Getaway – Maldo Travels https://www.maldotravels.com Travel - Learn - Share Mon, 25 Jul 2022 01:31:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 https://www.maldotravels.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Favicon-Black.png Getaway – Maldo Travels https://www.maldotravels.com 32 32 San Andres – Caribbean Paradise https://www.maldotravels.com/south-america/san-andres-caribbean-paradise/ https://www.maldotravels.com/south-america/san-andres-caribbean-paradise/#respond Sun, 18 Apr 2021 20:00:00 +0000 http://54.211.235.180/?p=28184
 

At the departure airport, everyone has to purchase a Tourist Card which costs 25 USD1 and can be paid in USD or COP2. you must make sure to keep the Tourist Card throughout your stay and present it at the San Andres customs when leaving the island. We arrived at the San Andres Airport at around 4 PM. The airport is quite small so we got through customs quickly. Upon exiting the airport, several taxis are waiting to pick up passengers. Our hotel was located in San Luis on the east side of the island which was a little far away from Centro where the main strip is. We decided to first walk to the main strip to see if we could get a tour for the following day.

The main strip is a short 20-minute walk from the airport, and you can first walk to the beach and walk alongside the sea which is a beautiful walk. Once we got to the main strip, we found a couple of tour agencies and bought an Islands Tour for the next day. We then took a taxi to our hotel which cost us 25,000 COP. We stayed at San Luis Place by Dorado which had a private beach. A perk of the hotel we stayed at is that we also had access to the private beaches and facilities of the other hotels By Dorado. That evening we headed to one of them in the San Luis area Hotel Reina del Mar which had a bar and restaurant.

We spent a week in San Andres which is great for both relaxing and going on tours to explore the island. Many of the hotels have private beaches and we found time every day to chill at the private beaches and pools of the hotels By Dorado. There are also lots of tours and activities available and we headed out on the Islands Tour, a Scuba Diving Experience, a Semi-Submarine tour, rented a golf cart to tour the island, and went to a Boat Party. Overall, it’s a great island destination to experience Caribbean beaches with lots of activities.

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From London, it’s a short 1 hour 30 minute flight to get to Edinburgh making it perfect for a weekend getaway. We left on an early Saturday morning getting to Edinburgh at 9.30 AM. We rented a car to get around the city and after dropping off our bags at the hotel, we headed out to the National Wallace Monument. It was an hour’s drive away from Edinburgh to the site which is near the city of Stirling. Entrance tickets were 10.75 GBP3 and you can find more info on the site here. Once you’ve paid for your ticket, there’s a bus service included which takes you up the hill to the monument. You can wait for the bus or hike up the hill which took us about 15 minutes. At the monument, you can then walk up the stairs in the tower to top for panoramic views of Stirling. Inside the tower, there’s a museum laid out on several floors. These make for good checkpoints to explore the museum on the way to the top. The museum goes over William Wallace’s and Scotland’s history. Once you reach the top, it gets very windy so make sure you take warm clothing. After taking some pictures, we headed back down and took the bus back down to the entrance.

By now it was around 1.30 PM so we headed back to the capital to visit Edinburgh Castle while we still had some sunlight. Finding free parking in the city can be a little tricky but we found a paid car park near the castle. We got to the castle ticket office at around 3 PM. Tickets cost 19.50 GBP but we got them for half price with our English Heritage membership. A free guided tour is included or you can hire an audio guide for 3.50 GBP. We had about 1 hour 30 minutes to explore the castle which is full of history. There are also some great viewpoints from the towers and castle walls. It was dark by the time we finished touring the castle when the site was closing at 5 PM. We then went for a walk around the city and came across a winter Christmas market which was set up in the Princess Street Gardens. There were several rides and the city is nicely lit up with Christmas lights. After getting some dinner, we then headed back to the hotel to get some sleep for an early morning the next day.

On Sunday, we left at 7.30 AM for Loch Ness, stopping for breakfast at Inverness at 10.30 AM. It’s then a quick 15-minute drive to the start of Loch Ness. Along the highway, there are several viewpoints with parking spots to get some pictures of the lake. We continued along the lakeside highway until we reached Urquhart Castle. This is roughly the halfway point of the lake so we decided to visit the lakeside castle. Tickets cost 12 GBP and there’s no English Heritage discount here. There’s also a free guided tour included with the ticket which leaves from the mound at the end of the castle. We walked around the castle ruins before the tour started at 1.30 PM. On the tour, the guide takes you through the site going over the history and the changing appearance of the castle through time. The tour takes about 30 minutes and ends in the keep. There’s also a pier at the site for boat tours that stop here. We were done with our visit at around 2.30 PM and started to head back to Edinburgh. When we got back, we went for another quick walk around the city to get some dinner. It was then an early night to be up to get our early morning flight back to London the next day.

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