Now if you don’t know already, I love travelling. I love long trips, short trips, backpacking and more recently a bit more lux trips. I’ve spent a grand total of three years outside of Australia either travelling around or living overseas. And after travelling through 33 countries it’s hard to narrow the list down to my top three, but here we go:

3. Greece

No wonder the Greek gods came from here! This place is absolutely paradise!
I was living my best life in Greece, the best week in my whole travel career was here, for sure. And to top it all off, this is where I met my boyfriend!
I was in Greece for a month and spent most of my time in Crete, in Chania, Plakias and Réthimon, Paleochora and then I island hopped to Santorini and Paros before arriving in Athens.
I went swimming in the ocean every single day that I was on a Greek island, and was constantly munching on beautiful fresh fruits! There is so much gorgeous scenery, incredible history, beautiful nature and plenty of amazing hidden & secret spots to discover.

And the islands hold THE cutest towns of all time, I loved walking the cobbled streets, exploring what they had to offer before finding a beautiful beach to relax at -and wow, some of the beaches here are prettyyy spesh! The colour of the ocean is just something else.
-And one of my local beaches growing up was just named the number one beach in Australia, so it’s fair to say my standards for beaches are pretty high.

For me, Greece definitely lived up to the hype.

2. Scotland

Oh Scotland, there’s such an undeniable force pulling me towards this country. Maybe it’s my Scottish roots? I don’t know, but bets are if you’ve got a love for Scotland it will stay with you for life.

I was here for nearly two months, travelling around and helping to set up a wellness retreat in the beautiful countryside. This was such an amazing time as I lived in a 200 year old stone mansion, and felt like a princess because I had so much space (especially after travelling backpacker-style through South East Asia). I went for long walks and foraged for herbs and edible weeds every day and met some beautiful friends.

I spent a fair bit of time in Edinburgh too, and it easily became my favourite UK city. I had a friend living in Glasgow so I spent some time around there as well. I also visited Loch Lomond, Isle of Skye (amazing!), Fairy Glen, Oban, Inverness, Perth and a few other special places -one with a beach lake in the forest! I even went swimming in the famous Loch Ness, but the water was absolutely freezing!
When choosing where to move to with my UK working visa, Scotland was very high on the list but only got beaten because it’s just so damn cold in winter and I don’t think the coastal Aussie in me could handle it.

1. And in first position, Japan.

How could I go past kawaii-land? Japan is just out of this world, I think it’s the most different place I’ve ever been to. Such a contrast between futuristic & high tech and old & traditional.

But my favourite part? Everything is SO kawaii and cute! And when I say everything, I mean even the road barriers were hello kitty themed!
We brought this cute felt strawberry hat with us and whoever wore it was treated almost like a celebrity, people would regularly stop us in the street to tell us how cute we were. Whenever I needed a bit of an ego boost, “Hey it’s my turn to wear the strawberry hat!”

I loved the supermarkets, all the cute stationary shops, the incredible nature, the food -matcha everything and how polite, kind and helpful everyone is.
We stayed in a variety of places, in the old district of Tokyo, Kyoto, Kamikochi, Matsumoto and a few other places. But my favourite bit was when we couch surfed with a family and stayed with them in their house, they were so so welcoming and the mum even made us packed lunches for the day when we went out to explore! And then they thanked US for coming to stay with them, what?!

And one more thing, RAMEN! Ramen is by far my favourite food now but I didn’t even really know about it before I went to Japan. I loved how all the ramen shops were so small and intimate, with only a few bar stools per shop and the chef was in the middle so everyone could watch.
The only downside was that fruit there is SO expensive, like crazy expensive. I’m not sure what’s going on with that.. Maybe I was just missing something?

All in all, I 100% recommend visiting Japan, I cannot wait to go back!

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