elliehopgood – Endlessly Restless

Love in the time of humidity, hills and wrong turns

November 14, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 0 Comment

Jake and I travel well together. We both eat everything, are unfussy about accommodation and transport and love new places and experiences. We also share an unreasonable love for anything deep-fried and making pig noses at each other on planes. You know, the important stuff. However, there are moments that test even the most relaxed couple. These same moments also test me and Jake. We were travelling by boat from Praslin to Mahe, the island where we would spend our…

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Thoughts from forty thousand feet

November 13, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 0 Comment

At this point, I am well practised at flying long haul. Having flown to and from Australia upwards of ten times, visiting my family, I am used to taking a fourteen hour flight, stumbling blearily around an airport for two hours and then boarding another nine hour flight. Ten hours direct from Mahe Airport to London Heathrow should be easy in comparison. And yet, regardless of experience, long haul flights are a beast unto themselves. Here’s how I spent ten…

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Three days on Praslin island

November 11, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 0 Comment

The second island we visited was Praslin, which is only a fifteen minute boat ride from La Digue. Praslin is bigger than La Digue, with actual roads and buses that sometimes arrive when the schedule says they will. Except for the 63. As we were told, the timetable for the 63 bus is a “suggestion.” Finding our accommodation was its own challenge. I had lots of relevant information about the place, like the unmarked junction it is situated at and…

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Exploring La Digue: sunsets and stingrays

November 9, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 0 Comment

Although there are 115 islands overall, there are three main islands in the Seychelles: Mahe, Praslin and La Digue. La Digue is the smallest, home to only 1800 people, and our first stop on the trip. I loved this little speck of an island! There are very few cars allowed so most people get around on bikes. There’s no need to ever lock your bike up; one day we left our bikes on the side of the road for over…

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On “beach bodies”

November 6, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 0 Comment

There’s a weird cultural phenomenon where, before a holiday or the summer, people suddenly start trying to lose weight, solely for the purpose of looking thinner on the beach and in their holiday photos. Bikini bodies, beach bodies, summer bodies – whatever you call it, clearly there’s dissonance for many between the body they live in most of the time and the public body that they want others to see (or are less stressed about others seeing). The idea that…

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Budget breakdown: two days in Copenhagen

November 2, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 0 Comment

As the world gets more expensive, it can seem like everyone is competing to win the “it costs me the most live an ordinary existence” contest. House prices have become a comparative signifier of the modern yo-pro’s economic stress, with everywhere from London to New York to Sydney to San Francisco exclaiming that they have the hottest, most unaffordable property market. Within this mix of many major cities exclaiming their citizens are the most likely to be living in an abandoned warehouse…

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Looking up: Prague’s St Vitus Cathedral

October 31, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 0 Comment

St Vitus Cathedral is an impressive structure. It’s not exactly ground-breaking that I would suggest you visit here, given that it’s part of the castle complex that tops every ‘what to do in Prague’ list. It’s full name is The Metropolitan Cathedral of Saints Vitus, Wenceslaus and Adalbert, so bum deal for Wenceslaus and Adalbert whose names get dropped most of the time (though with a name like Wenceslaus, he’s probably used to it). This is a massive Gothic cathedral,…

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Walking in the Alps – Sunday in Salzburg

October 28, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 0 Comment

I’m trying to recap the trips I’ve taken in 2018 by the end of the year, so I can start next year fresh and cover any adventures in real time. This trip to Salzburg happened in March 2018. I have been keen to visit Vienna, Austria’s capital, for some time now. However, being a more popular destination, weekend trip flights are very expensive. When I was browsing Skyscanner, I noticed that flights to Salzburg for the dates I was considering were…

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Trdelnik: a treat just for tourists (feat. judgemental pigeon)

October 25, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 1 comment

I love when people pick an ordinary thing and make a habit of doing it in every new place they go. Iona buys a bra. Her dad gets a local shave. I was thinking my thing could be ‘eat something baked and delicious’. In the name of exploration, of course. My baked good of choice for Prague was the Trdelnik. A delicious chimney of sweet dough covered in cinnamon sugar and filled with any number of delicious, creamy fillings. This…

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Some thoughts and recommendations from Prague

October 23, 2018 elliehopgood Comments 0 Comment

This weekend, I went to Prague with Jake and Iona. Not only are these two people kind and fun, they are also curious and introspective. I mean, Iona spent the weekend explaining how everything can be related back to the industrial revolution and reading Alain de Botton’s philosophical treatise, ‘the Art of Travel’. In fact, she talked about Alain de Botton a lot, sharing his theories on how architecture reflects human psychology as I gawked at Prague’s buildings. This meant…

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