Below you will find a selection of the most recent entries from bloggers in our Travel section.
To view the entries from individual bloggers, click on the links below:
- After a successful corporate career in supply chain management, Marta Koncz, took the leap to follow her passion for travel and start her own business: Agate Experience, to help people discover and explore the hidden gems of her adopted home country, Switzerland.
Marta has always loved to travel, to discover new cultures, dishes, and customs, and experience something new. Even as a schoolgirl she planned trips for her classmates. As an adult, travelling was more than just a passion, it was also a therapy for Marta as she found she learnt a lot about herself through her adventures and seeing life through a different lens. It was also the perfect way to destress and relax from a busy working week.
Through Agate Experience she offers fun travel experiences and opportunities to discover the hidden gems of Switzerland.
- This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - A keen photographer and former expat who loves to travel, discover food, wine and cultures, does a bit of feng shui & home design and plays Scrabble & Gateball. She has been living in Switzerland since 2000 and would like to share her experiences, photos and perspectives on all of the above! This is her first travel blog catered for Swiss locals.
- Rachel Beacher is a British journalist who would be ready to backpack around the world tomorrow if she could find an easy way to carry two small and unruly children. She most enjoys travelling to places that are family-friendly, and easily accessible from Geneva. Before becoming an expat in Switzerland, Rachel was a writer and editor for UK newspapers and magazines. She moved to Lausanne in early 2013, speaks passable French, and has been writing travel articles for over 15 years. She is the co-founder of Living In Sion.
By Aurea Fagel, text and photos
Here comes the proverbial question everyone is begging to ask you now: ‘What are your summer plans?’
And this is no ordinary summer where we can just blurt out and say you are going to fly out to some exotic country or to your top beach destination.
This year, probably the best and more prudent answer would be: local and sustainable.
Yes, go Switzerland. And why not? You would be amazed at how much you have "under-discovered" this amazing country. For sure, there must be some place where you have not trekked, visited or eaten! And by not flying, you are also reducing your carbon footprints and perhaps even saving a bit of money. If there is a time to help our local business, producers and economy, it is now!
So here is a tip: challenge yourself to find that Swiss spot to conquer and claim. Your humble guide is here with a few ideas. In each of my articles, I will highlight one possible destination - either a charming village, a nature trek, a culinary fancy or anything Swiss under the sun. Have a great trip!
Legoland Windsor Resort Fireworks
By Rachel Beacher, Journalist
Back in the days before the British government was intent on destroying itself, Guy Fawkes was infamous for his foiled attempt to blow up the House of Lords.
The thwarting of this 17th century terrorist plot is remembered every year in the UK with public fireworks displays across the country.
These days the celebrations span several weeks up to 5 November, with some of the best Bonfire Night shows at amusement parks, where you can stay in on-site hotels if you choose to travel for the weekend. Here is a selection of this year's events, most of which are just a short flight away in the UK.
Legoland, Windsor, Berkshire
27 and 28 October
Ninjago-themed displays, where you can use 3D glasses to watch the fireworks explode into thousands of tiny Lego bricks. The shows mark the opening of Lego Ninjago World and coincide with a Brick or Treat Halloween festival, which runs until 30 October. Under-threes go free. The park has two hotels that look like they've been built out of giant Lego bricks.
Nearest airport: Heathrow
Port de Pollença
By Rachel Beacher, Journalist
Flight bookings have just opened for this autumn and winter 2017/18. For people planning how to spend the colder months, where better than a picturesque Mallorcan port?
'Everyone – the English, the Americans – they all came to Mallorca in the winter.'
So observed the thriller writer Agatha Christie in 1935 in her short story 'Problem at Pollensa Bay'. Indeed, at the time, the major towns of Mallorca were so busy that the author's hero sought refuge towards the less popular north east coast of the island and by chance came across a pretty and bohemian bolthole – Port de Pollença.
I visited Port de Pollença during those pesky school holidays in October, when the weather is usually failing in Vaud and it is still many months until ski season.
I found it to be enduringly enchanting and unmistakably recognisable from Christie's pre-war portrait.
She describes how a private detective, attempting to escape from his work and from the bothersomeness of people in general, falls in love immediately with 'a small hotel standing on the edge of the sea looking out over a view that in the misty haze of a fine morning had the exquisite vagueness of a Japanese print.'
