Tag: Islands

Lonely Planet’s lightning guide to the South Pacific Island of Fiji.

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Lonely Planet’s lightning guide to the Pacific island of Hawaii just off the coast of the USA.

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In this video, I travel to the Island of Cyprus down on the Mediterranean, where perhaps surprisingly, Greek is the main language. I came to Cyprus to hang out with my friends and to go to the wedding of my friends David and Andrea. In true “me” fashion, I go exploring and have a BLAST.

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Travel to the fabulous island of Mykonos in Greece, where the wealthy play, the decadent flourish and the beautiful people languish. Visit the beaches, travel the streets of Old Town, visit the Wind Mills and enjoy the sunset.

Editor Note: Those are not my words incidentally!! Greek mythology has it that this Island is where the battle between Zeus and the Gigantes took place. See? You learn something new and totally useless every day!

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Last year, my girlfriend and I decided that we’d like to go to one of the Greek Islands for some sun - last minute holidays are typically “us“ and this was no exception. Now both of us have been before…we’ve both done Rhodes and Skiathos, and she’s also been to Crete and the Greek Mainland but this time we wanted somewhere fairly quiet and relaxing, although we are restricted to going during the school holidays so naturally there’s a challenge there! As usual, finding a good deal and suitable destination involved plenty of Interweb wandering and - one of the reasons I started up this site actually - inspiration for some reason always seems to be in short supply. Sure, there are some great cheap deals out there, but none of the travel booking websites seem to tell you what the place is really like.

You know the score - the deal is great but the blurb that accompanies it is all about how wonderful the place is, how amazing the hotel is blah, blah, but it doesn’t tell you that your room looks out over the waste bins, or that 25 guests went down with food poisoning in July. Or that the Island is a protected environment for Waspus Stingus Humungous. And the Greek Islands do have Read the rest of this entry »

The second visit to the Maldives (with my current girlfriend) we did things a little differently, but had an equally fantastic time in a slightly more “natural” habitat on Asdu Sun Island which is an hour speed-boat ride from Malé airport. Asdu is different to Kanuhura in several ways - it’s less “purpose built” and more basic/informal, plenty of trees in a more natural habitat and a smaller Island all round - without the 5* touches, but much more of that “middle of nowhere” feeling which is, I have to say, fantastic. You sit on the white sandy beach during the day looking out at….nothing! Not a thing in sight. Robinson Crusoe this is! You can walk right round the Island in, ooh, 10 minutes, it’s that small. It only had around 25 guest rooms, a central restaurant, and being dive-oriented, is quiet during the day because they all sail out to the reef to, well “dive” I guess! Not that it will ever get busy with so few rooms!

It’s a more rustic feeling, basic yet very clean rooms, but it’s also a very cheap holiday by Maldives standards. We did this Read the rest of this entry »

Sometime back in the 80’s, when I was a mere youngster, before the days of this amazing Interweb thingy, I remember seeing an advert in a glossy magazine for a place called the Maldives. It was what has now become the sterotypical picture of paradise - the palm tree, white beach, glistening blue lagoon and the distant outline of a small Island - and I remember thinking “one day, I’m GOING to go there!” The trouble is of course, the pics in the brochure are always touched up, taken from the “right angle” and generally the best possible advert…the real thing never lives up to the image.

Or so I thought. When I returned from my first trip to the Maldives in 2001, my answer to people who asked what it was like was “it’s the only place I’ve ever been where the reality is better than the pictures!”. Which is probably why I went back again in 2006 and will be going back again in the next 2 years, and probably again after that (repeat to fade). I’m not normally one to go back to the same place more than twice in quick succession, but the Maldives is definitely the exception Read the rest of this entry »