still think that the short two and a half mile walk between Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door is one of the most beautiful walks in the world.
It’s a strange thing to admit to yourself: that you can feel at home on the road and just kind of lost in the familiar place that you know as home.
It’s a feeling that I’ve only just come to realise since travelling home to the UK from Nicaragua a couple of weeks ago. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like being at home because I do really miss my family when I’m away and I do appreciate the comfortable feeling that comes with being home. It’s just that I never made my home here.
I never got that job commuting into London, I never moved into that first time flat, and I never decided that it was time to settle. When I graduated from university, I moved abroad with Luke almost right away. We spent a year teaching in Taiwan, and sure we worked full-time and lived in an apartment like most people do, but we also travelled a lot.
Those who haven’t travelled to the UK often has a very romanticised view of our culture and lifestyle from watching Downton Abbey and Hugh Grant romcoms – but in truth the UK and its film industry is a whole lot more diverse than that.
Love Actually and Bridget Jones’ Diary captivated many a romantic dreamer, but that’s not all the UK film industry has to offer. The more popular UK films might leave viewers thinking that we all live in mansions and drink tea in the countryside, but that’s just not the case. The UK has a plethora of directors making great films about youth culture that deal with real issues experienced by people in the UK in recent decades. While my list of five films aren’t the most wanderlust inducing and probably won’t make you swoon over English traditions, all of them taught me a lot about the socio-cultural background of the country where I grew up.
We’re Charlie and Luke — UK travel bloggers, adventurers and storytellers. We travel slow and write about sustainable travel. We want to make responsible travel choices and help you do the same. Get to know us.
