Our Day by Design

In December last year we spent 8 nights in Orlando, Florida with Grahams family {his parents, his sister & her fiancé, his aunt & uncle and his cousin & his fiancée}, making 10 of us in total. The 8 of them had spent a week down the coast in Fort Myers first but due to our lack of holidays, we could only get 6 days off work. We met them all in Orlando on the Saturday. We set off on the Friday, my 29th birthday and as we landed in Orlando, we were just relieved that we had actually managed to get there, following a few issues to say the least. It started with the never ending snow which had closed Edinburgh airport and kept my sister & nephew up here since the weekend before. The week was full of helpful suggestions from everyone and there were even thoughts of driving down to Manchester for our Orlando flight; thankfully the airport reopened on the Friday morning! However there were still a few issues at check in {how an airline system can’t cope with people who ha...

Back in October last year we spent a week down in the Norfolk Broads with my parents, my sister, her fiance & my nephew and my aunt & uncle. Since we are about to head off for this October's trip, I thought it was time to get caught up with a quick recap! We drove down to Pontefract on the Friday night and met my parents and aunt & uncle at a Premier Inn, just in time for some food and a few glasses of wine. On Saturday morning we continued our journey as far as Norwich to pick up my sister & family at the train station before continuing to our house on The Broads for the week. We stayed at a lodge by the river in the village of Wroxham , which came with a motorised day boat for us to use. The living room / kitchen was upstairs with the four bedrooms on the ground floor.   We took the boat out for the first time on Sunday and made our way slowly towards Horning , mooring right in front of the Swan Inn for lunch, which was delicious!   My dad h...

It only took around twenty minutes to go further out of the city to our next hotel. We spent the remaining four nights of the week at the Sirayane Boutique Hotel & Spa .     After being welcomed with mint tea and homemade biscuits, we were shown around the gorgeous hotel before being taken to our room, which was lovely with a massive bathroom.   We had booked one of the 8 rooms with a private terrace, situated in the main building, which I think was a good choice as some of the private garden rooms could be seen from the pool. However, they also looked lovely so I don't think any room would have been a bad choice. The suites with the private pools would be perfect for a honeymoon but were a little more expensive than we wanted to pay.   We spent all of our time there just doing nothing, sunbathing and reading by the pool, relaxing and sleeping. Instead of individual sun loungers the pool was surround by large beds ...

We arrived in Marrakech on Saturday evening, following our afternoon flight direct from Edinburgh. After customs taking forever, and another stamp in my new passport, we found our taxi driver that had been arranged through our riad. He dropped us off at a parking area near to our riad {no cars are allowed within the Medina} then he asked a young boy to direct us to the door. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was literally only five seconds away from where we had been dropped off so there was no real need for a guide, especially when we then had to give him some money for carrying my suitcase! For the first three nights we stayed in the Medina in the Riad Marrabahia . Although it had 8 rooms arranged around the central courtyard with the pool, we were the only guests staying. The room was lovely and had everything we needed. After we had got settled it was quite late so we asked for directions for somewhere to eat and were directed to Kosybar for our first taste of Morocca...