Apologies!

I really feel the need to apologise. I'm going theough a bit of a rough time at the moment. This has resulted in me moving in with a friend for a little while, what this means is I am commuting to work, doing 7am until 7pm days and having no time to blog! In fact, I only have chance to write this because everyone has gone out and I'm off work poorly! I promise I'll be back up and running soon - don't get too imparient!

In the mean time I am posting on Instagram still so go follow me! I'm @srhptrc! 

xx

Seoul 2014

Don't worry everyone, normal beauty posts will resume shortly but first I wanted to do my final installment of my holiday. As I am sure you are aware (and probably sick of hearing about by now), I took a lovely trip to Japan earlier this year and while we were there we thought we'd pop over to South Korea! Right, I need to clear some things up - I really didn't want to go but fortunately I was persuaded into it and I'm so glad I was! What a beautiful place of the world.

I don't have a huge amount of photos but that doesn't mean I found it any less impressive than Japan, I was just so busy taking everything in that I forgot I needed to! Of all the places we went to on our trip, Seoul was my biggest surprise. We were here for around 5 days and it was simply amazing! The food was delicious.. (who doesn't love BBQ and fried chicken?!), the people were friendly and the places we visited while we were there was fantastic!

One of my favourite things we done while in Seoul was a hike up Bukhansan National Park. While I know it's not everyone's cup of tea it was just a fabulous day out in the great outdoors. It sounds stupid now but one of the things I did not expect was how hard it was... I know it's a mountain, duh! I can't remember which route we took but the most important thing is we made it to the top in a big, sweaty mess!

Seoul was very museum-y, which I really didn't mind, by this point in the holiday we were a little bit tired and it was nice doing the history part at the end after having such a hectic time in Japan. We managed to visit The War Memorial of Korea, which was obviously a must see! We saw the National Museum of Korea, and my personal favourite Seodaemun Prison History Hall. What I didn't like was that in the Prison museum they had the rooms where they tortured the prisoners and people were taking photos of their kids in them... Totally inappropriate!

You'll have to excuse the quality of the next photos as they were ones I took on my iPhone rather than my camera. Seoul is a beautiful place, as I'm sure other places in South Korea are too. I would definitely return but next time I would make sure I visited the DMZ which is the border of North and South Korea, it was very expensive this time round. I do feel like we done a huge amount while we in Seoul, which obviously is great, but we spent a lot of time in area such as Hongdae due to them being the most touristy. I think next time I go I will definitely make sure I try and see other places. Everything was so quirky and unusual, it was a totally different world to the Western world I'm used to. Definitely a holiday to remember.

I hope you've enjoyed these posts! Would you ever be tempted to go to South Korea, or have you been? If so, let me know as I would love to know what you thought! 

Kyoto 2014

Following my post on Japan next up is Kyoto! We spent two days in Kyoto which was more than enough to get a brief view of the city. After Tokyo, Kyoto had a lot to live up to and unfortunately it wasn't my favourite place, in fact it was my least favourite of the four places we visited. Like I said on my Tokyo post, me and Dave are not the biggest fans of temples and it seems like this is Kyoto's 'thing'.

This isn't going to be a very long post unlike my Tokyo one as I don't have much to say. Kyoto was a really pretty place and I'm really glad we went and if we went to Japan again I probably would make a quick pit stop there. It was a lot more traditional than Tokyo, the buildings were pretty and all in all it was a very tranquil place. I must admit, I could wander the streets for hours, they were fascinating, especially with all the Japanese people walking around in traditional dress! When we went to Kyoto there was a couple of things we wanted to do but the main one was go to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Basically it's a hill/mountain (it felt like a mountain!) around 250 meters above sea level which you have to hike up to get to the top. It was amazing and possibly one of the best things we done in Japan. We also wanted to go to the Monkey Park but after reading about it we decided against it - you couldn't touch the monkeys, feed the monkeys or even look the monkeys in the eyes.. Seemed a bit pointless really. 

It was really nice to see the other side of Japan - not the hustle and bustle but the peaceful, traditional side of it. I know this post hasn't had me ranting and raving but if you were thinking of going to Kyoto don't let me put you off.. It is an amazing place to see, it just wasn't quite Tokyo. 

Have you ever been to Kyoto? If so, what did you think? Let me know and keep your eyes peeled for the final installment in my Japan trip - Osaka! 

Tokyo 2014

As I am sure you all know by now, I recently went to Japan and South Korea. Although it's been two weeks since I arrived home I thought I would share my trip with you all, starting with Tokyo.

From the moment we stepped out of the Shinjuku metro I know I was going to love it! It was busy, bright and noisy! There was no pushing and shoving, instead people were politely stepping aside to let others past. I knew within about 15 minutes that Tokyo was going to be one of my favourite cities in the whole world. Everyone was so friendly, there were several times we got lost throughout the whole trip and people would go out of their way to help you.. A couple of times people stopped what they were doing to walk us where we needed to be which was 10 minutes in the wrong direction. 

We were in Tokyo for around 5 days which was enough to just get a little bit of a feel for the city, if I ever went again I would definitely go for a little longer to try and explore more. In the 5 days that we were there though we did quite a lot of the usual touristy things. We were staying in Shinjuku but we managed to go visit Shibuya, Ginza and Harajuku, amongst searching for the other treasures it had to offer. What I honestly loved about Tokyo was that one minute you were amongst the hustle and bustle of the city then if you walked five minutes in the opposite direction you found yourself in a tranquil temple or shrine. We weren't the biggest fan on the shrines or temples, in our opinion once you saw the best ones Tokyo had the offer the rest would just be disappointing, so we went to the Meji Shrine and Sensoji Temple which were more than enough for us. 

We wanted to go to Japan in order to experience the culture change, but also for the food! Being massive Japanese food fans this was something were very much looking forward to and we were not disappointed! One of my favourite places was Genki Sushi - a sushi conveyor belt restaurant where each plate is acount 120 Yen (59p approximately). You order it on one of the little computers suspended above your seat and it comes whizzing to you in a matter of seconds/minutes. 

I appreciate that this is a very long post but bare with me because I'm nearly done. A special mention does have to be made for the weirdness of Japan. Everywhere you were there was very strange stuff! Whether this was quirky people dressed up as their favourite anime characters or bizarre stuff for the home. A couple of my favourites were these two in the health sections - a face massage which resembles a Mexican wrestling mask and a cheek toning device which looked a little big suspicious. 

If you are thinking of going to Japan I could not recommend Tokyo enough! Everywhere you looked there was friendly people, vending machines and Hello Kitty! It was so clean and tidy, even down the little alleys we felt so safe and never saw any trouble anywhere. Keep your eyes peeled for a post on Kyoto, Osaka and Seoul, South Korea. 

 

Japan and South Korea 2014

Sorry I've been a little bit missing in action lately but these last few weeks I've been on holiday in Japan and South Korea. I am going to get round to putting a more details post up about the trip in the next few weeks but thought I would share a handful of photos with you for the time being. Call it a sneak peek or a taster if you like. Enjoy!