THE ADVENTURES OF ELLIE AND BARRY
(AND HENNING THE TROLL)

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Good day, fellow travellers! Today we awoke to much milder weather from the get-go. It was an early start for us, rising at 06:30, having a quick breakfast and rushing out the door. Despite our efforts, we were running a bit behind and it was a little bit panic stations when we came out from the Metro and marched toward Vatican City, the second country of the trip and, as Barry mentioned, the smallest country in the world! Fun fact: highe

This blog is brought to you by Barry Buongiorno! With a busy day ahead of us we were awake at a reasonably early hour, if not the crack of dawn then perhaps the cleft? Breakfast was the first thing in our agenda - always the highlight of a hotel stay if it’s included in the price. Sadly though it was more of a restaurant-style setup rather than a pile ‘em high buffet and so I felt socially unable to request my usual plate of ‘one of everything, plus a few spares’. Still, the

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. We’re back at it again, folks! When we last left you, we had been galavanting all over Geneva for my birthday, getting all Christmassy. Our first holiday of 2026 is going to be a short, but much needed, break. Amid wedding planning and sometimes stressful jobs, it’s nice to get back to normal. Rome is the city of choice this time and I have never been to Italy before! Barry has been to Milan and did not get on so well with Italian public

This blog is (also) brought to you by Barry In our last instalment I promised that Ellie would be guiding you through our trip into the Swiss Alps. However, since our return she has been the busiest of bees, including celebrating her birthday, so I’ve decided to take one for the team and break the usual cycle of alternate blogs while things are relatively fresh in the mind, to save the eventual entry from being ‘we went to the mountains, it was nice’. But off to the mountains

This blog is brought to you by Barry Is it very early or is it very late? This was the question I asked myself when planning this surprise trip in the now-distant days of the summer. Being more specific, if I booked a flight from Luton - Geneva at 6:50am, it would entail us ideally arriving to the airport around 5am, necessitating a 3am departure from Norwich. So, taking into account 30 minutes or so to get myself washed, dressed and out of the door, would waking up at 2:30am

This blog is brought to you by Ellie (and special guest Animal Correspondent, Ruth!) Well, yesterday was pretty eventful, despite ending well. Shall we have a chilled day today? I think we shall. We had a slow breakfast this morning on the front terrace (a choice of terraces, how hard our life has been this week). Today we had a small and perfectly formed plan. Myself, Barry and Dad were to drive into Periana to fetch two highly sought after items, then return victorious and

This blog is brought to you by Barry Today began in what was becoming the usual routine for this Spanish excursion, with everyone emerging sometime after 9am for coffee, juice and breakfast by the pool. The plan for the group was that we were to spend a chilled morning in the villa before heading on an expedition to the city of Granada around 12:30. These hours passed quickly without much to report - Sam, Steed and I used the time to perfect our aquatic ball and frisbee thro

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. This morning I woke up, blinking sleep out of my eyes, at 7am. I fell straight back to sleep and when I next woke, three Spanish hours had passed like magic. It seemed everyone was rising late this morning, a sure sign we have started to relax. When my parents, brother Samuel and Ruth arrived, they were given a short tour by the owner and a sizeable bag of oranges. We enjoyed their juice this morning with our breakfast on the pool terrace

This blog is brought to you by Barry Day Dos (that's Day Two for the uninitiated) began with a bright beam of light calling me from above. Had I passed away in the night and been called up to heaven? Unlikely, for a number of reasons, but the powerful ray of sunshine was enough to ensure that I could no longer keep my eyes closed. As I began to stir from my slumber, I surmised that I was not in fact about to be handed my very own cloud, harp and opportunity to reunite with my

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Well well well… Look what we have here! It's a new Barry & Ellie (& Henning) blog for all to devour. It's been a while, friends. When we last saw you we were in New York in September and newly engaged. I am pleased to inform you that that is still the case and Barry hasn't tired of my presence yet. The wedding planning is well underway and money is being spent at a terrifying rate, but we are very excited to get married, joined by our clo

This blog is brought to you by Barry. Day Two began with Ellie heading out on a solo mission to locate some pastries for our breakfast. She always enjoys a morning wander in a new city and returned with a successful haul of a strawberry tart (for me) and apple donut (for her), plus a couple of cups of tea from downstairs at the hotel reception. In comparison to yesterday’s start time (is 2:30am so early it’s actually very late?) it was a comparatively relaxed beginning to the

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Barry’s birthday is coming up this week, or as we like to say in this house, “Barrymas”. His favourite thing to do is visit new places, so we planned a little city break to Cologne, Germany. Little, meaning one night, sandwiched between two very long days! The flight time for this morning had been brought forward multiple times by Ryanair over the last couple of months, to the point where we had to get up at 2:30am to drive through the po

This blog is brought to you by Barry. Our final full day in Iceland began with another hotel breakfast. Sadly the waffle maker has yet to return to the buffet so I decided to liven things up by braving the pickled herring. The texture was spongy yet soft, almost like a fishy marshmallow. Flavour-wise, not as bad as I was anticipating, although the taste did seem to linger. Fuelled by preserved fish and feeling like a true Icelander I wrapped myself up in my big coat and scarf

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Breakfast today was at 9am and we had all slept like logs after the late night yesterday. It had been an amazing day filled with beautiful firsts and today would be no different. We fed ourselves up and grabbed a few snacks to take on the road. Barry… did not sample the pickled herring today. If you read yesterday’s blog, you know what this means for me. When we piled into the car, the temperature was -1 but we knew we were in for a cold

This blog is brought to you by Barry. After such a long day on our feet yesterday my first thought when the alarm sounded at just gone 7am this morning was ‘no lagoon today, only slumbers’. After a few more moments I realised this was a holiday, and therefore no time for relaxing, and up for breakfast we headed. I’d love to say we were greeted by a beautiful Icelandic morning but it was still pitch black outside. The nights were clearly drawing out even at this northerly lati

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. The time is once again upon us! Thank you for joining myself and Barry (and Henning) on another adventure. This time, we are accompanying Barry’s parents (Karl & Karen) and are very grateful to them for having us. We awoke this morning at a spritely 4am in the Premier Inn at Terminal 4, Heathrow. I was actually a bit lucky to wake up on time as I had set my alarm to 4:50 instead of 3:50. My first blonde moment of the holiday and I’m sure

This blog is brought to you by Barry… It was another early start for me this morning as I tackled the mean streets of Paphos for a morning run. Thankfully the sun was a bit less oppressive this time around and I took a slightly different route running around the full length of the archaeological site and then back through the town. It was a hillier route but I felt far better for the lower temperatures and survived relatively intact. With that foolishness out of the way I met

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. I was very slow to wake up this morning. I’d had a restless night and had trouble getting to sleep. I’d like to think it wasn’t due to the one glass of wine and the one shot of coffee liqueur - though would anyone be surprised? Barry went for another chilly swim whilst I floundered around getting ready for the day, then we walked over to breakfast together, where I actually took a photo of some of the offerings! Another glorious breakfast

This blog is brought to you by Barry… Here’s a test to establish if you’re an idiot while on holiday - you wake up at 7am in Cyprus, do you; A. Roll over and go back to sleep. You’re on holiday, enjoy yourself! B. Head outside for a 5 mile run in hot and sunny conditions. Guess which one I chose? Terrible idea, 0/10, would not recommend. Annoyingly I can’t seem to let myself get out of the running habit even when on holiday. It is nice to get out and enjoy a run in completel

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Today was a day of deja-vu moments, cold water and dirt. I started the day off determined to go for a morning swim, so I got out of bed nice and early and checked the weather out on the balcony. It was a glorious day, though the wind was just as ferocious as last night! It turned out the wind would continue to plague us all day. Barry joined me and we made our way down to the pool area. The pool opens at 8am and at 08:15 we watched the at