Anyways I woke Monday morning at 4.30am and never managed to get back to sleep – like I tried and tried, even listened to some music and did a bit of reading, but nothing worked and I remained wide awake! I honestly couldn’t wait for Luke to wake up, but he seemed to be sound asleep! I was also starting to get really hungry, so the countdown until he woke up had truly begun.

Luke eventually woke at 7am (at last!) and he too was as equally hungry as I was so we decided to get up have a shower get dressed and head out into the beautiful city.

We left the hotel room around 8.30am and headed to breakfast at cafe Alma – and just a quick side note breakfast in Sydney is a game changer! Açai bowls, overnight oats bowls, granola bowls, I mean basically everything I absolutely love! And what a great way to start the day before embarking on a day full of sight seeing and exploring.

It was a hot (like so ridiculously hot) day but I was not about to start moaning, seeing as I spend so much of my time feeling absolutely freezing. The heat was very much welcomed. Think it got quite high into the 30’s and there was no breeze whatsoever, so the humidity was on another level.

Seeing as our time in Sydney was short, we had decided that we had to make the most of it, and see as much as possible in the few days that we had.

And I have to say we literally had the best day visiting the Sydney harbour bridge and Sydney opera house, taking a trip to the Chinese garden of friendship and hitting all the great look out spots along the way. We ended up walking over 6 and a half miles and I got 5 blisters to show for it! But that was partly down to my stupid footwear (sandals!) I did keep the complaining to a minimum but my god they were so painful!

Even though I was really suffering and had to buy 2 new pairs of equally uncomfortable flip flops, I was determined to keep on going, and not waste any precious time.

By the time it got to 5pm Luke & I were both hot and the jet lag had properly set in, and I really needed a shower and some food. We got an Uber back to the cute hotel with every intention of freshening up and heading out for dinner. Except that jet lag I had previously mentioned had other plans and whilst I just laid on the bed for a minute both Luke and I woke up to find it was 8.30pm – oh well a lobster roll delivered by Uber eats would have to do instead of heading out for dinner. And then it was time to sleep, and I couldn’t wait to sleep.

First day in Sydney – amazing!

Watch the travel vlog here

The post Sydney 2024 Day 1 appeared first on Lifestyle Lisa.

Actually can we please just take a moment to mention the weather! I mean for this autumn loving girl, I am LOVING like literally LOVING this autumnal weather! I mean FINALLY, it’s starting to feel like October, and I couldn’t be happier.

Okay enough about the weather, let’s get back to todays travel blog.

The impromptu trip to Cork Ireland!

Let’s start by saying, yes I know this is way overdue by like a month, life got busy and I just didn’t have the time to write any content. But better late than never, right?

So if you follow my blogs or even my YouTube channel then you will know that I love to travel, I love getting out there and visiting a new or even old destination. And I am huge huge fan of impromptu trips! I love booking a last minute flight jumping on a plan and exploring a city with no actual plans!!

Saturday the 2nd of September saw me boarding an 9am ryanair flight to Cork – the return flight cost was £35.45 (I then paid an additional £18 total to secure my seat) flight time was around an hour and fifteen minutes.

I had my favourite travel companion with me – my husband Luke, and to be honest I couldn’t wait to be back in Cork exploring and making memories. I say being back in Cork because 10 years ago during the month of September before Luke and I were even a couple I spent a long weekend being the perfect tourist and checking out the sights, bars and restaurants that lined the streets of the beautiful city.

I had always planned to revisit Cork, I just didn’t think it would take 10 years to do so!

As with our previous impromptu trip to Dublin back in July, Luke and I only pre booked 2 things to do which would then free up time to be tourists, live in the moment and do touristy things. I mean is there anything better?

Arriving at Cork airport shortly after 10am, and making it through customs very quickly, we jumped into a taxi and headed to our first activity of the day – a tour around Cork City Gaol .

Cork City Gaol Gaol, is a stunning castle-building which once housed 19th century prisoners. We booked a self guided tour which cost £10.09 pp (yes the 9p is random) we then took a trip back in time and wandered through the wings of the Gaol, which was once home to many inmates, who had committed various crimes.

The tour took us roughly and hour, and was throughly worth it. It was very interesting and informative and it wasn’t too crowded either, so we weren’t forever bumping into other couples.

With the tour done, Luke and I had around 4 hours to wonder the streets of Cork before our guided walking tour at just after 2pm.

We found a Starbucks (of course) they couldn’t do me a Pumpkin Spice frappe with oat milk though, they had the syrup, they just couldn’t make it….. yes I thought this was strange, but I settled for the normal coffee frappe oat milk, and it was actually a very very good frappe!

Mini pit stop done, we were soon back on the streets of Cork taking in all the sights. This will be a good time to elaborate on the fact that this isn’t my first time in Cork, as I mentioned previously I had visited 10 years ago, and absolutely fell in love with the stunning city. Whilst I was there back in the September of 2013 I found a lovely family run restaurant which served the nicest (literally the absolute best) seafood chowder and seafood linguine. Unfortunately I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of it but thought I might recognise it when I started walking around the city centre. Needless say I didn’t recognise a thing but did remember it was near a bridge, however there are 31 bridges in Cork (which I learnt on my walking tour) so the chances of me remembering which bridge were oh so very very slim! After well over an hour I resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to find this restaurant. And after 10 years there was every possibility that it wasn’t even there anymore!

Epic fail on my part having walked aimlessly around trying to find that restaurant, it was time to go on the working tour – I mean maybe I’d see it when on the tour!

The walking tour was as I thought it would be – brilliant! Super informative and we had the nicest tour guide – although everyone I met in cork was friendly. The entire waking tour last around 1hour 30 minutes, and it was so interesting finding out the history of Cork.

Tour done, we needed food! So we settled on the decision that we would need to find another place to eat we decided on giving Quinlans a go.

Quinlans is a fresh fish restaurant that can be found situated on the high street. It has some pretty decent reviews, and by this point I was super hungry so when I saw what the menu had to offer, I was pretty much sold. We ordered crab cakes for starters and I had the sizzling prawn for main, whilst Luke had fish and chips. The crab cakes which we shared were delicious, however the mains took over an hour to arrive, and the restaurant was not busy. Apparently there had been a mix up in the kitchen and our order wasn’t put through. Because we were on a day trip time schedule we decided that we couldn’t wait around, the manager was extremely apologetic and gave us our mains to go (he didn’t charge us for those) Whilst Luke tried to eat his dinner sitting on a bench in a park I couldn’t eat my prawns which were dripping in oil, which in turn had leaked all over Luke’s fish and chips. Unfortunately a disappointing dinner for us both , but we did still find time to fit in some ice cream, or in my case a frozen yogurt, which we got at swoon! And a Irish coffee too, which was something I really wanted as I didn’t get round to getting one in Dublin.

Swoon was our last stop of the day, after 12 hours being the perfect little tourists it was time to head back to the airport. Chill in the land and finally board our Ryanair flight back to Stansted airport.

Day dreaming of my next impromptu trip away – stay tuned ….

The post 12 Hours in Cork appeared first on Lifestyle Lisa.

Bora Bora travel blog series coming soon!!!!

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Check out my day 5 travel vlog which is now live on my YouTube channel.

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Please head over to my YouTube channel & check out day one of my travel vlog to Mo’orea.

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Well I had a productive weekend, and I finally sat down and edited my travel vlog series from my trip to French Polynesia back in December 2022.

Yes I know, it’s a little late, but better late than never as they say.

Here’s the link (fingers crossed it’s works) so please head over to my YouTube channel give the video a little like don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and enjoy the new series.

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