A Summer Weekend in Dover

Officially, the first day of summer this year in the northern hemisphere is 21st June (I know, I just looked it up!), but personally, I've always found it easier to categorise the seasons by months, like so:

Summer: June, July, August

Autumn: September, October, November

Winter: December, January, February

Spring: March, April, May

...which makes the 1st June the first day of summer. So, when Claudio and I went for a weekend away in Dover from the 1st to the 2nd of June, it felt like a great way to start my favourite season of the year!

We started our trip by taking the Elizabeth Line to Farringdon, followed by the tube to King's Cross/St Pancras. As we had a little bit of spare time before our train to Dover, we had a look around St Pancras International station. It was exciting to see the Eurostar trains going to France and Belgium!

Despite the fact that Dover is quite far from London, the train we took was high speed, and we were there in about an hour. Arriving at Dover Priory Station, I was happy to find some vintage travel posters, which I always love seeing!

The retro vibes continued once we reached our hotel, the Best Western Premier Dover Marina Hotel & Spa. This is one of those grand, 19th century English seaside hotels, located right on the beach. I'd always wanted to stay in a hotel like this!

Before checking in, we had a walk around the beach and the pier. From outside the hotel, we could see the iconic sights of the castle and the white cliffs, which was very exciting!

We entered the hotel and checked into our room, which was small, but very cosy, with views out across the beach and the sea. I'd done a search with flexible dates on the Hotels.com app, so had got the room for well under £100. I'd then made a bid of an extra £10 for a room with a sea view, which was accepted. All in all, I feel it was a pretty great deal!

While bidding for the room upgrade, I'd also added another extra to our stay: afternoon tea at the hotel's Churchill Bar & Lounge! This afternoon tea only cost around £20 per person, which I thought was quite a good deal, as in London, you'd generally be paying upwards of £30-£40.

Everything was so tasty (especially the scones!) and it was made extra special by the fact that we were sitting in the window, right next to the beach.

Later in the afternoon, we went down to the beach. In my opinion, it's not a proper beach holiday without a swim in the sea, so even though the weather wasn't exactly boiling hot, we still took the plunge and had a quick dip in the English Channel. As you can probably imagine, the water was very, very cold, but we felt amazing afterwards!

We warmed up in the best possible way, by visiting the hotel's spa, which has a steam room, sauna and jacuzzi. Though the steam room was a little too hot for our liking, the jacuzzi was absolutely perfect. It was a super relaxing way to end the day!

Waking up right next to the sea the following morning was very special. We could even see France in the distance, right from our bed!

We started the day with eggs on toast and coffee at Wheeler's Fish & Chips, which is also part of the hotel, before going off to explore.

Our first destination of the day was Shakespeare Beach, a tranquil pebble beach overlooked by cliffs. These are not the famous white cliffs that you see on postcards (those are on the other side of the town), but they were very picturesque.

Our next little adventure was climbing up the hill to the castle. With its steep stone steps surrounded by foliage, the climb reminded me of my hike to Machu Picchu, though, fortunately, it didn't take nearly as long!

We decided not to buy tickets to enter the castle - at £30 per adult, we felt it was just too expensive. (Since moving to Reading, I've been slightly shocked at how expensive most activities and events are around London and the South East!) But at least we were able to walk around it a bit from the outside. It's actually the biggest castle in the entire country, and it was pretty spectacular to see.

Then it was time for even more walking, as we made our way to the National Trust site on the White Cliffs of Dover.

The site has a really nice café and gift shop. Of course, being at the beach, we had to have some ice cream! It gave us energy to continue on with the last bit of our walk to get to the famous viewpoint of the white cliffs.

I'd never been to Dover before, so it was very special to see the cliffs, which are such a famous symbol of Britain. To make things even better, we could see the cliffs of northern France reasonably clearly in the distance. France has always been one of my favourite countries, so it was exciting to be so close!

To sum up, our weekend in Dover was super fun and a much-needed break for both of us. We've had our fair share of stress lately, what with moving house, and in my case, dealing with various issues at work while searching for a new job, and in Claudio's case, trying to get his first job in the UK. Fortunately, the latter is no longer a problem - Claudio has just started a new job, doing the same thing as he was doing back in Chile! It's a real relief, and I'm so proud of him, as the job market is really rough at the moment, and he was thinking he might have to lower his expectations in terms of the sort of role he could aim for. So it's a great achievement for him, and also gives us stability we've never had before (we've never both been in stable, full-time jobs at the same time).

So, overall, our new life in Reading is getting off to a great start, and we plan to have more little adventures like this in the near future!

Snorkelling in the Surin Islands

We got back from our honeymoon in Thailand over two months ago, and I've now arrived at my last post of 9 about our time there. It's amazing how much I've had to write about it all, but we saw and did so much during those two weeks!

The third and final day trip we took was a guided tour to the Surin Islands on the penultimate day of our holiday. These islands to the west of the country are well-known for being one of the world's best snorkelling spots, which is what motivated us to travel there. We snorkelled in Arraial do Cabo back in 2022 and absolutely loved the experience, so were really excited to try it in a different part of the world.

Again, we booked a guided tour with GetYourGuide, and were picked up along with a couple of others in the early hours of the morning in a minibus. To be honest, we thought that this was going to be the group that we would be with for the whole tour, but when we arrived at the pier, we were dropped off at this big area with tonnes of people. We were given a blue wristband and were told to wait until they called our group. It was a bit chaotic, but at least there was WiFi, toilets and showers, and even a breakfast spread laid out. We'd already eaten breakfast at our hotel in Khao Lak (I got into the routine of having a breakfast of steamed rice, eggs, tomatoes and chili sauce every morning, which I miss a little bit now!) but we definitely weren't going to say no to chocolate brownies and iced coffee!

We were there for around an hour before we were given an introductory talk about the day's itinerary and what to do while snorkelling (the guide doing the talk actually told us that clown fish sting like jellyfish, which I later found out is not true!). Then it was time to take a travel sickness pill (which were given out for free) and get on the speedboat.

The Surin Islands are actually pretty far from the Thai mainland, so it took about 80-90 minutes to get there, even travelling as fast as we were.

At last, we arrived, and immediately jumped into the sea for our first snorkelling session.

Claudio had brought his waterproof phone case, so he could take some photos and videos underwater. He found it quite difficult to get good footage, as the fish move around so fast, but it's fair to say that the underwater world of these islands was absolutely incredible - there were fishes of all colours and some amazing corals. We didn't get to see a "Nemo fish" (clown fish), but we were lucky enough to see a couple of "Dory fish" (blue tang)!

For the next part of the tour, we got off the speedboat and into a long-tail boat to visit the Moken village on the south island. This is a community of people from an ethnic minority group who live in huts on the beach and sell items such as jewellery to make money.

The sight of the village as you approach it in the boat is really beautiful.

After about an hour at the Moken village, which we mostly spent relaxing on the beach, we went over to the north island for lunch. This was definitely the least enjoyable lunch from the three tours we did - the only veggie option was a very bland, watery stir fry, and the buffet table was a bit of a rugby scrum because there were several other tour groups there at the same time. That said, I can't really complain, as the breakfast at the pier had been really good. Plus, while eating at an outside picnic table, we had a view of a monkey playing in a tree!

A short distance from the picnic area, there's an absolutely beautiful beach, where we swam during our free time after lunch. This beach is the very definition of a secluded, tropical paradise, and actually reminded me a bit of the clips I'd seen of The Beach. However, unlike the real beach from the movie, you're allowed to swim here and it's not packed full of tourists!

We had two more snorkelling stops in the afternoon, seeing some more wonderful marine life. Each stop was around 45 minutes, and it was actually kind of tiring by the third stop. Overall, it was over two hours of snorkelling, which is a long time to wear an uncomfortable mask with your teeth clamped around the mouthpiece! By the end, I was taking a lot of breaks to just float in the water and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

We were welcomed back at the pier later with even more snacks, including coconut ice cream, which was especially appreciated! As with the James Bond tour, it was a super long and full day, but a really great way to see Thailand's underwater wildlife. Though overall, our trip to Ayutthaya was my clear favourite out of the tours we took, this excursion definitely added something special to our honeymoon.

And so, with that, my posts about Thailand have come to end! It was an absolutely unbelievable couple of weeks and gave us so many memories we'll treasure forever. One thing I really loved, and which kind of surprised me, was just how different all the places we visited were; from the vibrant metropolis of Bangkok, to the ancient temples of Ayutthaya, the lush rainforests of Khao Sok National Park, and the paradise beaches of Khao Lak and the Surin Islands. Strangely, although our trip went fast, in a way, we also felt like we spent a lot of time there and really experienced a good amount of the country. Obviously, we would have loved to stay longer, but we also felt very satisfied with how we'd spent the trip, as we'd done everything we wanted and more. All in all, we couldn't have asked for a more perfect honeymoon!

Of course, coming back to the "real world" has been a contrast to say the least. For various reasons, we've had our fair share of stress over the last couple of months, but we've also gone through a very happy change in our life. Last month, we moved out of my parent's house in the Wiltshire countryside and moved into our own little flat in Reading! I've also swapped working in Bristol for working in London, which has long been a dream of mine.

Moving home also means there are plenty of new travel adventures to be had, and we've already got started on that! Stay tuned, because I'll be posting plenty about London and beyond over the coming weeks.

See you back here soon!