Will Travel For Pandas

February 10, 2021September 9, 2024 Kirsten

One Year Without Travel

The last time I travelled was my trip to Copenhagen at the end of January 2020 – that ended a busy month with 3 ‘long-weekend’ city breaks which included visiting Belgium and Germany. I got back home on the 1st of February and had no idea there would be no travel for such a long time. I had one trip planned for 2020, in June I was to stay at the Pairi Daiza Resort in Belgium. Luckily that was the only one and it was easy for me to get refunds/vouchers and hopefully the trip will be possible in the future. Also luckily, I hadn’t yet planned anymore travel, but since the lockdown, travel is all I’ve been thinking about!

At first it was quite nice to be at home for a while and being settled – despite loving travelling, there is a stressful element to it – but after a while it’s just been very demotivating with the ‘not knowing’ of when travelling can be possible. I used to live for my holidays – whether they were a real break or even just travelling for a conference – they were really what motivated me at work as something to look forward to, and now there’s nothing like that to look to. But obviously, I’d rather sacrifice not travelling at the moment for a year (or two, but I really hope not more) so that it can be possible again in the future. Without any travelling to actually do, I’ve planned so much theoretical travel that I don’t think there will ever be enough time to get it all done, but I can dream!

I think it’s unlikely I’ll get to travel anywhere this year, sure I’d like to make use of my voucher to visit the Pairi Daiza Resort (and stay in the most amazing hotel with a room looking onto the polar bears) but that will still be there in the future. For the meantime, I’m in my final year of laboratory work for my PhD – not being able to travel is the perfect reason to get my head down and get on with my long to-do list, and in 2022 I will then be working on writing my thesis. I’m hoping if I work hard now, then by the end of it all I can enjoy the perfect trip away. Japan in the dream! Luckily without travel or socialising in the past year-ish, I’ve been able to make some great savings and really work towards making my ‘I finished my PhD trip’ a reality.

I’m glad my last travels before the pandemic were great ones, and I saw pandas, what more could I ask for? But it’s been a year and I’m having some panda (especially panda cub) withdrawals. I still have quite a few posts to share about my travels in the past few years, I hope those will see me through until I can have a new trip to share about.

Do I wish we could have all been out and enjoying the world, of course, but it’s important to think of the bigger picture at the moment still. Keep safe!

December 16, 2020December 26, 2023 Kirsten

Lanterns & Lights – Edinburgh Zoo 2017 to 2020

For the past 4 years, including this one, winters in Edinburgh have brought some fantastic Giant Lanterns of China events to Edinburgh Zoo! Each year has had a different theming, although this years event is Christmas Lights themed rather than using lanterns – it was still a super fun event and I think could be something combined using both light effects and lanterns for events in the future. Edinburgh Zoo was one of the first zoos to have a lantern event, particularly in the UK, and these are definitely becoming very popular events now to brighten up the cold winter nights! Some of the Giant Lantern events have even won Giant Panda Global Awards too, which is a fun accolade for the events^ This post is photo-heavy, so I will write a little about each of the annual events then leave you to enjoy the pictures of some of the fantastic lantern and light displays that I’ve enjoyed over the years =)

December 9, 2020December 26, 2023 Kirsten

Edinburgh Zoo – November 2020

In November I made two trips to Edinburgh Zoo on some days off that I had. The regulations in Scotland are currently that no-one should be entering into or out of the Edinburgh area, so at the moment the zoo is really for local visitors only – there are pros and cons to this, it’s nice to have fewer visitors (I went on both a morning and an afternoon, it was a little busier in the morning, but it was by no means busy) however this isn’t great in trying to help the zoo raise the funds it really needs to keep going. Despite it being November and a little cold and grey, with rain forecast on both of my visits, I had great trips with some great photography opportunities – hopefully you enjoy these pictures!

November 25, 2020December 29, 2024 Kirsten

Magical first time at Shanghai Disneyland

When I was thinking about planning my trip to China last year I focussed on going somewhere I hadn’t been before – other than Chengdu I’ve been to Xi’an and Beijing, and while I love those cities, I need to branch out! I also need to visit some smaller places (for example Guilin is high on my priority list, it looks beautiful!), but I was thinking I should tick off the major sites first – which brought me to Shanghai. In my research Shanghai Disneyland kept coming up on travel blogs and TripAdvisor, but I was a little apprehensive about going alone. I then searched on Youtube and came across videos by thisnatasha, who has been solo to Shanghai Disneyland and really made it look super easy, so I became sold on the idea! I started my 2019 China trip in Shanghai, spending 4 days there split between Disneyland and visiting the city – it’s safe to say that the 1.5 days I spent at Shanghai Disneyland are in my absolute life highlights of things I’ve done, I just had the best time there and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since!

November 11, 2020December 26, 2023 Kirsten

Washington DC – City Guide

Of course I couldn’t go all the way to Washington DC and only see the pandas – today I am sharing my city guide and what we got up to on our trip in September 2018. It was very hot on our first day, however that day then ended with a crazy rainstorm and we got very soaked! After that it was a bit of a damp and cloudy trip, however that didn’t spoil our time, just made for some dullness in the pictures but hopefully they still show the city and its attractions well.