Sho’t Left to the Eastern Cape

Hey good people, I’m back because I have something to blog today 😁. Those of you who know me, know that I don’t really celebrate my birthday. I hype up leo season waaaay more than I do my birthday. Weird I know. But since 2021 I’ve been downright depressed on my birthday, side effect of being mother-less I guess🤷🏾‍♀️. So this year I decided I’m not going to wallow in self pity, I’m all woe-is-me’d out at this point.

So my beastie suggested we do a sho’t left because my birthday fell on a long weekend, so yeah we decided to book a relaxing trip where all we planned on doing was absolutely nothing.

Now the reason we picked the destination we chose was because it was usually warm even in August. The weather switched up on us though, these people were living it up 26ºC-29ºC degrees until we landed then temperatures dropped down to 16ºC-21ºC. And being the delulu girlies we are we still held out hope that we would be chilling beachside all weekend. I will say though the universe was kind and granted us sunshine on Friday and Saturday.

After that loooong preamble I can get into where we spent the weekend, we booked an apartment in Kelly’s Beach in Port Alfred which is a 2 hour drive from PE (the internet lied to us and told us it was an hour and a half drive). The apartment was located across the road from the beach which was a delight. The apartment itself was a catfish so we won’t go further into that.

7 Aug (AKA My birthday)

My view first thing on my birthday, how pretty?

Me on my b-day

A random shot of Port Alfred, picturesque

8 Aug

We checked out Kenton-on-sea, shoutout to Neil for suggesting this little town with beautiful beaches. No lie I had never heard of this place until this past weekend. It’s a 20 minute drive from Port Alfred and we went for brunch and to check out the beaches and lagoons.

9 Aug

Sunday was cold and rainy so we went to get food and stayed in the apartment bingeing Netflix and playing card game.

10 Aug

Here are some candids taken on our way to the airport before the rain start pouring down.

All in all Port Alfred is a cute town and its the perfect destination for a lazy holiday because there’s not much to do but go to the beach. It is essentially a retirement town most the surfers and paddle boarders I saw were 50+. That being said when going there be prepared to not have the amenities we’re used to like ubereats/Mr Delivery and everything closes early. If you’re looking for downtime and tranquility Port Alfred’s your man. The people are also really nice there, which I appreciate. I do intend to visit in the summer time because laying on the beach is one of my favourite activities.

What was the last live performance you saw?

Gosh, my last live performance was nearly a year ago. It was Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour in Paris. Still one of the highlights of my year. I still look through the pictures and remember that day fondly. Yes I am a card carrying member of the #BeyHive😁

What is your favorite animal?

I’m a Leo so it goes without saying that my favourite animal is a lion 🦁

Leo Season Never Ends

I decided to act like a tourist in my own country, and booked an activity I’ve been wanting to do for the past year. A walking with lions excursion, I’ve been seeing a bunch of tourists enjoying this experience, so I though why not enjoy the fruits of my country. When I realized there was a place only 2hrs drive from home I asked a couple of people to come with me; and as these things go you either wait around for people or go on your own. And I am no stranger to doing things solo so I went all by myself.

I booked a session with Ukutula lodge and game reserve, where I got to walk with my favourite animal and the mascot for my zodiac sign the majestic lion.

Meet Zoro and his brother Milo, aren’t they so beautiful 😍😍

Just a bunch of leos hanging out

I cannot get over how beautiful they are.

Travel Essentials for Solo Travellers

I do some solo travel from time to time and I thought I should share some of my favourite essentials.

First on my list is my favourite inanimate travel companion….my tripod, because pictures must be taken of course. Here’s my compact cellphone tripod.

Next on my list is my cellphone and an eSim because there is no getting around without data. Whether its getting around using Google maps, calling an uber or just uploading photos and videos onto social media data is a must. I highly recommend getting an eSim. I usually get one from Airalo. Here’s my referral code so you get a discount when using Airalo’s eSim OFENTS1830. Honourable mention goes to the powerbank because when travelling solo you cannot afford to have your phone battery die on you.

Another safety essential is a portable door lock, which reinforces the locked door, I highly recommend this to women travelling solo.

Then the miscellaneous travel bits-n-bobs: Luggage edition:

The expandable bag which works as my hand luggage and can be expanded to fit more stuff if the shopping gets out of hand and I need more space.

Then of course we have the compression packing cubes, these bad boys have made my life so much easier.

Then obviously I don’t travel without my motion sickness tablets, aspirin and ginger tea. Once I buy a decent one I’ll be adding a camera to the list, for now my phone camera will do; and it has served be well. Shoutout to Samsung for my phone I still use the Galaxy S21ultra.

Euro Summer Re-cap

It’s taken a while for me to post the second half of my mini Euro Summer which was another one of my favourite destinations Cote d’Azur, Nice to be specific. Honestly in a perfect world every one of my summers would be spent here. Nice is legit the perfect place, the people are friendly, the weather is great, the water’s so blue *in Beyonce’s voice* and you can hop on a train and be in an equally beautiful town or village. I would recommend it over and over again to anyone who will listen.

My first time in Nice was a solo trip and this time around I went with my bestie, so its safe to say it works great as a solo travel destination as well as a girls trip destination.

The sun sets were at 21h30 or so and I tried to capture the beauty.

Nights at the beach were lovely.

I revisited Ezè village and Monaco.

I made it to Cannes this time around and the train ride was longer and hotter (you have been warned). Train ride aside Cannes is absolutely gorgeous and their beach has sand instead of pebble beaches in Nice. ( I do not care for the pebbles personally).

Checked out their walk of fame and walked up and down Les Marches du Palais(the red carpet stairs)

Even in my blogs I’m a maximalist here are a bunch of pics that I’m posting just for kicks.😉

I returned to Farago on the roof for Sunday brunch and the views were as lovely as I remembered (pictured above).

Next time I’ll make it to St Tropez and Menton.

Paris I love you

If you’ve glanced at my blog even once you will know that Paris is the love of my life. There’s nothing else left to say really as I’ve written many a love letter to this city. So this time I’m just sharing pics from this last trip to mon cœur.

Isn’t she lovely 😍

We also visited the gardens in Versailles, more loveliness.

No trip is complete without a visit to Gallaries Lafayette.

Paris Je t’aime ♥️

*Sidenote I take good pictures ne

Cowboy Carter Tour -Paris Edition

After struggling on French Ticketmaster for ages (we had to Google translate the entire process) we finally got tickets to see Queen Bey in my favourite city…. Paris. 💃🏿💃🏿

The whole experience was amazing right from the day we landed and our uber driver played Beyonce for us all the way to our hotel, so good vibes all the way. My one complaint is the merch stands had run out of the “Cowboy Carter” fans when we got there 🤷🏾‍♀️. I did get a Cecred headscarf though🤷🏾‍♀️.

Saying Beyonce was AMAZING would be the understatement of the century. Vocals on point, visuals on point, choreography on point. Blue Ivy 👌🏾. The show was a feast for the ears and the eyes. It was nearly 3 hours of perfection and when JayZ came out it blew all our cowboy hats off. What a show.

Beyonce and her family put on a great show.

The metro ride after the show was a bunch of Beyhive members plotting how we can experience that again, some trying to work out how to get to Houston to see Beyonce again. We felt like the chosen ones because JayZ performed 2 songs, and you know what we were.

Trying out new hobbies

At this point we all know how trigger happy I am when it comes to taking pictures, but they just sit on my phone and a select few make it onto instagram and this blog. My friend and I used to talk about actually print our pictures out and I recently finally did and compiled photobooks. That kinda led to my new hobby digital journalling/scrapbooking.

Yeah I’m an ipad kid so it only makes sense for me to scrapbook digitally. Here are some pages from my scrapbook with my travel chronicles if you will. Chances are at some point I’ll print these out into a photobook.

Mish Mash Floripa

I still have a bunch of photos that I took on this trip, so this is more of a miscellaneous post to share more pictures. Lets treat this post like tumblr back in the day when we appreciated pretty pictures. And Florianapolis serves a beautiful backdrop. So guys here is more of what I saw and what I got up to in Brazil.

Shots from my walk