Archive for March, 2011

Volunteering in Africa has been something we have felt strongly about for a long time. Elissa particularly wanted to help out with orphaned children and in a school and Pete wanted to help with wildlife.

The first of our two volunteering placements was with New Hope Children’s Home and Community School, Mombasa.

We flew from Nairobi to Mombasa which was extremely cheap – only $50 USD pp return flight. The train, which is apparently ‘an experience’ in itself costs $10 less and takes 8-12 hours (most likely 12 hrs apparently), and only leaves on certain days so it was a no-brainer to fly.

Having experienced a freezing European winter we were excited to go somewhere warmer and that somewhere was our 6th continent on our journey – AFRICA!

We flew directly (8hours) from London to Kenya‘s capital, Nairobi in Eastern Africa in mid January in between the short rainy season in November & the long rains in March through to May. We welcomed the 30 degree heat.

With only three days left on our trip with Leonie and Mike, we arrived in Amsterdam. This city had been completely covered in snow only a few weeks earlier but thankfully by the time we arrived this had melted and so we only had to contend with the cold.

Time was flying and our second last destination with Michael and Leonie was Bruges in Belgium. Within a few hours of arrival we all agreed that Bruges would have to be one of the prettiest European cities we had ever seen. We completely understand why it is listed as a World Heritage Site. It has a fascinating history (once the commercial capital of the world among other things). A visit here is well recommended.

After 3 beautiful snow filled days in Colmar, we moved onto Lille. We only had one full day to spend in this area and we had a full itinerary. We hired another car and drove from Lille to Frommelles and visited the sites where The Battle of Frommelles took place in WWI (19th – 20th July, 1916), where Mike’s Grandfather had fought.

We had all agreed that it would be rather special to celebrate the New Year in Paris and so we allocated 5 days to this fabulous city to do a little sight seeing but mainly just enjoy ‘living Paris’. We caught the train which took 3 hours.We had all been here a couple of times ...

From Interlaken we caught the train to Colmar in France. The train is a great way of travelling through these parts of Europe for that matter especially in the winter where the chances of flights being affected by snow is likely. We arrived by midday and very conveniently our hotel, Hotel Bristol was located just across the road from the station