15 August 2023

In February this year, we visited Sri Lanka for the first time, with my son who is 6. We decided that a week would give us the perfect amount of relaxation and also enough time to do some sightseeing. The flight timings to Sri Lanka on Emirates didn’t work well for us, so we opted to fly with Sri Lankan Airlines. The outbound flight left at 11 pm, so we hoped that my son would get on the flight and sleep.. success, he did! We got an upgrade offer from Sri Lankan Airlines, so decided to take that, which meant lie-flat beds in business class. It is only a four-hour flight from Dubai, but due to the lie-flat beds, we arrived having had a few hours’ sleep. The return flight was at 19.00, so we had the full day in the resort, to relax before the flight home. On arrival in Sri Lanka, we were met by our Destination Management Company, Columbus Tours, who were providing the transfers to and from the airport and some sightseeing trips. We stayed in the Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle, on the south coast. The Anantara is around a 3-hour drive from the airport, which meant that my son could also snooze in the car, whilst we admired the beautiful Sri Lankan countryside. Our driver Lesley is very knowledgeable, providing us with lots of interesting facts about Sri Lanka. Who knew Sri Lanka has over 400 waterfalls? On arrival at the Anantara, we were greeted with a full welcome reception by the wonderful team there. The staff at the Anantara really do go above and beyond. We were also met by our personal Butler Prashanth, who we could what’s app or call, at any time, if we needed assistance. The hotel itself is beautiful and sits on a rocky outcrop on the southern coast of Sri Lanka near the old fort town of Tangalle. The resort has a mixture of rooms and villas, some villas with pools. The hotel is located on the beach; however, the sea is quite rough most of the year, therefore difficult to swim in, although I did see some people braving it and going for a dip! Several dining options were available, but we opted to go half board, however, the Anantara also offer bed and breakfast, full board and all-inclusive food options. We chose half board as we knew that we would spend a couple of days out sightseeing. We did sometimes buy food in the hotel and found the prices for this were quite reasonable, certainly in comparison to Dubai. Eating out in Sri Lanka is very inexpensive and when we were out sightseeing we were able to sample some lovely Sri Lankan cuisine. The food in the hotel was excellent and we sampled lots of different local dishes, including lobster and different seafood and of course, the Sri Lankan curries – be warned they are quite spicy! One of the main reasons for us wanting to visit Sri Lanka was so that we could enjoy a safari. From Tangalle you can easily reach Udawalawe National Park, it’s around 1.5 hours away. We decided to do a half-day safari with Columbus Tours again, our driver Lesley came back to the hotel to collect us and take us there. The highlight of the safari was getting up close and personal with the elephants and staying a bit further away from a crocodile… the half day tour was the right length of time for my son, I think if we had done a full day it would have been too long with all the driving. Later on in the week, we went on a half-day tour to Galle to wander around the old town and see Galle Fort, which was a great morning out. We did this tour with Tuk Tuk Safari Tangalle and a gentleman called Akila, who is a friend of ours. On the way back we spent a couple of hours on the beach at Marissa to watch the surfers and see people climbing up Coconut Tree Hill. In the evening after Galle Fort, we had the pleasure of visiting another local hotel for dinner, the Amanwella; the views at dinner are simply stunning and the cuisine was also excellent. The rest of the week was spent relaxing in the hotel. The hotel has lots of wildlife, including peacocks, squirrels and even monkeys that are sometimes brave enough to come and steal some food, keeping my son entertained. Sri Lanka and the amazing people there have secured a special place in our hearts and we will definitely be back, in the not-too-distant future…

02 February 2022

In 2019 we decided to celebrate my Mother in Law’s 60th birthday on a cruise ship. Now, I am not going to lie, I was initially quite apprehensive about this. A cruise ship with a 3-year-old, nowhere to escape to when needed and a tiny cabin (was the impression I had in my mind before boarding the ship). How wrong could I have been! We sailed on Royal Caribbean, on the Oasis of the Sea’s, a ship built in 2009 with a guest capacity of 5,606 people, it really is a wonder of the seas and felt like a floating city. With 25 dining options, multiple bars and lounges you had plenty of choices. There was a great selection of entertainment for the children on offer, the smaller children could enjoy the various swimming pools, kid’s clubs, puppet theatre and even a carousel. Whilst the older children had a football pitch and basketball court, waterslides, cinema and even a junior disco. There was a zip line for the more adventurous folk (like my mother in law) rock climbing walls and a Flo Rider wave machine. One of the highlights for me was the Aqua Theatre, where they put on spectacular dive shows every afternoon/evening. The Royal Theatre also put on stage productions every day; the earlier ones are suitable for young families as well. We loved strolling along the Royal Promenade, which felt like we were walking through a street in a city, with tree-lined walkways and even Tiffany the jewellery store. Which my Husband tried desperately to avoid. However, he didn’t try as had hard to avoid the casino… I was really surprised just how much there was to do on the ship, in fact in some ports we didn’t even get off the ship. This was in part due to bad planning, as we hadn’t organized excursions in advance. So when we left the ship we either had to wait quite a long time to do so anything or just wandered round the cities, taking in the sights. However, we were also very happy just to be on the ship, as there was so much to keep everyone entertained. I realized as I came to the end of this post that I haven’t spoken about the cities we visited on the cruise. We embarked on the ship in Barcelona and travelled to Mallorca, Provence, Florence, Rome, Naples and back to Barcelona. We had a near miss when a few trains were cancelled in Rome and we thought we might not make it back to the ship on time. Luckily, we did manage, with half an hour to spare. Cruising and Royal Caribbean... I will most definitely be back!