Another academic year over… I was so focused on exams that I didn’t have time to digest the fact that my penultimate year of university was ending! To be honest, I’m not too sure how I feel about it yet. The past 9 months have dragged painfully slowly whilst flying by at the speed of light, I know, doesn’t really make much sense but I know what I mean! It feels like just yesterday that I was landing in Heathrow airport after 6 weeks in Thailand with my best friend.

This is the last Summer I have before I’m expected to ‘grow up’, I say grow up with air quotes because I really can’t see that happening in the next year. I have a long 5 months before I have to get back on the uni grind, dissertations and whatnot so I plan on making the absolute most of this Summer. Whilst I say a long 5 months, I’m surprised at how fast I’ve managed to fill a lot of that time up. We’ll start from May, as my last exam was on the 21st and that is technically when my Summer started. Unfortunately, as soon as I was out of that exam room I was ready to start gallivanting around the country so I have been slacking on the blog side of things recently but I’m sure you can forgive me for being a little slow! Without further ado, here are my summer plans!

May 20th – Charlie’s 22nd Birthday

Unfortunately Charlie’s birthday was literally in the middle of my two exams. I had one exam on the 19th and my last on the 21st, which left very little room for major celebrations because I spent most of the day trying to remember quotes through singing them to the tune of Taylor Swift’s ‘You Belong With Me’. We did manage to have a nice dinner at Jamie’s Italian in Bristol where we very narrowly avoided a parking ticket.

May 21st – LAST EXAM
No explanation needed.

May 23rd- London

Norwich is a solid 5 hour journey away from where I live so we decided we would need to stop off midway to have a break. And where’s better than London? As it happened, there was a custom motorbike show in the tobacco docks called The Bike Shed that Charlie was desperate to go to as he is partway through customising his own bike. After a couple of hours perusing motorbikes in a very crowded space we headed to London Bridge for drink in a German bar with Charlie’s old university room mate.

May 24th – Radio 1’s Big Weekend 

HEY TAY! Pretty much the only reason I was up at 7.30 to get tickets for Radio 1’s Big Weekend was because I knew Taylor Swift was going to be playing. I have been following Taylor Swift ever since I was 15 and this is the first opportunity I have had to see her live and FOR FREE!!! I can safely assure you that she was exceeded all expectations, even Charlie has been converted to a Swifty fan. Along with Taylor, we were joined by Olly Murs, Clean Bandit, Catfish and Bottlemen, Rita Ora, Imagine Dragons, George Ezra and the Foo Fighters. The amazing line up made the dreary weather bearable which eventually cleared up as George Ezra came on stage.

May 26th-27th – Wales

Blog post to come…

June 12th- London
On June 12th I am heading up to London to be reunited with my amazing friend Holly Beale, I have talked about her in a previous post but that was right at the beginning of my blogging days and yeah… let’s not go there. It’s been around a year and a half since I last saw Holly so safe to say I’m pretty excited! We have no plans as of yet except that we’ll be drinking a lot of prosecco. Maybe a rollerblade in Hyde Park? Maybe a trip up to the sky garden? Who knows.

June 26th- 21st BIRTHDAY
Officially an adult in the USA! It will be a special day as even my Dad is missing the beginning of Glastonbury to be there. So far we’ve planned brunch at the Glassboat so Dad can shoot off to see The Foo Fighters and we haven’t got much else planned as of yet. But hopefully the next day we’ll be driving to……….

June 27th- Thorpe Park
A pretty epic birthday day out if you ask me… Hopefully it’ll be a joint birthday with one of my favourite gals from work and my little sister.

I’ve kinda bunged the rest of Summer into July as I’m going to write about each place in separate blog posts!

July 1st- Italy
Our first family holiday since 2011! I have never been to Italy before so I’m really excited! We will be spending a week in Tuscany and I’ll hopefully be reuniting with a friend from Camp in Florence! I leave for India almost straight after we come home so it’s a pretty awesome way to say bye to the family for 2 months!

July 13th- Land in New Delhi, India

We fly on the 12th and land on the 13th! I can’t say I’m super hyped for our ridiculously long journey, but I am excited to be travelling again! Charlie and I have almost sussed a route so I will be updating you on our trip details pretty soon!

August 3rd- Fly to Bali

I AM SO EXCITED TO BE COMING BACK TO BALI! Unfortunately we overstay our visa by 2 days so we may need to escape to another Indonesian destination. Flores, maybe? Recommendations are so welcome!

September 3rd- Fly from Bali to India
The last stretch before we head home! We wanted to get the cheapest flights possible and that meant that we had to return to India a week before our flight. To be honest, I’m pretty happy about that because we land in Kolkata, so we’ll have to journey our way back across to Delhi anyway. I hate being stressed, worried and rushed about making our flight home so it’s nice that we have all this extra time!

September 8th- Fly Home
This seems so long away but I know I’ll be excited to be heading home after travelling continuously for two months. Plus I need time to pack up all my belongings before I move back to Bath for my FINAL YEAR OF UNIVERSITY ahhhhh. Can you believe that this time next year I’ll be graduating?! Seems pretty crazy to me.And those are my plans so far. Like I said, I’ve been so taken aback with exams that I’ve barely had time to think about travelling but we almost have a route for India and I’m pretty sure we’ll start booking things soon so keep an eye out for the posts to follow.

Sending Summer vibes your way,

S x