#Travelbug: Landing in Croatia

A couple of weeks back, one of my oldest friends and I, Jen, took a jaunt to beautiful Croatia on a trip which ultimately changed the way I think about travel and how I like to spend my holidays.

To give you a bit of background, I haven’t been on a hot summer holiday for three years, as evidenced by my stark white complexion and deep jealousy of everyone I know as they return to the office with glorious olive skin. My lack of travel has been down to a combo of skintness, singleness and all-around lack of time.

So last year, Jen and I decided enough is enough and that we would get our asses on a plane this September and widen our horizons. Everyone had been raving about how spectacular Croatia is so we booked tickets and (kind of) planned a route through the islands from Split to Dubrovnik. 

So we packed our backpacks (which I would deffo recommend over a suitcase) and headed to Gatwick at 3.30am on a sleepy Tuesday morning. We decided to head early so that we left ourselves enough time – turns out we got there an hour before we could even check our bags in at the self service Easyjet bag check with our e-tickets. Besides feeling very high tech and hyper-organised, the rest of the journey to Spilt was pretty uneventful.

When we arrived in Croatia, we took the bus down to the centre of Split, which was very straightforward and super-cheap. It was then that we encountered our first problem. The only accommodation pre-booking we made was an Airbnb, which we assumed from the description was in Split itself. It was not. It was about 25 minutes taxi drive away in a completely different town called Podstrana. When our taxi driver informed us that it would cost 150 Kuna, I had a minor heart attack – as it turned out, this actually worked out at about £15 each, but at this point I hadn’t wrapped my head around the exchange rate.

The apartment was up a steep hill in a housing development, miles from Split. It was very cheap, costing about £17 for the night, so we weren’t expecting 5* luxury. However, it had a dodgy front door and didn’t feel particularly safe and had no bin in the entire flat. It’s not somewhere I would recommend and what we learned from this is that you need to be very careful when you book apartments like this.

Once we had worked out the simple and cheap bus system, we headed into Split itself. We visited into the Diocletian's Palace where traders have set up craft and jewellery stalls and wandered around the streets, Lonely Planet book in hand. 

Although there wasn’t a huge amount to do in Split, one thing I would totally recommend is finding a place to admire the view from (I do love a good view. It’s how I know I’m getting on a bit). We stumbled across a bell tower that you could pay 30KN (about £3) to climb. The exhausting trek to the top was fully worth it for the dramatic view over the whole of the city.

We then wandered around for a bit, getting momentarily discombobulated and a smidge lost, found ourselves again and rewarded ourselves with a cocktail and then dinner, our first taste of Croatian cuisine. I will be putting up a separate post all about the food lights of our trip – keep your eyes peeled!

After being accosted by a couple of brightly dressed pub-crawl reps offering a neon-themed drink fest, which sounded about as appealing as having someone stroke my foot for an hour (for those who know me, you will know just how cringe that is) we went up to Cafe Bar Vidilica on the hill on the west side of the city. This involved a lot of walking, which became an on-going theme of this trip. Again though, it was fully worth it for the view from the top.

We then headed back on the bus to our wilderness apartment, unfortunately missing the stop entirely and having to take a route back through a silent housing estate. After a disconcerting incident where a car slowed down to our speed and some men shouted at us out of the window in Croatian, we hurried back to the flat and went to bed. Apart from a loud and slightly aggressive man on the bus to the ferry the next morning, this was the only unpleasantness we experienced on the entire trip and on the whole, the locals were really friendly and welcoming.

I have to say, I should have heeded the warnings about Spilt – although it was very pretty, there wasn’t much to do and we ended up sitting around drinking cocktails for a large chunk of time. Although that’s far from a bad thing. It was a nice start, however, to what turned out to be an amazing trip... read in next week to find out where we went next!

The mid-twenties: a sliding scale.

In my experience, most people in their mid twenties tend to fall somewhere along a spectrum. At one end, you are one of those people who have met ‘the one’, have settled down and are in the process of buying a house, a marriage and babies. Towards the other end you have those who are perpetually single, get drunk a lot and find adulting to be a daily struggle. Take a butchers at which side I tend to ere on.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there is anything wrong with sitting at either end of this life seesaw. It’s just that sometimes this divide can be painfully obvious, and as someone who has many couple friends and very few single friends (I have four quite close single friends: two are perpetual daters, one is my ex boyfriend from yesteryear and the other lives in Wiltshire – most of the other single friends I have a are either much older and maturer than me or I barely ever hang out with), I see it on a regular basis.

Sometimes it’s hilarious. For example, recently I visited home for the weekend. Now, every time I go home, I make an effort to see my friends, so on this occasion, I went to a house warming party for two of my friends who were moving in together. At this party, I met George the tiny human. His mum and dad are two of my best married friends from school, Jodi and Luke. So far, so couple. I held George and managed to make it look natural for all of the 10 seconds in which it took to take the below photo. Don’t get me wrong, he’s very cute but I spent the entire time in fear I would drop him/ get sicked on/ get pooed on/ get cried on. Much to my dad's dismay, at this point, children are not really my thing.

Later in the night we vacated to the pub, where I proceeded, in a very mature fashion, to start a competitive bout of ‘save the queen’ and drink much gin and tequila. This was the second picture taken that evening:

About an hour after as the pub closed, I jumped on this guy’s back. Rory was even drunker than me on account of it being his 20th birthday so this was always going to a flawed plan. Needless to say he didn’t catch me and instead we fell backwards, with me smacking my head on the pavement, almost knocking myself out in the process. In the words of Jess: I could have died. After almost bashing down the pub door to get back in for some ice, I was driven home. I even had to wake my parents to let them know what had happened just in case I died unexpectedly in the night. I’m totally parenting material.

There’s nothing like this decent from a civilised couple and baby filled evening to absolute carnage to really highlight how different people’s lives can be at this age.

Having been in and out relationships like a yoyo for the past forever, I’ve learned to cope over the years with what it’s like to hang out with couples, and for the most part I’ve been quite lucky. Just before third year of uni, my ex and I broke up over the summer and I moved into a house which most of the time had four couples living in it. Other than my friend Jen, with whom until recently I had a weird thing whereby we couldn’t both be in a relationship at the same time, and our friends James, Nathan, Heather, all of my childhood friends are in serious long-term relationships or married to their school sweethearts. Both of my best friends live with their bfs. I currently live and work exclusively with people who are in relationships. None of these awesome people make it their mission to rub their relationships in my face, which is nice.

However, this does present the issue of who I can go on nights out with and get my flirt on. So what I’m saying is there is a nice big wing-woman and fellow single pringle shaped hole in my life so if there is anyone out there who fancies taking on the challenge, I’m accepting CVs.

Sorry, got a little sidetracked there. The point I’m trying to make is that life would be boring if our lives were all at the same stage at the same time. Some people marry the person they lose their virginity to and some people don’t meet the love of their lives until they have been through the relationship and heartbreak ringer a few times. Some people have lots of babies in their twenties and some people leave it until their 30s or 40s and some people never have children at all. Some people are put together and are mature and some people simply cannot adult. Somehow the majority of us get to where we’re supposed to be eventually, it’s just a matter of timing.

So there, smug marrieds.

On the topic of boobs

Boobs. Breasts. Knockers. Tits. Big ones. Small ones. Some as big as your head. Boobs of two different sizes. Boobs that are saggy. Boobs that made of silicone. No matter what you call them or what they look like, the fact is over 50% of the population has a pair, if you include moobs into the equation. They feed our children and they are part of what makes us women. It’s an area of the body that is poked, prodded, ogled at and dreamed about by every straight, horny teenage boy as well as most horny adult men. They are a big part of our lives and so this week, I am devoting a whole post to the everyday practicalities of carrying around a pair of boobs all the god-given day.

It’s pretty safe to say, in the grand scale of things, I have quite sizeable boobs. As my mum always said, I pushed to the front of the boob queue and selfishly stole it all for myself  (as a disclaimer, I am in no way bragging about this fact, as I’m sure you’ll come to quickly realise). Now, being well endowed in the chest department is both a blessing and a curse. There are definitely things I can’t complain about, from getting served quickly in bars to having a handy storage area for when I don’t have pockets or a bag. I can, quite comically, go hands free with drinks and they serve as a great place to prop my laptop when watching TV in bed. Thanks to these puppies I give excellent hugs (or so I’ve been told) and yeah, I’m not going to lie, when the moment requires it, having effortless cleavage is a terrific pulling tool.

But there are also a great many things about having big boobs that are less than ideal. For example, finding nice clothes that fit well in all the right places is a nightmare. The fashion industry does a very good job of forgetting that women’s boobs come in all different sizes, meaning therefore that I can almost never find shirts that fit, party dresses that don’t show nearly my whole bra or bikinis that will offer any support at the beach. Unless you are shopping in somewhere like Marks and Spencer (what a hero) or Debenhams, you can forget about finding pretty, affordable and supportive bras in anything above a D cup. There are whole dedicated high-street underwear retailers that don’t sell bras for my size. Not great.

And there are certain clothes that are just not an option. Outfits that look effortless and elegant on smaller-chested, slender women can end up looking completely slutty and inappropriate on anyone with a larger than average bust. Backless dresses are a no-go, as there is very little chance I’m going without a bra or one of those awful stick-on contraptions. And you can forget about polo neck jumpers, which will make you look like you are on the verge of falling over forwards at all times.

Sports are also a problem. Finding the right sports bra to fit your shape and offer the right amount of support is a marathon in itself, but no matter how steel-reinforced your bra is, they are still going to jiggle and inevitably going to hurt a little and cause back pain. You sometimes find yourself wrapping your arms around yourself like a hug as an extra makeshift bra to stop them from bouncing. There are moves in yoga and Pilates when you are lying on your front and the instructor asks you to lift your chest off the floor. The only way this would be possible is if I had the most flexible spine in the world, which I do not. They also get extremely sweaty and gross and which can even cause them to become infected. Dream about that one, lads.

My last gripe is that there are those men who stare when it really is inappropriate to do so. For the most part, I’m pretty used to it and to be honest I don’t really mind, but there have been times in my life when this has made me feel really rather uncomfortable. For example, I once had a meeting at work with a new client, who I was informed at a much later date had been openly ogling my boobs for the entire time he was there. Luckily, my boss had a massive go at the guy and let him know that he was being unacceptable. I hadn’t noticed at the time and she only told me this when I left that agency, which I’m really thankful for as it meant that I was able to work with him and not feel awkward, but still thinking about that now makes me feel a little queasy. You would think working in an industry mostly filled with women and gay men may protect you from this kind of misogynistic behaviour, but evidently not.

So in conclusion, I can honestly say that having boobs is not as easy as it looks. They have their pros and their cons and on balance, if I could give away a couple of cups sizes, I totally would. I’m sure when I have babies, I will change my mind and will relish in the ample supply of free baby food but for now, I will continue to complain loudly in clothes shops and on the treadmill. And I don’t care if that means making a tit out of myself.

This post is dedicated to a fantastic woman who I used to work with who I discovered this week has breast cancer. I want her to know that I am rooting for her and that I have every faith that if anyone can kick cancer’s arse, she can.

Giving blood: Myth-busters

Last week I received an unexpected greetings card. It wasn’t because someone pranked me and changed my birthday on Facebook and neither was it from that creepy library guy from uni with the high pitched voice and bare feet (oh god). It was because, since I was 17, I have given blood ten times. Ten times I have voluntarily had someone stick a needle in my arm and drain me like a vampire. And at the risk of verging into Twilight territory, it isn’t as bad as you might think. There are all sorts of horror stories and misconceptions about blood donation that are, for the most part, completely unfounded.

Firstly, there is the rumour that when you give blood, you are more than likely to feel faint, vomit and pass out in dramatic, damsel in distress fashion. I can tell you from personal experience that this is pretty unlikely to happen. In all of my ten trips to the donation station, I have only seen this happen to two people, both of whom were very small people, who were probably on the verge of the 50kg weight limit and hadn’t had enough to eat and drink prior to arrival. I say this because there are certain questions and precautions that the nurses take when you arrive to ensure that you are fit and healthy to donate. In all likelihood, if you are over 55kg and in good health, you should be just fine. Luckily I am tall and strong as ox so I’ve always been ok, although I wouldn’t recommend vigorous yoga (it’s totally a thing) the next morning as it may cause you to almost pass out in the down dog position. It's all about initiative guys. In an effort to completely contradict myself, one time when I was feeling particularly zealous and initiative-free, I challenged my dad to a race to see who could give a pint the fastest, because why not. I won the race, because I am a pro.

A second glaring alarm bell for some people is the thought of the needle. Now this is one which I cannot dispel as I know that for a lot of people, needles scare the bejesus out of you, much like clowns, feet and standing on three consecutive drains does to me. And I totally get that one measly blog post from me is unlikely to be the catalyst for your decision to embrace the needle (in fairness that’s not something I would recommend – it’s pretty sharp). But what I can say is this. It really doesn’t hurt. It’s not like when you stand on Lego or give yourself a paper-cut. All it is is a small scratch and you don’t even have to look. It actually hurts more removing the super-glue plaster they make you put on afterwards that rips all of your arm hair out and leaves a week-long sticky residue in its wake. If ever there was an excuse to not give blood it’s that devil plaster (you should probably do something about that, NHS – it’s putting people off).

A third and final reason that I have heard people give and I have certainly done this is that you can’t fit it into your life. Now this is something I can completely relate to. In our busy lives, it can be difficult to fit in such a trivial thing such as giving blood. But what I have realised is that it’s really not such a big deal. You can only do it once every 16 weeks as a woman and every 12 weeks as a man and it takes about an hour of your time. That’s maximum five hours per year. I spend more time than that watching How I Met Your Mother in one sitting. And if I or one of my family members were in a car accident or god forbid got a spot of the Big C, I would be pretty thankful for the time someone dragged themselves away from Netflix.

I’m really sorry if this came over at all preachy, because that was not my aim at all, but I really am passionate about how important this is. It’s pretty scary that in the last year, the numbers of new people going out and giving blood fell by 40%. In total less than 4% of us give up some of our red stuff for the 1 in 4 people that will need it at some point in our lives.

Go on, you know you want to. They’ll even give you free biscuits and crisps afterwards which, I’m not sure if you know, don’t contain any calories. If that isn’t incentive enough to go, I don’t know what is.

https://www.blood.co.uk/

Glasses: A grumble.

I’ve worn glasses pretty much my whole life, donning my first pair of fetching bottle tops with classic hooked arms aged three, followed up with an operation to correct my squint aged six, resulting in the inevitable pirate eye patch. Over the years I’ve gone for a variety of styles and have currently settled on a pair of dark red Karen Millen’s.

For the most part, I’m pretty down with wearing glasses, as after all, I’d be pretty screwed without them. They make you look smarter, which at school isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially when you have your gappy teeth and general geeky aura to also contend with, but when you reach adulthood, this can occasionally come in handy. You can pretend that you are a sultry secretary who oozes sex appeal (although this clearly hasn’t worked for me thus far). And these days your specs can double as a fashion statement – you can tell a lot about someone from the glasses they choose to wear.

However, wearing glasses comes with its own perils and annoyances. So I’ve decided to compile a list of the top five times when needing to wear glasses is simply not the one, because why the devil not:

1)    When you have the fear that you’ve lost your glasses

This has happened to me on multiple occasions, from when they fell off my face on a theme park ride and were caught by someone in the queue, to when I thought I had lost them on a night out, cried down the phone to my Mum whilst still drunk the next morning only to discover they were under my friends bed, literally in my eye-line from the fold-out mattress. However, the most frustrating situation is when you have fallen asleep in your glasses or had some kind of night spasm and knocked them off the bedside table, resulting in a ten minute scrabble on the floor, blindly looking for them with your useless eyesight. Not ideal.

2)    When you break your glasses

There are many situations where you are in danger of breaking your glasses, whether you are partaking in sports or accidentally getting a bit squiffy on a night out. Breaking your glasses can result in a number of different outcomes. You can continue to wear said glasses, taped together Harry Potter style, which let’s face it just isn’t all that cute. You can wear your old scratched up glasses which probably aren’t your correct prescription anymore until yours are fixed, resulting in headaches and general discomfort. You can wear your contacts, which is fine in most situations; however mine just aren’t as good as my glasses and cause me to want to nap part of the way through the day at work, which I’m pretty sure is frowned upon. Or you can buy a brand new sparkly pair, which leads me nicely on to...

3)    When you have to buy new glasses but are poor af

There are no two ways about it, nice glasses do not come cheap. Unless you want to wear thick, ugly glasses that look like they came straight out of the eighties, you are looking at spending at least £100 on a new pair, and that doesn’t include having them thinned. And before you scream ‘YOU SHOULD HAVE GONE TO SPECSAVERS!’, I'm way ahead of you - I've been going there for years (don't event get me started on Haine and Smith). It actually makes me really quite mad when I think about it that I have to pay for glasses full stop – I didn’t ask to be born with astigmatism, after all. It’s just a bit unfair if truth be told. And I’m constantly poor, so there’s also that.

4)    When you see other people wearing glasses with non prescription lenses

Seeing other people wearing glasses without lenses makes me want shake them, give them a bit of a slap and sit them down for a stern word or two. I know glasses are just the coolest and the ultimate in chic accessorising (ahem) but I just don’t understand for the life of me why someone would choose to wear glasses when, if I had the money, I would be splashing out on laser eye surgery in order to NOT have to wear them. It baffles me. If you’re one of those people, please readdress this life decision. I don’t want to have to disown you.

5)    When people feel the need to test your vision

There is nothing more annoying than when someone decides to take your glasses from your face/ wave their hands around and asks you 'how many fingers am I holding up?' like you are actually certified blind. They put on your glasses and have a good old laugh about how they feel drunk and ask if this is how I see without my specs on. No. It's not. Now give my glasses back so I can see you well enough to give you the death stare.

Looking up at that, I realise it’s quite the moan fest and it’s a bit first world problems.com, but sometimes you need a bit of a rant, right? I’m sure if I thought about there would be more to moan about on the topic, but instead I’m just going to leave you with these beautiful images of me, aged 5. You’re welcome.

Fitness and other struggles

There are some people in life who are naturally motivated to get fit. There are those early risers who are perfectly happy to get up at 5.30am and take a brisk jog around the block or enjoy a pre-work spin class. These people are also the kinds of people who will happily exist solely on kale juice, broccoli and turkey slices.

I, however, am not one of those people.

The motivation to get fit and stay that way has always been an ongoing issue in my life. I have a terrible habit of getting really in shape and then completely losing the plot and commencing to do absolutely no exercise and exist on a combination of burgers, biscuits and wine for an extended period of time.

A classic example of this is when, about 5 years ago (Jesus I’m getting old) I went on a girl’s holiday to Zante with my svelte friends. At the beginning of the summer I had ventured to New Look to try on a bikini and had a terrible shock when I saw in the mirror that I had unknowingly morphed into a beached beluga whale. I then went on a bit of a mission and spent the summer on a horrible cereal-based diet and going to the gym six days a week, losing a stone and a half before our holiday. Just how unattainable this regime was became overwhelmingly apparent when, after spending a week drinking and eating McDonalds in Greece, the weight began to creep back on.

And I am not, and have never been, an early riser. It’s not the being up early thing that bothers me all that much; it’s just the process of actually dragging myself out of my warm comfy bed in the first place. This is a pattern of behaviour that started at a young age, whereby I was perfectly happy and capable to walk, as long as someone physically stood me up onto my feet and made me do so.

This is a pattern that I am desperate to change. Not the eating bit so much – I’m pretty sure I’m never going to be happy just eating lettuce leaves and drinking varying degrees of joyless detoxifying green tea. It’s not even that I’d like to be skinny because I know deep down I’m always going to be curvy girl. I just want to be fit and enjoy exercise just as much as those people doing crazy yoga on the beach at sunrise and running marathons. That’s not too much to ask, right?

So I started this process last year. Firstly, I decided to go for a bit of nostalgia and joined a netball team. I hadn’t played since secondary school and I’m not that good, but there’s something really fun about playing a team sport and making some really great friends in the process. Our team, Hoops I did it again (great name), have since decided that because we didn’t win all that often, it would be wise for us to go to some training, or as someone else put it, to voluntarily put ourselves into netball boot camp. It may be freezing cold playing outside in January, but being part of a team motivates me to get off my butt and get moving, which is perfect.

Secondly, I signed myself up for a 10km run. This would have been an amazing idea, had I not then fallen down a step in the pub (sober) and pulled a tendon in my foot. Not ideal. I discovered, though, that simply injuring myself was not enough to warrant giving me a refund on the £40 I paid to enter, so in two weeks I will be dragging myself around the central London course in an attempt to not completely embarrass myself. Here’s hoping. I have given my friends strict instructions not to come to witness this particular failure of a sports venture on my part, but I’m pretty sure they may come anyway. Sneaky blighters.

I’ve also started a Saturday morning yoga class, where I last week discovered I can’t do a shoulder stand. I’m still convinced that I will be able stand on my head by week four, which is what, my friends, you call optimism.

And last but not least, I have the office. Most of the people I work with are having a bit of a gym moment and one runs marathons. So naturally I am bowing to peer pressure and have so far this year been to the gym 5 times. Mostly it’s so I can watch TV on the fancy treadmills as I don’t have a telly licence, but you know, whatever works.

So, so far in 2016, so good. I’m yet to become a morning person and I haven’t gone the whole hog and started running home from work, but you never know, by the end of the year I could be a whole new woman. After all, stranger things have happened.

Baking break and boozy brownies

I told you there would be cake.

It’s a well known fact among my friends and family that I like to bake. Cupcakes, cookies, brownies, the lot. My friends usually get baked gifts on their birthdays. I even took three days off work to bake for my friend’s wedding last year. I’m one of those people who, in a very pathetic and juvenile fashion, profess to have been a Mary Berry fan-girl before she was cool, aka pre Bake Of fame. Let’s face it, baking is kind of my thing.

However, of late I may have let it slide a little. I could make all the excuses under the sun about people being on diets and staving off cake and not having the time, but these would just be great big porkies.  What has actually happened is I’ve just gotten lazy and have spent more and more of prime Sunday baking time in bed watching Grey’s on Netflix and intermittently napping.

Now, it’s safe to say that my crappy excuses haven’t fooled my housemates Chloe and Laura. In my interview for my room in my Tooting flat (before which I’d had three glasses of wine, so I was a little tipsy – but that’s a story for another day), I announced that I like to make cakes. It may have even been the main reason they chose me to be their flatmate. So when I moved in and the fabled baked goods didn’t materialise they, quite rightly, began to not-so-subtly hint that I should get my ass into the kitchen and get to it.

On my birthday, knowing by this point that I’m also a fan of one or two alcoholic beverages of a night out, C and L bought me a rather excellent birthday present. Wrapped up separately in a bag, clad in leopard-print wrapping paper (love a bit of Pat Butcher chic), were two limes and bottle of coke (in phallic formation, see below), a bottle of white rum, a bar of chocolate and a copy of ‘The Boozy Baker’ by Lucy Baker. On page 110 was a post-it, marking a recipe of Cuba libre brownies, containing, you’ve guessed it, Coca-Cola, white rum and lime. So who am I to say no, right? The trick worked.

So this weekend (not gonna lie, 5 weeks after said birthday), I rustled up some of these tasty treats. Now I know it’s January and people are trying to be healthy, but sometimes we all need a brownie with rum and about 4 million calories, right? Right?!

These brownies, as it turns out, are ridiculously good. Squidgy and boozy and chocolaty and all that great stuff (not to blow my own horn or anything). So all this pre-ramble has come to this: the recipe. For the full version, make sure to check it out here – it would be a disservice, as well as blatant copyright to claim it as my own. So when you find yourself in your pjs at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon eating cheerios for dinner, give them a go. Believe me, your housemates, family and friends will appreciate it, which makes the effort worth it!

FOR THE BROWNIES (sorry – it’s in American measurements)

1 ½ cups sugar

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

10oz dark chocolate

½ pound unsalted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

¾ cup Coca Cola

¼ cup white rum

FOR THE FROSTING

1/ lb unsalted butter (room temp)

3 tbsp cocoa powder

1/3 cup white rum

4 cups icing sugar

Zest of two limes