Pack The Suitcases’ 2022 travel roundup

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Welcome to my yearly travel roundup, an overview of where I’ve been this year and all the travel-related highs and lows. Regular readers will know that 2022 has been my most exciting year of travel ever because I’m on a 12-month career break (also called a sabbatical) and have been full-time travelling since 1 April. So this is going to be a VERY long roundup I’m afraid. But hopefully an interesting one…

Since I launched Pack The Suitcases in 2016, I’ve been doing these yearly roundups, in which I try to sum up the ‘best of’ and ‘worst of’ (ahem, Spain) for all my previous year’s travel, and it’s become a tradition I can’t drop. They serve as a kind of personal reminder and are more for me than anything else, seeing as they’re of no interest to most people. So, if you’re reading this, thanks for sticking with me.

Pour yourself a mulled wine or a hot chocolate, and enjoy a read about my travel-tastic 2022. I also touch on what my plans are for the rest of my career break going into 2023…

Places visited in 2022

BRACE YOURSELVES. This is a long one what with travelling pretty much full-time at the mo…

February

A week in Tenerife, Spain – a sponsored trip with Jet2. 

April to July

The first chapter of the career break begins! This was Project: ‘Live in Portugal’, designed to understand Portugal better with a long-term stay, something you can’t replicate with normal annual leave from work. Started with a month in Tavira, also visiting Faro, Vila Real de Santo Antonio and Fuseta and other small towns while there. This was followed by another month in Lisbon, visiting Braga, Cascais, Sintra and Setubal while there. And then two weeks in Porto, with a few day trips from Porto. Then onto a week travelling around Galicia and Asturias in Spain (Porto Espasante, Cuddileiro, Ribadeo and Oviedo) before going down to Madrid to fly to Croatia. Started off in Split, then Korcula and Dubrovnik.

August

Home in the UK for a month.

September to December

Headed off for the second chapter of the career break… This was the Big Fat European Train Journey Adventure. 44 trains; 0 flights! Started off with a sponsored trip with Classic Cottages in Rye, Sussex. This was handy as it got us down south for the Eurostar. The first destination was Strasbourg, France, then Lucerne, Switzerland, through Brescia and Trieste, Italy, and then to Zagreb, Croatia for 3 weeks, including a day trip to Samobor. This was so our 90/180 days in the Schengen zone would be ok (Croatia is not in it). Then off to Ljubljana, Slovenia, for 8 nights, including a day trip to Lake Bled. Then back onto more rapid travel: Maribor, Slovenia, then Bratislava, Slovakia, then Vienna, Austria. I then did my first ever solo trip: Stuttgart, Germany. Then off to Bordeaux, France, before beginning the Spain section…

For two people who don’t like Spain, we spent a lot of time there as we were following the warmth as it went from the end of autumn into winter. Started in Bilbao, then Valladolid, Segovia, Valencia, Cordoba, Almuñécar, Málaga, Zaragoza and finally Barcelona. By then it was December and we braved the cold on the way back home, with Nimes and Paris, France.

So that was quite the leap from barely any travel back in 2021!

And the stats…

✈️ 7 flights
🚄 53 trains
📍 34 destinations (day trips not included)
🛏️ 37 apartments/hotels
🌎 10 countries
💇🏻‍♀️ 3 hairdressers abroad
🧳 2 suitcases!

First off, what is a career break/sabbatical?

Before I get into the highs and lows of travel this year, I just wanted to answer this as I thought it was obvious but I’ve been asked loads.

A career break, also known as a sabbatical, is a period of unpaid leave you can take from your job, if you have the option. It can be just a month or several years. At the end of it, you go back to your job and carry on as normal.

My day job, when I’m not travel blogging, is in the UK Civil Service. I’ve worked there since 2009. When you’ve done long-term service, you’re more likely to be granted a career break. Mine began on 1 April 2022 and I’ll be back at work in mid-April 2023. I’m very lucky to be able to afford to do this. It’s something we’ve been planning and saving up for over several years – and the thought of it got me through all the lockdowns when we couldn’t even think of going abroad! It’s honestly one of the best things I’ve done so far.

Best travel experiences of 2022

Other than simply being on a career break/sabbatical, I’ve had three standout travel experiences this year.

1. Trying out classical dressage in Portugal

Regular readers will know that I’m a lifelong equestrian and horse owner. I know most of my readers aren’t horsey, so I won’t go into too much detail here, but I’ve always been interested in classical dressage. Classical can be defined as ‘a training system which builds on the basic principles of the Old Masters, supplemented by new insights which serve the welfare of the horse and are purposeful for its training’. You can read more in this Horse & Hound article if you’re interested.

Several European countries have a history of classical riding. The ultimate for me is Portugal. So when I knew I was ‘living’ in Lisbon for a month, the first thing I did was book some training at the famous Valença Equestrian Academy. I knew it would be top-notch. But I wasn’t prepared for quite how much I’d fall in love with it. Nor how much it would improve my riding in just a couple of sessions. Suffice to say I learned almost as much in a few hours there as I have in the last 25+ years of riding. I got a feel for some of the high-level movements: one- and two-time changes, piaffe, passage, half-pass, and even just a shoulder-in but with so much more precision and detail. By the end, I felt like I was Charlotte Dujardin…

Not wanting to leave it as a one-off experience abroad, I booked some lessons when back home for summer, down at Pen Llyn Lusitanos in Wales. This is the only place you can do classical training in the UK. It was another fantastic experience (although without the Portuguese sunshine of course!). And I’ll be heading back regularly in future so prepare for a few Welsh travel guides next year…

2. Completing a 3-month, no-flights trip: The Big Fat European Train Journey Adventure

I’ve consciously been reducing how many flights we do each year for a while now and increasing the amount of train-based travel instead. I also try to offset any flights that we do by planting trees through a charity scheme. For ages, I’ve wanted to do a big environmentally-friendly journey by train. So we planned and completed a 3-month train adventure around Europe for the second chunk of the career break travels. Starting from home near Stockport, Cheshire, we travelled down south and onto the Eurostar, across Europe.

Here are the stats:

• 44 trains
• 23 destinations (day trips not included)
• 14 weeks
• 9 countries
• 2 suitcases
• ZERO flights! 

Trains across most of Europe are fantastic. They’re also affordable, especially compared with here in the UK. For example, my normal commute to work costs £7.50 a day for a 15-minute, 10-mile journey into Manchester. Compare that with the international journey from Porto to Vigo (2 hours 30 minutes; 100 miles) for 5€, or Ljubljana to Maribor (2 hours; 75 miles) for 2€, or Madrid to Valencia (1 hour 30 minutes; 220 miles) for 11€. These are extreme examples but they speak volumes. In France, there’s a railcard you can get for 50€, which caps the cost of train journeys at 79€ maximum. France is massive. Imagine how far you can go on that. Incredible.

Anyway, I enjoyed this trip so much. I cannot recommend enough ditching the stress of airports, the environmental guilt, and the joyless experience of flying in favour of a train adventure. Nothing compares with sitting on the upper deck of a double-decker train, in a comfortable seat, with a good book in hand, looking out of the window at the beautiful countryside whizzing by. I’ll definitely be doing more of this in future.

3. Returning to my favourite city in Europe, Ljubljana

We first went to Ljubljana, Slovenia, a few years ago and I fell in love with it after being there for only a few hours. I think I’ve been banging on about it ever since and was dying to return, so it obviously had to form part of our travels this year. I was a tiny bit worried it wouldn’t be as good as the first visit because it’s become much more popular since then. But I needn’t have worried. Ljubljana is still a belter. It ticks every box I require for a city: affordable, great restaurants, unusual architecture, compact and walkable size, stunningly beautiful. 

I think of Ljubljana as a Scandinavian-style city but without the painful price tag. If you want to read my guide to it, it’s here: 33 things to do in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

I also loved doing a day trip from Ljubljana to Lake Bled, where I instantly became a professional photographer. Bled is probably the most photogenic place I’ve ever been. Just unreal. And I also visited Maribor, another Slovenian city, for a couple of nights. It’s home to the world’s oldest grapevine, which even has its own Guinness World Record certificate. Slovenia continues to rise in my ‘favourite countries’ rankings. 

Worst travel experiences of 2022

Even living the dream on a career break for a year isn’t all fun and games. Here are my top three ‘lows’ of the year…

1. Trying to eat out in Spain during six weeks there

This was a two-fold problem: the food itself and the eating times. 

The food itself…

Suffice to say, your average Spanish tapas menu is not for me. I don’t eat meat or cheese, I’ve become increasingly intolerant of anything oily, I don’t eat much bread, and I need to eat vegetables with every meal or I feel rank. Over 6 weeks, going all the way from Oviedo to Malaga by train, we struggled with the menus in Spanish restaurants. There’s just so much ham, so much oil, and so few cooked vegetables. Menus are incredibly repetitious across the country, too. It’s usually easy to find veggie/pescetarian options, with nice fresh vegetables, in most European countries. Not Spain, though. They must either export all their veg or just cook it at home. Restaurants only seem to be able to produce an oily salad. After weeks of being ill/hungry/both, we ended up avoiding Spanish cuisine altogether. And we had some fantastic Middle Eastern (like La Hummuseria in Madrid) and Asian (like Dumplings in Barcelona) instead. 

… the eating times

As for the eating times in Spain… they just don’t work for me. We normally eat at 1pm and 7.30/8.30pm, which is fairly standard both at home in the UK and across Europe. I’ve never really even thought about it before. But try eating in any non-touristy restaurant in Spain at those times and it’ll be shut or you’ll be on your own. It varies a bit across the country but I’d say average eating times are 3.30/4pm and 10/11pm. This BBC article explains why Spain is so different from the rest of Europe. I couldn’t get along with it, especially in autumn/winter when you’re trying to make the most of daylight and don’t want to stay up late/lie in late.

… and in conclusion

After 6 weeks of travelling the length and breadth of the country, you can’t say I didn’t give Spain a good go. I saw some beautiful places – especially Córdoba, Oviedo and Valencia. But I doubt I’ll ever go back – or at least not for many years. The food culture is too much of a barrier to my enjoying it overall.

On the plus side, I was ill from oily food so many times that I actually lost weight. Hoorah. 

2. Experiencing my first unclean accommodation 

I’ve done really well with accommodation over the years. I think this is mainly down to high levels of research and knowing what to look for. But this year, for the first time ever, I ended up in a dirty apartment.

This was in Bratislava (a gorgeous city I intend to write about next year!). The apartment had ticked all the usual boxes I look for when booking: good photos, very positive reviews etc. There was no warning it would be mining. But when we checked in, it was dirty. And I mean properly dirty, not just a bit of dust. You could write in the dust (I hilariously wrote ‘dust’ and took a photo) on the surfaces, the bath was full of leg-shaving hairs and the kitchen floor had food crumbs everywhere and greasy drawer handles.

Ew, ew and more ew.

I complained to the owner the minute we arrived, but we’d got there in the evening and had no choice but to give it a quick clean ourselves so we could sleep there. The owner did come round the next morning to clean. But she only wiped the surfaces. The real ingrained dirt was still there. 

We put up with it for a few days but by day 4, I was sneezing so much that we called it a day and checked out early. I complained to Booking.com and they refunded me, so at least there’s that. If you want to know where to avoid staying in Bratislava, it’s this apartment. Bratislava is lovely though, and even a filthy apartment didn’t spoil my time there at all.

3. Getting heat exhaustion and COVID at the same time in Split

Well, not much to say about this really other than it was horrific. Would not recommend!

I wasn’t ill from covid other than feeling tired. But I was unable to leave the (horrible) bedroom I was self-isolating in while Chris did an excellent job of leaving food outside the door for me (we isolated from each other as we couldn’t afford him to get it and not be able to go out for supplies). And it was during a heatwave in Split. You know the UK heatwave over the summer where it was 30°? Well, that was easy to come home to after experiencing 44° in Split. And we had no A/C. It was staying above 30° at night and inevitably, I got heat exhaustion. This is the stage before heatstroke (when you need to go straight to hospital) and it’s horrific.

A particularly low point was when I was retching into a bag, covered in wet towels to try to keep my temperature down, being watched over by a particularly tacky Audrey Hepburn canvas above the (soaking wet) bed. Good times…

Despite having an awful time there, I still managed to write a fairly in-depth guide to Split, based on what I managed to get up to before and after my isolation from hell…

Best local destination of 2022

Rye, East Sussex, UK

For once, I’ve not actually done many local trips this year! The only places I’ve been are my local town, Stockport, for a few lunches and drinks out, and the lovely Rye in East Sussex.

I visited the latter on my way down to London for the Eurostar to begin the train-journey chapter of the career break. It was a sponsored stay with Classic Cottages, a holiday cottage company I’ve never worked with before, and I absolutely loved it. I hardly ever take on sponsored work, even though I do get offered a fair amount of it these days. I’m picky with what I’ll do! But I’m really glad I accepted this trip. 

Rye is a really quaint and characterful town: just my cup of tea – a bit like Kirkby Lonsdale or Skipton in vibes. It’s full of steep cobbled streets lined with beautiful half-timbered Tudor buildings, set on a hillside overlooking a river. It’s got some excellent pubs (including a haunted one!), cafés and restaurants as well as some interesting history, fantastic art galleries and most importantly (for me), lots of quirky independent shops to browse. 

Best new destination of 2022

France in general: Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Nîmes

Some places I’ve been this year have been as I expected, some have been disappointing, and a few have really surprised me with how much I’ve loved them. Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Nîmes in France were all in the latter category. I’ve never been particularly interested in France before, well not beyond an obsession with French fashion anyway. I’ve been to Paris a few times and also around Nice/Antibes/Cannes over the years, but I’d never really become enamoured with it. However, after spending time in different places this year, I get it. And I love it.

• Strasbourg is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I can’t begin to describe how ‘me’ it was! I took about 300 photos in just two days there. Canals, cobbled streets, bicycles leaning on flower-filled bridges, pastel-coloured rows of cutesy houses… Also, it’s very exciting being in a border town so you can just cross a bridge on the tram and be in Germany. 
• Bordeaux is also gorgeous. It was possible to get great veggie food, the shops are beyond anything (I could have spent a FORTUNE on midi dresses alone) and I loved the atmosphere in general. 
• Nîmes was another lovely surprise. It’s got Roman architecture to rival actual Rome, incredible food, more brilliant clothes shops and is such a nice size for a long weekend. When we were there, it was mid-December and the streets were full of very tasteful Christmas lights and decorations. I loved it.

I’m now really keen to explore more of France and have already planned a 2023 French train journey trip.

Best accommodation of 2022

Normally, I just pick one place for this. But as I’ve stayed in 37 (omg) hotels/apartments this year, I can’t whittle it down that much. So I’ve picked my best three apartments and my best three hotels.

Apartments

• In Zagreb, Croatia, we spent 3 weeks in the amazing Hendrix Bridge Apartment 2. Everything was faultless. 100% spot on. The owner, Ignor, was lovely and I think he should teach online courses to train people in how to run a holiday apartment. 
• We spent a whole month in Tavira, Portugal, at the lovely Casa Oliverio Apartment. I felt so at home there. The owner, Christine, is absolutely wonderful and has thought of everything.
• We spent a week in Almuñécar, a seaside town on the Costa Tropical in Spain, in Epsylon 2 Apartment. I wasn’t a fan of the town but that was quite good because I wanted to write, uninterrupted. It was ideal for that. The apartment was basic but spotless, with an excellent kitchen and a big balcony. I set up my desk and enjoyed the most amazing sunsets, as shown below. It was also the quietest in terms of neighbour-noise in the whole of Spain. Bliss.

Hotels

• In Oviedo, Spain, we stayed a few nights at the super-swanky Princess Munia Hotel & Spa. How this was within my 80€ per night budget at the time, I’ll never know. We got very lucky with a mid-week deal, I think. I loved it!
• We returned to our favourite hotel of all time this year! Boutiquehotel Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria, is somewhere we’ve talked about and referenced as our ultimate hotel ever since our stay in 2012. It was lovely to return. It’s all eco-friendly, with a living roof made of lavender, and an amazing vegan-friendly, organic breakfast. It was just as good as I remembered.
• It’s not often I stay at the same place twice in a year, but UVE Marcenado Hotel in Madrid was so good that I booked it for both our stays, in July and in September. It’s not some kind of little boutique hidden gem or anything, it’s just a very clean, well-located, decent hotel. But I really struggled to find a Madrid hotel within budget. I did lots of research, checking and re-checking for deals, but kept coming back to this, and both times it did the job really well. If you’re struggling with ridiculous 100€+ options in Madrid, check whether this one is better.

Travel blogging in 2022

Traffic recovery at last

After an appalling two years in terms of traffic and income from the blog due to lockdowns and everything, it picked up nicely in 2022. I’m now back to my previous levels of traffic and more. I had a personal best of 85,000 pageviews in May! Obviously, not every month is that wonderful. December is really dead because people aren’t researching travel when they’re so busy with Christmas so traffic plummets. But generally, it’s been a good year and I’m chuffed that things are back on track. 

I just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who read and supported the blog in 2022. Your lovely comments, emails and social media messages have kept me going. I love love love writing my travel guides but they do take a lot of time and energy, from preliminary research all the way through to final edits. I was feeling travel sick on a train through rural France at one point this autumn, trying to finish my Ljubljana guide, and nearly giving up. Then a message appeared from a lady who’d gone to Naxos based purely on my guide to it, and she was having a beer at a bar I’d recommended so thought she’d email me! Needless to say, that spurred me on and I kept going and finished the piece. Lovely stuff.

I’ve also had quite a few of you buying me a drink over on my Buy Me a Coffee account (I hate coffee and use it to buy G&T or tea!). I’m very grateful and touched by every single one.

Social media

I’ve really started updating a lot more on my Pack The Suitcases account on Instagram this year. Given that I was on the go almost every day in terms of travel, I started doing daily stories so that people could follow along. And you all seemed to love them because I ended up having to give up attempting to respond to my inbox messages from everyone! But I do appreciate this very much.

I’d like to say that I now have a huge Instagram following so that tourism boards (who are OBSESSED with Instagram) all want to work with me, but alas I still have a woefully small number. I’ve just had to accept that I’m very much a writer and blogger, not an Instagram influencer.

I’m also still very active on my Pack The Suitcases accounts on Facebook (where I tend to share long and rambling updates from places I will never blog about but want to share) and Twitter (where I’m clinging on until the heinous Elon Musk kills it off).

My plans for 2023

My career break ends in mid-April. I can’t think about that yet without feeling sick. The thought of going back to my normal job, as much as I love it, and my normal routine, as lucky as I am to have a good life, is revolting. 

But before I have to face that horror, I still have January to March for travel. The plan is coming together for an Asian trip. We’re going to Japan (for the umpteenth time but we love it and we want to see our friends there), then Vietnam and Thailand, both of which are new destinations to us. We’re flying back home via a few days in Istanbul just because I fancy it. That takes us to March, when we’ll be doing a bit more train travel around France before dragging ourselves back to the UK to attempt to reintegrate back into reality. Wish me luck.

Please do let me know in the comments where you’re hoping to head off to in 2023! Hope everyone has a lovely Christmas and a brilliant new year.

If you’d like an email alert when I publish a new post this year, subscribe using the box at the side (if you’re on a laptop) or at the bottom (if you’re on a mobile or tablet). If you liked this post and want to save it to come back to later, you may want to pin it on Pinterest using the image below. And if you enjoy my blog in general and all the travel guides and tips I share on it, you can even buy me a drink. Cheers and see you in 2023!

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