I was sad to bid farewell to my old passport this week — not just because it was an EU one (*sob*) but also because the stamps inside remind me of the travel experiences I've enjoyed over the past decade. To highlight some of these wonderful memories, I decided to pick one photo from each year, and boy was that hard! (I cheated because the header image features an 11th photo!)

Later this year, I am travelling to Peru, where I hope to cross another item off my bucket list: hiking the Inca Trail and visiting Machu Picchu. I'm really excited about the trip, which will be my first time in South America, and I couldn't help but look back on some of the other amazing travel experiences I've been lucky enough to have over the past few years. I hope some of these will inspire you with your own holiday planning for 2018 and beyond.

It's time again for my annual series of year-in-review top-five lists. As always, I'm starting with my top five leaps of the year, which, I find, is a good way of looking back on some of my travels and other adventures. 2015 hasn't been a particularly strong year for leaps: for various reasons (mainly weather-related), I didn't manage to take any on my European trips to Brussels, Lisbon, Copenhagen and Cannes. Here are a few favourites from some of my other adventures:

OK, this really is the last post about my recent holiday in Mexico, I promise! I made a short video with some of my highlights from the trip.



If you've been thinking about planning a vacation to Mexico, I'd highly recommend it as a holiday destination. You can read my overview of the trip here, and other Mexico blog posts here.

Ten years ago, while travelling around California, I hopped on the trolley from San Diego to Tijuana and spent half a day in the border town. Since then, I have been wanting to return to see much more of Mexico. It is impossible to 'do' Mexico in a two-week holiday and it was really difficult to narrow down my itinerary when so many places sounded fascinating but I still managed to see a lot of the country.

When I was researching my trip to Mexico, I was pleased to find that Mexico City had plenty of the third-wave specialty coffee coffee bars I love so much. Mexico is a favourite coffee-bean region of mine — much of it is grown in Oaxaca and Guerrero, closer to the coast, but there are a lot of great varieties in DF (when I visited Cuba in 2005, much of the best coffee was exported, leaving only poorly-quality beans for the Cubans). 

When I was planning my trip to Mexico, I knew I wanted to end it with a few days on an amazing beach. A beach where there was little to do other than swim, sunbathe, eat and swim again. I also knew that after Cancún's zona hotelera wasn't for me after being disappointed by Varadero, Cuba.

Rather than taking a direct bus from Mérida to Cancún and then Isla Mujeres, I decided to stop at Chichén Itzá, one of the most famous Mayan archaeological sites — a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. 

If you're in Oaxaca for a few days and love the city's food, I would definitely recommend that you take one of the cooking courses offered by many of the restaurants in the town. I booked a four-and-a-half hour class with Oscar Carrizosa of Casa Crespo, which cost US$65 and which was great fun.

One of the main reasons I wanted to come to Oaxaca was because of its rich culinary heritage; they have at least seven varieties of mole — a rich, dark, smoky sauce — alone, and whether you choose a casual comedor in one of the markets or one of the fine-dining restaurants in town, it's hard to have a bad meal. Here are some of the foods and drinks that I tried.

After a long but often scenic bus journey from DF, I arrived in Oaxaca on Wednesday night, just as the heavens opened. I decided to walk to my hotel, despite the rain, as I thought it would help me to get my bearings more quickly.

Yesterday morning, I went to the two last museums on my list for this trip: the Museo Nacional de Historia and the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, both of which are based in the Bosque de Chapultepec, a huge park on the west side of the city centre. Chapultepec means 'the grasshopper hill' in Nahuatl, and the history museum is located in the Castillo de Chapultepec, at the top of the said hill. 

About 30 miles outside the centre of Mexico City lies the ancient city of Teotihuacán, which was first established in about 100 AD. The origins of the city and the people who founded it (the name Teotihuacán, meaning 'birthplace of the gods', was given to it many centuries later by the Aztecs) remain mysterious. However, the site — famous for its two large pyramids, the Piramide del Sol and the Piramide de la Luna (Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon) — is one of the most popular attractions in the Mexico City area.

Making the most of the (relatively) cooler weather in Mexico City, I went for another run to the Bosque de Chapultepec yesterday morning. This time, I went further into the park, including the very steep climb to the top of the hill on which Castillo de Chapultepec is perched. 

After almost missing my connecting flight from JFK to Mexico City (my first flight was late,and I had to run through the airport and sweet talk the guy at the airline desk into letting me check in even though the flight had closed), I made it to my hotel safely on Friday night. I decided to stay in the Roma area of DF (Distrito Federal — AKA Mexico City), partly because it's a lot calmer than the centro historico, and partly because there is an abundance of good coffee shops.