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

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

Staying out late, X’s on hands. Since when did you like punk rock bands? This blog is brought to you by Barry. In comparison to previous days, the agenda I’d set for poor Ellie’s legs today was far less challenging, almost verging on ‘relaxing’. After whipping up our now traditional breakfast of Trader Joe’s Pumpkin-Os (with added fruit) and a banging cup of tea, we were out of the door at 9am sharp for my longest drive of the holiday so far. The six point turn required to ge

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Hello there, fellow travellers! Welcome to another day in sunny Los Angeles. Today was to be a day of two halves and a quite cultural one too, but first I had to drag my weary bones and muscles out of bed, which sounds easier than it was after the last two days of marching about. After a quick shower and breakfast, we were back out for a short drive down to La Brea Tar Pits. You may have seen the iconic image of the woolly mammoths stuck

This blog is brought to you by Barry. Yesterday featured early morning mountain climbs, heat, jet lag and challenging drives around twisty-turny streets in LA traffic. With all that taken into account, I’m sure it was little comfort to Ellie’s legs to know that when planning this trip, even I looked at our schedule for today and thought ‘this could be a bit ambitious’. Nevertheless, we were taking advantage of the fact that the massive shift in time zones had temporarily turn

This blog is brought to you by Ellie. Thanks to a healthy dose of jet lag, we rose bright and early at 05:30 on the first day of this year’s big Barry and Ellie getaway. We started the day with a squidgy apple cinnamon roll and our favourite tea, purchased from Trader Joe’s yesterday. We packed a bag with sandwiches and snacks and headed out for our first full day. The plan today is as follows: Make Ellie hike to the Hollywood sign (an adventure I did not feel I was capable o

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 Barry. “How you doing?” The morning found us in good spirits and feeling well-rested despite the length and duration of our travels yesterday. It was a relatively relaxed start with our first appointment not scheduled until 10am, so we had time for a leisurely breakfast of pastries and tea courtesy of our visit to Trader Joe’s yesterday. If anyone fancies opening a Trader Joe’s franchise in the UK then consider me first in line. And so with a sp

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