TRAVEL DESTINATIONS: ANTIGUA

Hello, everyone!


I've been thinking about delving into the travel blogger community a lot more recently. I have been to quite a few places and thought it would be fun to start a series on my travel blog all about the destinations I've been to and my recommendations if you decide you want to venture out there!

The first one I thought I'd speak about would be Antigua and Barbuda.

I went to Antigua and Barbuda last year and have to say it's one of my favourite Caribbean islands!

We stayed in Saint Philip Parish in Willikies - near the coast basically. We stayed in the Pineapple Beach Hotel which was an all inclusive. 

http://bit.ly/2bmbkAm 

The location was perfect as it wasn't far from the airport but far enough away that you couldn't hear airplanes when you was sitting trying to relax. 

It was so scenic and beautiful. We had like a town right outside our resort, we ended up having a little walk down into the town. We went into a flea market to get some authentic bits. It was a bit overwhelming as Antigua gets most of the economic income from tourists so we was getting heckled left right and center to buy stuff which was kind of intimidating. If you were to go I would recommend visiting the town with a group maybe unless you are confident enough to say no otherwise you might leave the market with 4 mangos, 6 beers and a goat for no apparent reason. 

On the resort itself, you could walk up the hill that overlooks the sea and go up to an old style shanty restaurant, it was only open during the day but it was all made out of wood and like random stuff like registration plates & signs. You could sign your name anywhere on the restaurant which was really cool too! 

There is a total of 365 beaches in Antigua and Barbuda. There is also a "pink beach" which I never got to visit but would love too! The beach we were on was like white sand and clear blue sea! 

The food was lovely too. You could get authentic dishes or something widely eaten like burger and chips. They actually did a bbq on the beach once a week. They had chips, fruit, curries and assortment of other stuff too. So any fussy eaters would be okay with the food! 

We didn't do a ton of exploring on this holiday as it was supposed to be a super laid back holiday. We did do a bit of scuba diving, I tried to enter some go pro footage but it wouldn't let me, unfortunately. If you love aquatic life then the scuba diving or deep sea diving would be right up your street. 

The resort actually has a facility in which you can plan excursions from and borrow equipment like snorkels! You can also hire the windsurfers and hobbycats too! 

I think Antigua is an all rounder, it's perfect for the relaxing holiday where you can get a little bit tipsy and have fun or the adventurous holiday where you can go deep sea diving and swim with turtles and dolphins! It's really up to you!

SO if any of you are struggling with holiday destinations then I would 100% recommend this if you want to explore some of the Carribean! 

Thanks for reading,

Tay x

MALIBU MOMENT

The next place we visited was Malibu. This was only 22 miles away from our original spot in Marina Del Rey. However it took so long because of the traffic, it genuinely was heaving all the way down the coastline!  However, we did leave on a Sunday so maybe that was why?
We were staying in an apartment on Pacific Coast Highway. The apartment has a balcony overlooking our own private bit of beach. It was gorgeous.
 (I forgot to take pictures of the interior so I have used some of the ones on the website, I will (*) any that are not my own)

(*)

Here's one that was similar to ours, the house was set into four apartments. Ours was newly refurbished with a brighter interior. (*)

This was our little slice of beach. The tide came in really quickly but it was so tranquil at night when the waves were crashing down!

The apartment was really lush, so cosy and cute! We had a little kitchen in the corner which meant we could make our own stuff in the morning rather than go out and get food which is sometimes nicer I think!

 It was quite a quiet area. There was a pier at the end of our street which was a fishing pier but also had small pop-up restaurants and booths for food. On the other side of the road, they had different restaurants including a Mexican, a jack in the box, a Chinese and a McDonald'.s It was a collection of food and they were all easy to get too so it wasn't lots of driving around. 

On the first night, seeing as it was my dad's birthday we let him decide what he wanted to do and he wanted to just chill out and get some takeaway or easy food and sit outside on the beach. We decided to go to a grocery store and pick up some snack food for the evening. The nearest supermarket was about a 15-minute drive. We got some food and had a lazy night. 

The next day we decided to have breakfast at the apartment then go for a little swim in the sea. My dad wanted to watch the England game that was on (yawn) and then after we went shopping. We went to an outlet place called Camarillo Premium Outlets. My dad wanted to get some new shoes and I wanted to get some makeup. 

There were lots of different stores there but the ones I was most interested in were The Cosmetic Company Store and Luxury Beauty Store. I actually heard about The Cosmetic Company through Emily Canham's Videos. She spoke about getting Estee Lauder in one of these for a discounted price. That was the first one I visited and in all honestly it was okay but just wasn't great! Like the deals were $5 off for damaged packaging so I didn't think it was really worth it. However, the luxury beauty store was incredible. I will be speaking about this more in depth in the future but I ended up getting a lot of Urban Decay stuff in there for like 60% off! I highly recommend visiting this store as there were so many good deals!  

We then went and had dinner in Jack In the Box, a burger place similar to Mcdonalds but with better burgers, 

This part of our holiday was more about chilling and enjoying the sunshine and relaxing so a majority of the time we were just on the beach.

The next day we did just that, we sat on the beach but we went further out and went to Zuma beach. This is a very well known beach and lots of celebs have been seen surfing here including Leonardo Di Caprio, Gwen Stefani and Taylor Swift who actually filmed her music video "22" there! 

ZUMA beach. 

We spent the morning there and then went back to the apartment and chilled out before having a walk up to the pier and going for dinner. They were actually filming something on the pier, it was for paramount pictures we are still not sure what it was! 

On our last full day, we decided to go to Calabasas to see if there was anywhere nice for lunch, We had to drive across Pacific Coast Highway to get there.

These are some of the views we had. California is absolutely incredible, the mountains and the sea are like nothing I've ever seen before. In the morning you see the clouds rolling in over the top of the mountains. I can understand why so many people migrate to this area!

Mountains on PCH

Calabasas was a lot smaller than we thought it would be it's hidden in the hills of Cali and is a very scenic and wealthy area. There actually wasn't really anywhere for us to stop off and eat so we just had a drive around. 

Calabasas

Malibu was one of my favourite locations just because of how relaxing it was! The next day we had to pack up and leave and none of us wanted to go! We had a 397-mile journey over the next two days so we wanted to set off early so we didnt spend the majority of the day driving. 

Our homemade fresh watermelon daiquiris 

I hope you enjoyed this blog,

Thanks for reading, 

Tay x

HOLIDAY PACKING HACKS

So if you follow me on Twitter you would know (by my constant tweets) I am going away in 3 days!! I've been packing my suitcase today and thought of some great packing hacks that could help you if you are going on a holiday soon!

Here they are....

• I always ROLL my clothes tightly rather than lay them flat, this gives you so much more room and also stops them getting all screwed up. I used to always try and lay my clothes as flat as possible to prevent them looking all crunched up and without a doubt, no matter how flat I laid them, they always creased somehow. My friend then told me that rolling them was actually better, if you pack them tightly rolled next to each other that can't move around as much and are therefore sort of compacted in there! So far this hack has worked wonders for me so I hope it works wonders for you! 

• I don't know if this has ever happened to any of you but there was one time when my family went on holiday and my brother's suitcase went missing for two days! He was stuck in crappy clothes we found in a local store! This is why we now mix our clothes up together so that we all have a mixture of clothes in each other's suitcases. We always try and put two outfits of each person in each suitcase so that we know if our suitcases get lost we have something to wear while its being located! This is perfect if you are travelling in groups!

•  My nan actually gave us this hack! When she packs for a long haul flight she puts dryer sheets in between layers of clothing so that the clothes don't smell musky or anything after the flight! 

• Always put your shoes in shoe bags! This is more of a tip than a hack, I just think that (especially if the shoes have been worn) that you should definitely put a protective layer between your clothes and your shoes!

•  I stuff my bra's when I'm packing them with my knickers! There is nothing worse than opening up your suitcase to see a collapsed sorry-for-itself bra! This will help it keep its shape! You can also buy cup bags/bra bags that protect your bras too! 

• This was a hack I heard from a magazine I think and it has helped me so much. Powder makeup products are probably my most valuable possessions (doesn't say much about me as a person does it?) so I always want to protect them! I put a cotton pad on top of them (or layered tissue) in hope of protecting them! So far it's worked as I've not had one makeup product break on me! 

• Pack an empty bag for dirty clothes so you don't mix your clean clothes and dirty clothes on the way back (this will stop the mountain of washing you have to do upon arrival home!) 

• If you're not an outfit planner like myself, the rule of thumb is to pack three tops for every bottom you bring! I feel like tops are harder to wear again than bottoms! (P,s I found these cool outfit planner printables that are great if you wanna keep on top of your outfits when packing)

• I always use clear see-through cosmetic bags as sometimes there isn't enough space to lay your cosmetics out so it's a great way to easily see what you have without getting everything out to put it all back away again!

I hope some of these hacks help/helped you out with your packing!

Thanks for reading,
Tay x

LA EDIT

If you follow me on twitter/snap chat then you would probably know (from my constant updates) that I was recently on holiday! I went on a little road trip around California. I think we did 996 miles all in all!

We flew into LAX on a Virgin Atlantic Flight, we were lucky enough to get upper-class upgrades which helped with the long haul flight! I think the flight was around 11 hours. We were delayed by an hour and a half so we did end up getting there a tad later than we wanted too. When we were sat on the plane my brother was actually sat to the actress Margot Robbie (She was in The Wolf of Wall Street, Suicide Squad, and Tarzan to name a few). That was quite cool! When we arrived we had to go pick up our car and we only had to drive 6 miles to get to Marina Del Rey which was our first location.

You couldn't actually hear any airplane noise near us at all which was pretty lucky. This originally was supposed to be a stopover (1 night) but we extended it by 2 more nights. It was a really good location and it wasn't overly touristy either! It was half an hour away from "Hollywood".
Our first full day (24th) we decided to drive up to the Hollywood park, a great lookout point for the city of LA and for the Hollywood sign itself. We went fairly early because our bodies hadn't adjusted to the time zone yet so it wasn't busy at all. When we went back a bit later to pick my dad up (who had hiked the hills to get behind the Hollywood sign) it was heaving so I would definitely recommend going a bit earlier!

We then went for a drive to Pasadena, this was such a picturesque town!  If any of you used to watch a show called Brothers & Sisters this is where it was set! It was really sunny when we went, we just had a little cruise around! We then went to Santa Monica Pier!

Santa Monica Pier was actually so not how I pictured it. The beach was amazing and they had little shops and stalls which were so quaint but the pier itself was definitely more of a side show tourist attraction than a pier! It was so busy and crammed full of restaurants! I actually didn't enjoy it which was a bit of bummer but I think because of how busy it was it kind of affected how much you could wander and stuff.

The next day we had a wander into the hub of Hollywood! This is where all of the Walk of Fame, Chinese Theatre, Hand Prints and Theatres are! This is so busy regardless of the time but we still go there fairly early as we still hadn't adjusted and it wasn't as busy but I would just be warned that it gets very crammed! We decided to go on a Hollywood Tour Bus to show us the sights and also the Famous Star's houses! It was an hour tour and cost $25 which I thought was pretty good.

That was a really fun experience because it's things you see in movies and you are actually there! It was really cool! We also went into Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, and the Hollywood Hills. 

We then went back to the hotel to get ready and then go out to eat. We went to this really cool "old shack" restaurant called The Warehouse Resturant. (Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the front) I decided to have a seafood medley when I was there because of how fresh the fish was as we were right by the Marina! It was amazing! The food was fairly cheap, I think my meal and drink cost about $35 but it wasn't the cheapest dinner either. 

On the third day, it was actually my dad's birthday! So we decided to get up early and go for a ride to the beach. We went to Venice Beach which had a completely different vibe to Santa Monica, it was less touristy I think which meant it was less busy! We decided to rent out bikes and do a bike ride to Santa Monica pier and back! It was really fun as you got to see it in a different light.

We hired the bikes for $8 for an hour! The two piers are so close together that it only took us 45 mins with a few breaks for pictures! I would definitely recommend doing this, it's really cool and it's not that far so it doesn't matter what fitness level you are at!

After this we went for breakfast at Venice beach, we just had a full English at a small restaurant.

We then decided to set off towards our next destination...

MALIBU!


I decided to split each place into sections as it was easier and meant it would be easier to read!

I hope you enjoy reading!

Thanks,

Tay! x