So we said goodbye to Hanoi, The Lapis Hotel (amazing), our guide Lin and driver, Phong. They all made our stay extra special. Personally I would have liked at least one day longer to explore Hanoi on our own. We never really go to to do that as we arrived a day late. I will […]
Author: Sarah Isaacs
Deliberate spelling mistake allowed in one of the new 7 wonders of the world!

So after THE journey came THE view – Halong Bay. The photos don’t do it justice, and neither do these words. It was quite misty, which added to the mistery and majesty, but not the photos, sorry. However the water was just as emerald as it says on wikipaedia. We had the most fabulous 24 […]
Bonus post – a tribute to the late Dave Allen

So I wasn’t going to write anything today but our morning evoked memories of my childhood and watching the extremely funny comedian Dave Allen on tv with my parents. Children look up his clips on YouTube. He always finished his show with “Thank you. May your G-d go with you.” Whatever your religion, find your […]
Good Morning Vietnam – eventually
So we have arrived – fog at LBA, so flight cancelled. Courtesy of “The beast from the East” and “Storm Emma”, we never flew from Leeds. We should have left leeds at 14:05, but at 14:15 they were telling us the plane we needed was due to land at 14:30 despite the fact that we […]
So we are off, again . . .

. . . to a part of the world we have never been to before, how exciting! Again the accusations of desertion from the children, but they they are all working and can’t get the time off – such a shame! I’m hoping that for this trip there will be a “guest” blogger so that […]
Rachel’s Graduation

We were so lucky, two graduations only eight days apart and the baby of the family, last certainly but not least! The boys made her day by bringing her menagerie, although as the photos prove I think they really did it for them. Toby came too, well we had to bring someone who wanted to […]
David’s Graduation

This was another awesome and proud day for us all – David’s graduation. For once the focus was all on the middle child (poor deprived middle child as he would tell you), and he looked as if he thoroughly enjoyed it! The weather was glorious. Rachel and David stepped up to the mark and brought […]
Safely back home . . . .
This is a summary with a link to all the photos and our photobook. The blog posts below detailed what we did day by day, with the photos for each day – so track back to see whether we actually got to see the Northern Lights!! They are in reverse order with the last day at […]
Even more snow, and ice sculpting
Today was a totally relaxed day for our last day. Walking, watching the snow fall, reading and listening and lighting fires! The snow through our window. There was 3cm in about 3 hours: It’s Narnia outside I lit this one. A proud moment – no paper and no fire alarms!: My pyromania In the afternoon […]
The Ice Hotel
So we have left Muotkan Maja after a fabulous five days. After a transfer of just under 3 hours we are now at the Snow Village and Ice Hotel in Lainio. So we’ve moved from Finland’s NE Arctic region, 24 miles from the Russian border in a SW direction, still well into the Arctic circle […]