The tropical islands of the Seychelles have long been a dream destination of ours but one we always
thought would be outside our travel budget.
But in the first week of July
this year, when we were back in Scotland for the month, and after a week of catching up with
our much-missed families, we saw a last minute bargain flying to the Seychelles from Glasgow with Emirate
airlines.
We are subscribed to lots of
different airline and travel agency lists and when we were emailed with Emirate’s
‘24 hour flash sale’ – it seemed that a trip to the Seychelles might actually be
affordable to us if we acted quickly and made our travel plans independently.
It didn’t take us long to
agree and press a few buttons!
The Seychelles are an
archipelago in the Indian Ocean consisting of more than one hundred and fifteen islands that are made
up of ancient granite and corals. Famous for its beaches and nature reserves,
island hopping is an absolute must and we planned to visit all
the main islands of Mahé, Praslin, La Digue, and Curieuse,
during our 14 day trip.
My husband Trav was excited
about the scuba diving – the Seychelles are said to be one the world’s top ten
dive locations. I was excited about seeing some of the most beautiful beaches
in the world. I was also looking forward to
seeing the famous ‘coco-de-mer’ nut - the largest coconut in the world that is only
found on these islands. The largest tortoises in the world can also be found
here: they have a lifespan of around one hundred and fifty years and the breeding group on the Seychelles remains the only chance to save the species from complete extinction. I was really
looking forward to meeting some of these giant gentle creatures.
To say that I had huge
expectations for this trip was an understatement!
We flew out of Glasgow and
left the rain and grey skies behind us – heading for Dubai and a change of
airplane before flying onto Mahe, the main island. A total flying time of
around thirteen hours plus airport waiting time.
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| The view from our room at a Glasgow airport hotel on the morning we flew to the Seychelles! |
But all the travelling was all totally worth
it! We landed in Mahe around 6am and having used several internet travel sites
like Expedia, Hotels.com and Booking.com, to find affordable hotels, we took a
taxi to our hotel of choice.
We planned to be on Mahe for
our first three nights before taking an inter-island ferry over to Praslin, the
island that we would use as a base for a week of island hopping over to Le
Digue and Curieuse. Then we planned to return to Mahe for our last few nights
before flying back to Glasgow.
These are just some of my favourite photo memories of those amazing two weeks!
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| First day - exploring the beach on Mahe Island, Seychelles |
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| Island hopping is easy to do in the Seychelles using the inter-island ferry service |
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| There are no cars on La Digue so we hired bicycles to explore the island |
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| One of the world's most beautiful beaches... Anse Source D'Argent on La Digue Island, Seychelles |
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| Impressively large beach boulders on Pralin Island |
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| Hotel pool on Praslin |
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| We visited a black pearl farm on the island of Praslin |
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| The coco-de-mer nut! |
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| Island hopping over to La Digue |
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| Exploring Praslin on foot with Trav |
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| Trav on a Praslin beach |
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| Walking on the softest whitest sand in the world... |
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| Meeting a giant tortoise on Curieous Island |
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| An amazing sunset from our hotel on Praslin |
Once back in Glasgow, on the
last weekend of July, we headed up to the university town of St Andrews to attend our good
friends daughter’s wedding. St Andrews is also known as the 'home' of golf course, of course. We were thrilled to be invited to share in such a special
day and also excited to be meeting up with friends and to be staying overnight
in such fabulous surroundings.
Trav and I don’t actually
carry ‘best clothes’ in our suitcases while we are travelling, so we had to first
head to Princes Street, Edinburgh, where I bought a lovely summery dress from
Monsoon (half price in the sale - yay!) and Trav hired a very nice suit from a
menswear department.
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| On Princes Street, Edinburgh, shopping for our St Andrews wedding attire! |
The weather on the Saturday,
for the wedding, having started out a bit grey and rainy, brightened up beautifully as we came out of the chapel and the sun came out just as we all enjoyed having champagne and nibbles outside on the
famous grass quadrangle. While a string quartet
was playing, and the wedding party were having the official photographs taken, we
got to chat with our lovely much-missed friends and take lots of photographs. It was a fabulous day. Congratulations to the bride and groom, Leanne and Danny!
The day after the wedding,
we drove back to Edinburgh, handed over Trav’s hired suit and stayed overnight at our eldest son Ben’s apartment in Edinburgh.
In the morning,
we planned to be up early to travel to Glasgow with Ben where we would meet our
youngest son Iain.
We were all traveling
together to South Korea to visit our middle son James, his lovely wife Sujeong,
and our baby grandson Aaron – whom none of us had yet met!
We were also meeting
Sujeong’s family for the first time and I was worried how we would communicate, as they don’t speak any English and we don’t speak any Korean. But I needn’t
have worried - as we had an interpreter for our words - but the immediate love
and warmth between us all needed no interpretation at all. One week wasn’t
enough with our Korean family and we now miss them all dreadfully.
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| With our lovely Korean family! |
So my next blog post will be
about of our time, our experiences, and our travels in South Korea. It was
wonderful, exciting and emotional trip – and I did get lots of photographs!
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Love,
Janice xx
