My Year in Travel 2018
Catherine Mackey
🌍 Tailormade Travel Specialist | Creating inspiring bespoke leisure and adventure travel experiences for busy professionals | Stress-free corporate travel for small businesses | Travel Counsellors 🌏
It’s the time of year to put your feet up and think about next year’s travel plans. I hope my newsletter inspires your adventures for the year ahead. In 2018 I’ve been lucky to visit some exciting destinations, 7 of these being places I’ve never been to before and include 1 new continent – South America!
2018 has been an amazing year for my business and I’ve been privileged to design some wonderful trips creating lifetime memories – including tailor-made adventures, cruises, safaris, road trips, luxury beach getaways, city breaks, honeymoons, school trips, business travel, and ending the year with lots of families enjoying the magic of Lapland!
January
Travel Counsellors are at the forefront of making travel accessible for all. In January I completed specialist training to ensure that I have the tools at my fingertips to help anyone, with simple or complex needs to enjoy wonderful travel experiences all over the world. I believe that travel is something everyone can enjoy and I’m proud to be able to offer a personal service to my clients who need extra care taken over their travel plans to make this possible.
February
In February Karl & I took a short break to Krakow, a vibrant city steeped in over a thousand years of history. We enjoyed a food tour of the local restaurants and bars, visited the labyrinthine Wieliczka Salt Mine with its spectacular underground cathedral, and spent a sobering day visiting Auschwitz.
In half term Travel Counsellors held a TC Kids event where children met and learnt from real-life NASA astronaut, Nicole Stott, and came home with bags of NASA space ice cream! If we visit Florida in the future we will definitely be including a visit to the Kennedy Space Centre in our itinerary.
I also attended Stockport Town Hall Wedding Fair, meeting engaged couples and providing honeymoon advice. I LOVE talking about travel and weddings all day - my two favourite subjects! (if you don’t already know I’m also a part time Registrar and conduct wedding ceremonies for Stockport Council). I took my daughters with me and they were an amazing help with their clipboards!
April
April was all about cruise!
I travelled to Italy to join a CLIA Conference on board Carnival Horizon, spending the night before embarkation in Naples. In Naples we took the funicular railway to Castel Sant’Elmo where there are panoramic views over the city framed by the sea on one side and Vesuvius on the other. We stayed in the Spanish Quarter with its network of back alleys where laundry hangs from balconies and mopeds zip around at breakneck speed over the cobbles – just like in the movies! Our cruise also visited Rome & then Pisa, where we took the train into Florence for a spot of lunch al fresco before returning home. The Carnival Horizon is great for fun loving families with its rooftop Dr Seuss themed water park!
May
A busy month for ship visits including the beautiful Viking Sun, Cunard’s classic Queen Victoria and food lovers Oceania Nautica.
I also went on a mini-cruise on the re-launch of one of the UK’s favourite cruise ships, Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas, after her multi-million pound makeover. This ship is perfect for active families & groups of friends with its rock-climbing wall, interactive waterpark, laser tag, Escape room, bungee trampoline, Flowrider surf simulator & ice-skating rink!
In May I did my first ever slot on Trafford Sound radio talking about travel and sharing my advice with listeners. I must have said all the right things as I’ve been invited back every month since for a regular spot! You can listen to Trafford Sound radio here http://www.traffordsound.org/ and follow my Facebook page to find out when I’m on next!
June
This month I went on an adventure of a lifetime on a Wildlife Safari in Kenya with one of my favourite suppliers of adventure travel, Intrepid. It was an amazing experience, shared with an international group of travel professionals. We explored rural Kenya, were welcomed by singing villagers, camped out under the stars with Maasai Warriors and saw the Big 5 up close and personal! You can read my blog from the trip here…
In June I was proud to be part of the Urmston in Bloom project to brighten up the centre of our lovely town over the summer. I volunteered to adopt a couple of planters and water my floral displays throughout the summer months. Thankfully my daughters were on hand to help with the watering and tidying to make Urmston look blooming lovely!
July
More cruising in July including a visit on board Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth – completing the full set of all 3 Cunard ships!
This year our family holiday was also a cruise – a first for the children. We set off on Ms Magellan from our local port of Liverpool calling at Dublin, La Coruna, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Lisbon, Porto & La Rochelle. It was a wonderful family holiday. We were blessed with amazing weather, and the children loved visiting lots of different countries in one holiday and floating about in the pools and jacuzzis on board the ship. You can read my blog on our holiday here..
August
In August I had the opportunity to visit Fred Olsen’s ship Black Watch, a wonderful ship providing a home from home whilst exploring the oceans.
We were invited on a TC Family Day at Drayton Manor Park. It was a really fun high adrenaline day out and included a high ropes course. I would really recommend Drayton Manor park for families with small and younger teenage children.
At the end of August we set off on our annual trip to our favourite music festival, Solfest, in Cumbria, for a long weekend of no wifi, letting our hair down, dressing as we please, late night dancing & enjoying great music. It is without doubt our favourite weekend of the year and even better to share the fun with a big group of great friends as we did this year!
September
September ship visits included MSC Magnifica in Newcastle and Seabourn Ovation in Liverpool.
I also went on a Fred Olsen cruise to Arabia, on Ms Boudicca. Our cruise started in Muscat, Oman, called at Qatar and ended in Abu Dhabi. I would highly recommend a cruise in this part of the world. There is so much to see and you can return to the ship to cool down in the pool and sip ice-cold cocktails after a day sightseeing and enjoy beautiful sunset sail-aways. Highlights were an excursion on a traditional Dhow in the Omani fjords with dolphins swimming and jumping right along-side, and also visiting the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi at sunset.
In September I was also very proud to complete my cruise training to become a CLIA Cruise Master, which is the highest level of accreditation achievable in the cruise industry, reached with the completion of many hours of training, lots of ship visits, cruise blogs (and cruises!)
October
In October I had an amazing time in Brazil, visiting Rio de Janeiro & Salvador - two equally vibrant but completely different cities by the sea. We visited some fabulous hotels that I would highly recommend, including ones with stunning views of Rio and Copacabana Beach. Brazil is a diverse destination and I’d love to go back and explore more of the country, especially the Amazon. Rio highlights included standing at the foot of Christ The Redeemer watching Christ gradually appear as the mist cleared, and visiting the Carnival Factory, with a top-secret insight into next years’ Carnival floats! Salvador is a colourful, vibrant & musical city where locals genuinely do spontaneously samba in the streets!
November
In November the event of the year for all Travel Counsellors is our annual conference which was held in Glasgow. It’s a weekend packed full of learning & motivational speakers including Olympian Sir Chris Hoy. Evening entertainment included Craig David, The Red Hot Chilli Pipers & Marti Pellow! The best part of the conference though is catching up with TC friends from across the world who I’m in touch with ‘virtually’ every day, but working from home we don’t often get together face to face and let our hair down!
December
This month I spent lots of time at Manchester Airport visiting aircraft and learning more about the service on board Qatar Airways A350 with its award winning World’s Best Business Class, Emirates mega A380 with its on board cocktail bar, and I took part in a fly-around short flight on an Ethiopian Airways aircraft to launch their new route from Manchester to Addis Ababa and a new gateway to Africa and beyond.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my year in travel. Now is the time of year when we get together with our nearest & dearest and often the conversation is about travel plans for the year ahead. So please do think of me and pass on my details to anyone who would like Travel Counsellors magic sprinkled over their adventures! Catherine Xx