My Travels

I didn’t start travelling in earnest until I was in my 30’s, although I had moved to London a long time ago by then.

When you come from Dublin, moving to London doesn’t really count as travelling, almost everyone does it at some point, and it is only a 40 minute flight away! [This does ignore the travel time to and from the airport, the 20 minute walk to the boarding gate and the two-hour check in time]

I first came to London when I was 11 years old, and I instantly fell in love with the city that never sleeps!  Our hotel was The Regent Palace Hotel, just off Piccadilly Circus and I don’t think any of us slept that night as London clanged and banged around us! The Regent Palace Hotel is now undergoing a complete renovation costing £300 million!

Dublin in the early 80’s was a tiny town in comparison to London and my experience of driving through the city centre of Dublin on the way home from my grandparents house, was that after 11pm everything closed and the city went to sleep.  On my first night in London my dad took me for a walk up Regent Street and I my eyes were popping out of my head in excitement!  I couldn’t believe the amount of people out and about well past my bedtime!  There were adults on roller skates, punks all around Eros, and the cavernous shop windows were filled with solitary mannequins, rather than the clutter and overload that was the norm for shop windows in Dublin then.

I spent my teenage years yearning to return to London, and indeed, 2 days after I completed my Leaving Certificate and University College Dublin Matriculation exams, I was off.  I never looked back.  I did return to Ireland after a year as my boyfriend and I were not particularly good at looking after ourselves and he missed home comforts.  I started university, but after 2 years I dropped out and moved to London for good.  (The correct order in fact was; I came to London for the summer & never went back).

I have always loved taking photographs, and I have taken lots as I started to spread my wings and travel further afield. We love travelling, and continue to travel as much as we can.  I’m not setting myself any targets in terms of visiting countries, I have only managed to get to 17 so far, and there are so many yet to see!  Hopefully we will, in the future be able to pack up our land-rover & head off on a long road trip.  In the meantime I will add the different countries I have been to, and photo galleries of some of my pictures, when I get a chance.  As we explore more countries, I will add them too…

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Update

To whet your appetite, here is a list of the countries I have visited so far… Having spent half my life in Ireland, and the other half in England, I am now a tourist in both, so will include stories and pictures from both 🙂

Ireland

UK

USA

Belgium

Croatia

The Netherlands

Sweden

Turkey

The Canaries

Italy

France

Portugal

India

Spain

Switzerland

The Gambia

Greece

Egypt