Travel

I’ve been sighing a lot in London lately. I often talk about how much I love this city on this blog; I wrote a whole post about why it deserves every bit of that love, just over a year ago. In that post, I cited the things to do, the galleries, the people, the restaurants, the markets. And I still stand by every word of that post. From Broadway Market to Saatchi Gallery, to afternoon tea and early morning raves, I’m more in love with this city than ever.

But we all know what love is like. It starts off like fireworks, all oohs and aahs, lust and passion. If we’re lucky, that feeling stays for a while. If we’re really lucky, that feeling stays forever.

If you live in London, or have travelled there recently, you probably visited the Tower of London to see the poppies. But for those who couldn’t make it, I wanted to share photos from last week, when I saw it for myself. 888, 426 individual ceramic poppies were placed around the Tower of London, one for each British military casualty in the First World War. While it is visually stunning, I was completely overwhelmed by the tragedy it represents.

I rarely write about Central or West London; nearly all of my previous posts about London have been about my beloved East, where I live. I get the occasional email about things to do in London and I always feel a bit lost on what to recommend, especially if the person writing has never been to the Big Smoke before. While people want to find out about lesser-known places like Broadway Market and the Early Morning Rave, let’s face it: London has some of the greatest sightseeing spots in the world, from Buckingham Palace to Big Ben to Trafalgar Square.

It also has some of the best selections of afternoon tea.

I recently returned from a short but amazing holiday in Cyprus. With a few days in Nicosia and a day in the Troodos Mountains, I had just enough time to visit a few museums, do a bit of hiking, and, of course, visit a hamam. However, what really stood out for me, above anything else, was the incredible quality of Cypriot food. No word of a lie, Cypriot food was consistently some of the best food I’ve ever tasted.

Medellín has had a terrible reputation in the past – due to the drug cartel led by the infamous Pablo Escobar, it was once dubbed the most dangerous city in the world. Thousands of innocent civilians died in the 1980s and 1990s due to the business of cocaine. After Escobar’s death in 1993, however, the city started to get back on its feet, and over the past two decades there have been humongous changes. It is not a city totally devoid of crime, but crime rates have fallen in huge numbers, and I for one felt safe in its streets.

Now, as the second biggest city in Colombia, it is a city of beauty and culture; surrounded by mountains, it offered us blue skies and green landscapes. Although we only had a few days there, we filled our days with as much as Medellín could offer. There are many things to do in Medellín, but here are just a few of the things we enjoyed.

A photo essay from around South America, of all my favourite shades of blue.