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Posts Tagged ‘holidays’

If you are ever lucky enough to be able to bring a visit to the Garden Route in South Africa, you are in for a real treat. Kilometers of white sandy beaches on one side, flanked by mountains and rain forests on the other side make for a holiday paradise. The route starts in the west at Mossel Bay and ends at the Tsitsikamma rain forest near Plettenberg Bay in the east.

Arriving from Cape Town, you will first encounter Mossel Bay. This historical old town with its many finely preserved colonial buildings has an atmosphere and charm all of its own. It lagged behind the other Garden Route towns in development for many years, but nowadays it bursts at the seams with luxury hotels and guest houses. Standards are high: We could not help to notice that our hotel even had baby bath tubs available for those who travel with a baby.

A few kilometers to the east lies the resort towns of Klein Brak River and Groot Brak River. Both have been popular holiday spots for South Africans for decades. When it’s winter in the Northern hemisphere, it’s of course summer in South Africa. This makes the country the ideal winter holiday location for people from the North.

Sixty kilometers east of Mossel Bay you will pass the commercial hub of the Garden Route. George has many good restaurants, shopping malls and cinemas. This is where holidaymakers come to stock up on beer, movies and groceries. Twenty kilos east of George you’ll find the well-known seaside resort town of Wilderness. It’s trademark wide, sandy beaches and may restaurants draw thousands of tourists every year. I once spent a lovely evening at one of these restaurants where they had live music and the leader of the band had a Martin acoustic electric guitar, just like my own back home!

Leaving Wilderness, the road criss-crosses through a series of lush green hills and valleys where you will catch a periodic glimpse of the Indian Ocean to your right. A few km further to the east the road passes through Sedgefield. This is a timber-producing area with many lovely lakes. Despite asking around, we couldn’t find the fine costume jewelry wholesale distributor mentioned in our guide book.

Sixty kilometers east of George lies another historical town. Thirty years ago Knysna only came to life during the peak holiday seasons, but today this town can barely cope with the thousands of tourists descending upon it from all over South Africa and Europe during virtually the whole year. The waterfront area is particularly popular – not surprising taking into account the many excellent restaurants you will find there.

The last town on the route is Plettenberg Bay. This is where the wealthy and well-known hang out to see and be seen. There’s a legion of upmarket hotels and guest houses and just as many restaurants. A few km further to the east you arrive at the eastern border of the Garden Route – the Tsitsikamma rain forest. Here you will forget for a few hours that you are only 200km away from the semi-desert Karroo region – it’s a haven of waterfalls and ferns and you might even run into one of the few remaining elephants in the forest.

Technorati Tags: Garden Route, holidays, South Africa, travel, vactions

Ever wanted to live it up like a celebrity for a week or two, then why not try one of the holidays that they love so much! Celebrities enjoy holidays just like us “Normy’s” do, and they even enjoy a holiday that we even embark on, although they do enjoy a lot of luxury. So do you want to know where the celebrities go, then you could book a holiday and chances are, you may bump into your role model!

The thing is actually finding the holiday that these celebrities are on? Well one good place to start is in the Caribbean, more importantly St Lucia! St Lucia is known as the luxury island. This is where Celebrities come to relax, in some of the most expensive hotels available. If you want an example of a celebrity you could possibly meet could be Amy Winehouse. Even better she didn’t just stay for a week or two, she actually stayed for around 3 months, just chilling out and relaxing. She interacted with the locals and tourists, which was a fun experience for all.

Once again we stay in the Caribbean, and this time we are off to Barbados. Prince Harry is a big fan of Barbados, and heads off to this glorious location quite often, in fact himself and Chelsy have visited here a couple of times. Barbados is visited by many celebrities because of it’s lively nightlife and sunny surroundings. Barbados offers everyone including celebrities, the ability to party all night long, non stop and without interruption, and almost every night!

This next place is very luxurious. This is a big honeymoon location for the famous types of people. Beyonce and Jay Z enjoyed a long stay here after their wedding. This is where people can just relax in all day spa’s and stroll across beautiful beaches.

Which of these holidays best suits you, and who would you like to meet, would you fancy Maldives holidays with the stars or St Lucia holidays, maybe even Barbados holidays are more for you!

Technorati Tags: Barbados, celebrities, holidays, leisure, Maldives, St Lucia, travel

Need a diving holiday this year, but haven’t decided where to go, well let me help you out, I just went on my first Diving holiday and want to share the experience with you!

Hurghada is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever visited, and the Ocean “Red Sea” was amazing. The waters are so cool and calm, with clear blue seas. Now Egypt is generally a beautiful place to visit, with locations like Sharm El Sheikh and Luxor, but Hurghada makes you feel special. If you have ever heard of the Oberoi chain of hotels you will know what the place I was staying in would look like. This 5 star hotel was quite modest in price, but was extremely luxurious. There was a coral reef just off the coast from here and some great locations to go Wall Diving and Free diving.

The Coral diving was amazing, I couldn’t believe all of the separate colours that I saw, not to mention all of the weird and wonderful fish there were. Now I had already been Scuba Diving before so I was considered only a slight Amateur, but I had passed my PADI novice test. This allowed me to go Scuba Diving in Hurghada. We all had a great diving session in the Coral waters, it was amazing, and then the next time we were taken out we were taken into the deep blue. I wasn’t sure really what the plan was today, because stopped paying attention after I met a lovely lady.

I was quite quickly told to get ready for the Shark Diving, that didn’t sound good to me! Now, I am not all that good with sharks, although I can dive where they may be, I would prefer to stay away, and now I am going to be swimming with them. I was told that everything would be fine and not to panic. Now for the sake of not embarrassing myself in front of the lovely lady, I got in. Almost immediately we were met by about 4 Sharks (white tip I think). It was amazing, I had the best time of my life!

Hurghada holidays are a must do for anyone. Try Diving holidays if you ever get the chance, not to mention Hurghada diving!

Technorati Tags: diving, holidays, Scuba diving holidays, travel

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Australia can offer even the most prosperous person the most beautiful holiday, so if you have got a little extra cash to splash here’s a luxury guide to why Australian holidays should be top of your list. 

Sydney – Known throughout the world for its glamour and sophistication with landmarks such as the Opera House and now being even more expensive to live than New York City. There’s great variety in Sydney and you can really mix up what you do by trying the many restaurants, bars and hotels. There is a lot of luxury hotels dotted around the city however none are held in such high esteem as the Park Hyatt and Shangri-La. The Park Hyatt has some of the most wonderful views overlooking the Opera House with rooms to match with the latest mod-cons as you would expect.If you want to be grand then Shagri-La harbour view room is definitely for you with its 270 degree room allowing you to see unique views of Sydney Harbour.

Sydney offers some of the best Australian tours with experiences like climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge and twilight climb which will certainly make your holiday very special.

Adelaide – The home of the national food and wine festival, Adelaide packs in a lot of culture with some amazing food and drink. This is very different setting to Sydney but by no means is lacking in luxury. Thorngrove Manor Hotel is a breathtaking 5 star one-off hotel which is must for couple who enjoy their wine as it has great selection of local wines. Your stay at this hotel with its castle features will be nothing like you have seen before however it’s not all old you still get 24 hour wireless internet.One of Australia oldest wine regions is in Adeliade,The Bridge Mill a must see whenever in Adeliade. You can take the full tour of the vineyards as well as sample the local produce which should be every wine drinkers dream.

Adelaide isn’t all about wine with it having one the biggest shopping centres on the island, the Rundel Mall is huge with enough shops for even the most dedicated shopper.

Technorati Tags: australia, australia holidays, australian, holidays, luxury holidays

People all across the world believe there is an epidemic with children becoming over-weight. There has been too much talk about our children getting fact and not enough acting. So instead of planting fear into these children about how they should lose weight, because they won’t fit in, surely we should be doing something to help them.

Everybody says that we do our bit for our children to help them eat healthily. So diets aren’t the only thing that can help, the best solution is entertaining exercise. The hard part is trying to set up something that they can have a good time doing, yet has positive effect on their health?

Well the one easiest way to do this, is to get them trying something that they enjoy. Try and get them into a form of exercise, but make sure that it doesn’t really look like exercise. Now Diving is one example, although expensive abroad could inspire them to get into swimming. The main question is, do you have any holidays booked this year? If you don’t but your planning on it, maybe you should consider diving holidays. Although the cost will be higher, they are getting cheaper and cheaper.

What you want to do is take them on one of these holidays and really get them involved in it. There is a chance this experience could inspire them to take up swimming so that when you get back home they have a fun avenue of exercise to take up.

The main point to this is trying something that may cost a little bit for one time. Then when they have tried it they will become enthralled in it and then it can spark off several different avenues for them. Another interesting one is to go out and go on a Safari; these are great for inspiring environmental thinking, leading to hiking trails or any other things outside back at home.

Technorati Tags: Diving holidays, Exercise, Family, Family holidays, Health and Fitness, holidays, Safari

With money being hard to keep to ourselves, with bills and everything, is it possible for us to still embark on a luxury holiday. Saying that, things seem to be looking up on the holiday side of things, prices have fallen and all inclusive holidays have become more available.

However does this really help us, although holiday prices are coming down the odds are we still won’t be able to afford luxury holidays. We have bills to pay and other considerations where money is affected, but how much will going on a luxury holiday really set you back? If you look around you will find more and more deals coming in, with travel agents trying to send you all over the world for as little as possible, even on Caribbean holidays where you have the clean white beaches and 5 star hotels, all of the pampering that you would ever need from a holiday.

Looking around for the best deals will help, but because competition is so tough they are all bringing their prices down just keep up with each other. Even if bills are taking up most of our money, one of the mopst important things for us to do is get away from everything every now and then, and luxury holidays are now cheaper and more available.

Some people are even having their weddings abroad because the prices are even cheaper abroad than they are at home, this shows that holidays at home might not be that cheap either. Just to get away from all the stresses will do you wonders, and going on a luxury holiday certainly will help you chill out, especially now it’s becoming easier to obtain. So yes luxury holidays are becoming easier to afford, and it will help with the stress of home and work life, but money is money, so what will you do?

Technorati Tags: Caribbean holidays, holidays, luxury holidays, travel, weddings abroad