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We arrived nice and early for a very healthy breakfast of chocolate tasting at De Villiers Chocolate where we tried ten different variations from intense dark chocolate to milk and white chocolate with different flavour combinations. If all the tastings don’t fill you up (or if you end up eating so much chocolate that you’re in desperate need for something savoury) there are several child friendly restaurants to enjoy from a great breakfast at Barley & Biltong to pizza and wine with a view at La Grapperia, plus an awesome new playground area with a sandpit, swings, climbing frame, and giant tractors for the kids to enjoy themselves on. We didn’t visit here for the wine (shock horror I know) but actually to stay in the beautiful Vredenheim Guesthouse which sits along a grassy tree lined lane inside the wine farm. A few other wine estates that I’ve been told are extremely child friendly but we unfortunately didn’t get time to visit are Warwick for its great picnics on the lawn, Fairview where you can pet the goats and taste the goat’s cheese, as well as Under Oaks and Lanzerac which both have great jungle gyms.

Our trip to Cape Verde was a year ago now so I thought it was about time I finally wrote about it seeing as it’s one of the places I get asked about most often. A lot of people have either never heard of this small collection of islands dotted just off the coast of West Africa or they don’t know much about the destination

That’s 4 new countries for me and 6 new countries for Evie – making Evie’s total number of countries visited 13 before she’s even 2 years old. Spending my birthday on the beach in Cape Verde with my family, drinking very strong piña coladas and getting thoroughly excited about finding a beach swing to chill on while sipping on said piña coladas ♥  Going on my first solo trip with Evie to Germany and Austria and, even though it was tiring not having a single minute’s break or help for 12 whole days, realising that I can totally do this solo parent travel thing ♥  Visiting the magical Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria after years of dreaming of seeing the fairytale castle ♥  Seeing Evie start to walk (and then doing the bitter sweet mum thing by cheering and clapping at how well she’s doing and then bursting into tears because she’s growing so fast) and watching her huge personality blossoming ♥ As for 2019, I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions. The rest of the year is as yet unplanned but a few other things I’d like to do are to take my grandparents to Jersey, attempt to find a couple of spare hours a week for some me time without the overwhelming mum guilt that comes with it (any other parent managed to do this? ? ), get back into yoga, visit the lavender and tulip fields in spring, take a trip back to Gibraltar, and visit a new European destination for the Christmas markets in December.

Because who can really resist singing joyful Christmas tunes at the top of their voice or having a merry smile on their face in the run up to Christmas Day? But when we visited Germany’s most picturesque fairytale town, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, back in May there really was nothing I could do to stop the festive cheer when one of the town’s main tourist attractions is the Christmas Museum. Giant Christmas trees towered over us, twinkling stars dotted the ceiling, snow covered the ground and the rooftops, and we wandered around dancing along to merry Christmas tunes. the best day trips to take from MunichIt’s no surprise that the place is packed with tourists, visiting on day trips from other parts of Germany (I wrote about this being one of the best day trips to take from Munich as it’s only a couple of hours away).