My first impressions of Cape Town including what I saw, what I enjoyed, what I was surprised by, and what I will always remember. This is what Cape Town is really like. Read more

Before we met, I searched the internet for photos of her. I longed to know how tall her buildings grew. I was curious what style they held themselves in. I wanted to know what colour the water that flows through the city was. I hoped to discover if her streets read more

Walking through Madeira airport I looked for a sign with my name on it.I found it in the hands of a man wearing a navy cardigan and camel coloured trousers. He started to frown as I approached him.I read the sign again " Mr. Frances Thompson ".He read more

Prior to my trip for New Year's Eve, I'd been to Dubai four times before, however I'd never actually stepped foot outside the airport. While a number hungry traveller would happily count this as a country visited, I do not. So I was glad to finally get the chance to read more

My first visit to Porto was fast, fleeting and full of other distractions. I attended a conference there and only wandered the streets when on organised tours or events. Any free time I had I spent working because I still had clients to keep happy while filling most of the read more

These are my first impressions of Iceland, a country that has received so much hype over the years, and yet it still wowed me. Read more

You are like my old friend Amsterdam. Flat, clean, a little cloudy and grey, full of bicycles clunking along and home to extraordinarily tall people who speak my language with astonishing skill and nonchalance.And yet you are nothing like Amsterdam.No, dear Rotterdam, you have a soul, character and read more

I wrote many words about my first impressions of Brighton & Hove yesterday. They were centred on my first morning waking up in this British seaside city on the southern English coast and finding the city's marathon taking place outside of my window just off the seafront of Brighton. I read more

The woman next to me on the plane didn't know how to fill in her landing card.She was confused by what "date of deliverance" meant and I suddenly had to search for the French reason why this had been literally and therefore badly translated. Together with my brain-racking and read more

Never before, and quite possibly never again, will my first impressions of a place be defined by a naked sauna and ice dipping session with a group of jolly Finnish women I've never met before.It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. Particularly, perhaps, because I read more

I can already tell that Levi is unlike anywhere else I have snowboarded. Already so many words have popped into my head, prompted by the unexpected beauty of the landscape and scenery we have been surrounded by as we strapped snowboards to our feet and glided down the mountain side. Read more

We arrived in the middle of the night and in the middle of winter.Perhaps this was why instantly I felt like there was a little magic in the air? Or should I say on the ground. Because it was the snow piled up around me; slushy in parts, icy read more

It feels wrong writing first impressions for Phuket, a place that we have travelled through five or six times in the last year. But this time we are staying a while... (Roll over the circles on these photos to read some of my (almost) first impressions and experiences on read more