Mug #17 - Windsor, England

I often feel as though I'm cheating when I buy a mug in the UK. Like when I bought a mug at the British seaside in Broadstairs last summer or when I started my travel writing by not travelling and instead having a staycation in London.

But the thing is that I've set myself quite the challenge! I am attempting to collect 80 mugs from different places around the world before my current passport runs out in August 2020. And although I hope my collection will increase significantly when I Travel outside of Europe for the first time this summer, I'm still only on mug 17 and so maybe you can forgive me the odd cheat? Plus I think it's just as important to see as much of the wonderful Isle I'm from, as much as all the other wondrous places around the world that I'm just dying to see before I die (in 80 years time... slightly ambitious, but hopefully not by too much haha.)

So last weekend, on a rare occasion when both my girlfriend and myself had a free Sunday to use as we pleased, we jumped on a train at Paddington and within 35mins and at the cost of just £10.50 return each, we found ourselves in the lovely little town of Windsor. Which - don't tell my girlfriend - but if I was mad enough to want to leave London - I am not haha - might just be the perfect commuter town.

Now I'm guessing that Windsor is probably too nice to be cheap to live in, but compared to London living, surely it's like shopping at Asda, compared to Waitress? But then you normally get what you pay for. Yes London housing prices as INSANE! and obviously London is not for everyone, however it is just one of the best places in the world to live (in my opinion). There is always something going on, everyday of the week you can go and see a play, gig, poetry performance, go to a writing workshop or an immersive event like Secret Cinema. It's just a brilliant and exciting place to be.

I'm pretty sure you can't say the same about Windsor? But then that's not why people live there and that's not why we visited. So maybe there isn't enough to keep me entertained for a lifetime but there was definitely more than enough to keep me and my girlfriend busy for an afternoon.

Now the big draw in Windsor is Windsor Castle: "the largest and oldest occupied castle in the world."

And the castle is pretty impressive. I definitely wanted to go inside and have a nosey around, however, the only sticking point was the £20 entrance fee. I'm sure it's amazing inside and part of me thinks that we should have just bitten the bullet and gone in, but £40 for the two of us?  It seemed too much. Especially when we're not exactly rich and supposedly saving up for our big trip this summer?

But castle or no castle, we still had a really lovely time!

Upon arriving at Windsor, we had our pictures taken with Queen Victoria obviously!:

And then we had a little look in the Windsor and Royal Borough Museum, which is free for the yocals and a whole £2 for invaders like me and Liliana. But even at just £2 was frankly quite disappointing. Well at least the actual museum was but luckily while we were there, we joined the free tour of the Windsor Guildhall, a Grade 1 listed building which makes up the majority of the building the museum is housed in.

The tour was fun, I'd definitely recommend it. We were guided by an elderly gentleman - and gentleman is definitely the appropriate term, apart form his ill fitting clothes, he was the absolute epitome of the quintessential English gentleman - who was very knowledgable about the history of the building and the general history of Windsor.

It was a really nice building - mostly used for wedding services these days, including the wedding of Charles and Camila, which was a nice little bonus:

Next we went for something to eat. Liliana fancied a roast dinner, which was more than ok with me. So we found a nice looking pub called the Carpenters Arms and ordered the roast chicken:

The food was good, it took a little too long to arrive but once it did, it really hit the spot.

All fuelled up, it was time to grab a mug, before I forgot:

and then we headed off for a country walk down the Long Walk:

and boy was it a long walk! That picture above is close to the end of a very long path. In total we must have walked for an hour and a half - in a straight line - before we reached it's end. The plan was to head into the Great Park. I was hoping to see some deer - something we failed to do again, as we did in Dublin - and Liliana wanted to see the Savill Garden - 35 acres of interconnecting gardens - it did look amazing in pictures.

But after walking all that way to find that we were still miles from the gardens, we decided to turn back around and walk back up into the town centre, after all we had another long, long walk ahead of us. That's the castle in the distance.

And it was a long walk, one our legs weren't quite used to, but it was really lovely to get out into the great outdoors, get some exercise and breath in the fresh air (which unsurprisingly smelt of cow sh#t! haha).

By the time we finally got back into town, there was only really time for a quick sit down - we really needed a sit down by that time haha - a quick hot chocolate:

and then grab the train home:

Not this one unfortunately but we had a lovely little day out in Windsor. If you're visiting England or just want to get away from the hustle and bustle of London life for a few hours, I would definitely recommend a visit. I think we'll be back again soon and maybe we'll check out the castle and take in the beauty of the Savill Gardens this time.

Mug #14 - Broadstairs, England

A few weeks ago, on my return to London from Croatia, where I holidayed for 10 days - visiting Split, Vis and Pula - I found myself missing the sea. And so although it's not quite the same - I'm really sorry British seaside enthusiasts, as lovely as some of our beaches are, even on the rare occasions that we get the weather (usually for a whole day haha) it's simply not possible to have quite the same experience - as soon as I had a day free, I thought a trip to the seaside was in order.

The organisation of our trip - I went with my lovely girlfriend Liliana - was left up to me. Which is not necessarily always for the best. However, on this occasion I think that I did an ok job. Not that there was too much to plan. All I needed to do was to chose a beach and find a way - by which I mean book a train - to get there.

So where to go. Somewhere nice, with a sandy beach - something I found nigh on impossible to find in Croatia - which was easy and fairly quick to travel to from London. First I thought about Brighton. I like Brighton but it's a pebble beach and I've been there several times before. And so, although I don't have a Brighton mug, I really wanted to visit somewhere for the first time.

Next I thought about visiting Margate. Not least because of one of my favourite Only Fools And Horses episodes: The Jolly Boys Outing. I'm a huge fan of Only Fools And Horses. In a "knows all the words to every episode kind of way". But googling Margate - with all due respect to Margate - I thought that we might be able to find a better beach to visit. So I carried on my search and that's when I found pictures of Botany Bay. Now there is a beach I want to visit! Be sure to Google it and see for yourself. However, without the use of a car, it's not all that accessible from London. Therefore, in the end I decided upon visiting Viking Bay in Broadstairs, Kent. The main reasons for this being that it looked quite nice and was reasonably easy and cheap to get to on the train from Kings Cross St Pancras. And I'm glad that I did. I think it was a pretty good choice.

Viking Bay has a really lovely beach:

And we had a really lovely time there.

Now as is almost traditional now, these adventures tend to start with running and or a bit of a panic. It's bad enough when I'm on my own but this was only magnified by the fact that neither myself or Liliana are particularly punctual people and so - although it was due more to a lack of communication than being late - unsurprisingly we managed to miss the train I had planned for us to take. However, the trains from Kings Cross St Pancras are pretty regular and if anything the one we ended up taking was a little more direct and therefore took a little less time. Getting to Broadstairs took around 1hr 30mins and then for some reason it took around 1hr 50mins on the way back.

Upon arriving at Broadstairs station we followed the crowds - and even though it was the middle of the week and most people were working away in a stuffy office somewhere, there were a lot of people there, I don't want to imagine how busy it gets on weekends - down to the beach which was around a 10 minute walk from the station.

Broadstairs is very much your typical British seaside town and I mean that in both a positive and negative way. But I liked it - I think we both did? - and we did really have a great day there, walking along the beach, eating rock and taking lots of pictures:

Taken by Liliana Seca Santos

Taken by Liliana Seca Santos

After all that walking and picture taking, I found myself feeling a little peckish and although I was definitely a little tempted by the traditional fish and chips. Instead we managed to find a nice little place where I was able to enjoy one of my all time favourite dishes; whitebait:

Taken by Liliana Seca Santos

And of course, we also found enough time to purchase the all important mug:

I really liked Broadstairs. I personally wouldn't want to live there or even really stay there for more than an afternoon haha but it's a great place for a day trip out of London on a sunny day.

We had a lovely time - as I seem to keep repeating - and were back in London in time to celebrate my good friend Dom's 30th birthday - the one in the "birthday" tie - at this really nice pizza restaurant near Covent Garden called Homeslice Pizza:

Although this picture was actually taken in a bar around the corner.
Ps. for some reason I'm sucking on ice. Probably something to do with my bright red face?

And look at the colour of me in that picture! That's not a filter or anything. That's the actual colour my face was haha. Because in Broadstairs I managed to get something I didn't get while in the 35 degree sunshine of Croatia for 10 days... sunburnt haha.

Mug #8 - London, England

A rather obvious place to start?
For me it was the only place to start. I've lived in London for over 5 years and yet there are so many things to do and see that for one reason or another (mainly laziness) I haven't gotten around to. So back in November I decided to have a staycation.

A staycation is "a period in which an individual or family stays home and participates in leisure activities within driving distance, sleeping in their own beds at night. They might make day trips to local tourist sites, swimming venues, or engage in fun activities such as horseback riding, paintball, hiking or visiting museums."

It was also the week of my 31st birthday and so I wanted to do something to celebrate the fact that I would no longer be thirty but would now be a thirty something. So a little holiday in London, where I would take the opportunity to see and do some of the things I have always been meaning to and of course buy myself a London mug:

The week started with a trip to the Imperial War Museum with my good friend Ash who was with me for one of my first firsts: Jellied Eels.

Here is the Imperial War Museum:

Here I am in front of the IWM (can you spot me being all half turned and nonchalant):

The Imperial War Museum is a really great place. I don't know why I haven't been there before? There was so much to see. As well as a huge collection of war artefacts including real life planes, tanks, guns and missiles. They have a whole room full of war medals including more Victoria Crosses than you could shake a rifle at. There is a huge exhibition dedicated to the holocaust but very cleverly we went on a Saturday afternoon - good thinking Batman - and so there was a bit of a queue and as I have been to Auschwitz - although one of the most moving and fascinating places I have ever been to - I was happy to give that a miss. There was also an exhibition on WWI or the Great War but the queue was insane and so I hope to go back on a Thursday afternoon at some point to see that one. There was also a brilliant exhibition of war paintings which I found completely fascinating. I particularly loved the paintings by an artist named CRW Nevinson.

If you haven't been to the Imperial War Museum I would highly recommend it. Although very much a man of peace, of all of London's many, many wonderful museums the Imperial War Museum is now firmly one of my favourites.


To celebrate my birthday, a couple of days later I took myself off to - one of my other favourite museums - the National History Museum to see the exhibition of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award. Something I have been meaning to see every single year since moving to London but have never done so. Actually I did see some of the photographs one year by accident on the beach front in Brighton. But I have never seen the exhibition at the National History Museum before.

I knew I was going to love the exhibition. I love photography and I love animals and nature and so this exhibition was just perfect for me. I didn't however know just how much I would love it. I was there for a couple of hours, in complete awe of how amazing all the photographs were the whole time I was there. All of the photographs were amazing but there was one picture, a picture of a cheetah taken by a nine year old that just blew me away. Not least because here in front of me was a photograph taken by someone who was 9 years of age, that was ten thousand times better than any photograph I will ever take. The exhibition kept me completely captivated for two hours and I could have easily spend another two hours going back around, looking at them all over again.

The exhibition coast £12.50 and I have to admit that my initial thoughts were that it was slightly steep. However, by the time I exited the exhibition I was in no doubt that it was worth every penny. It was one of, it not the best exhibition I have ever seen! I will definitely be going back again next year (and the year after that and the year after that etc).


Next I went to see the London Wall:

I discovered the existence of the London Wall by accident. I was walking from Farringdon to Liverpool Street one day when I saw a sign for the London Wall. Up until then I'm ashamed to say that I'd never heard of it before and so I did what I always do whenever I hear of something or someone for the first time; I typed it into google.

Having Chester as our nearest City when I was growing up - which has a strong Roman history and an extremely well preserved Roman Wall - I find Roman History to be of particular interest. So I decided to go and have a look. A well preserved section of the wall - sadly not very much of the wall still exists - stands just yards from Tower Hill station:

This section of the London Wall is also just over the road from the Tower of London. Therefore, while I was there I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and go and see the 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red'. If you're not from Britain and/or you have been living in a cave, 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' was an art installation placed in the moat of the Tower of London to commemorate the start of the First World War:

On it's own 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. It was truly breathtaking. However, it is only when you consider that every one of the 888,246 hand made ceramic poppies represents the life of a British or Colonial serviceman lost during the War, that you can genuinely start to appreciate the true beauty of what you are seeing.


The week then ended with a trip to Highgate Cemetery with my friends Sophia and Cristina - who I am very excited to be holidaying with this Easter. Flights are already booked! - somewhere I have wanted to go for quite sometime now.

The big draw for a lot visitors to Highgate Cemetery is the grave of Karl Marx:

And for me too! I was also "excited" to see Malcolm McClaren's resting place:

But for me the highlight of the trip and the main reason for me wanting to go to Highgate Cemetery, was to see the grave of one of my all time heroes,
Douglas Adams:

Here I am leaving a pen in his honour:

It was such a beautiful afternoon. I would definitely recommend it if you're stuck for something to do one weekend. It's cheap at only £4 - and although there is something a little strange about treating a cemetery as a tourist attraction  - it's a lovely little walk and there are some really nice little places close by where you can eat lunch afterwards.


There were of course lots of other things that I hoped to fit in, like taking the opportunity to fly the London Eye or taking a trip to Richmond Park to see the deer that unfortunately I wasn't able to fit in. However, all in all I managed to cram quite a bit into my staycation. Not only did I manage to do all of the above but I also managed to spend some time with my friends, go climbing, go to a poetry event - something I really don't do all that often anymore - and go to my first ever Venezuelan restaurant with my friend Gigi.

It really was a great week and although I'm still flirting with the idea of living somewhere else for a short while - another country most likely - and I've always assumed I would retire somewhere warmer. This past week has only reaffirmed how much I love living in London!

So why not go out and see more of your local area?
I bet there's lots to see and do that for one reason or another you have never gotten around to (no matter how long you're lived there).

HAPPY STAYCATION(ING) :)