More travel plans for 2018 coming up

Hi guys, just a quick notification to let you know that I am off to Spain in about 24 hours - I'll be visiting the Sierra Nevada mountains again, one of the most beautiful parts of Spain where the highest mountains on mainland Spain are. Yes it is a part of Spain that I have visited many times before but I have a good friend there whom I am staying with, so this holiday is as much to catch up with him rather than trying to explore somewhere brand new. It is about -13 there at the moment and there's so much snow: the weather forecast is for it to stay way below zero for the entire period I will be there, so the skiing will be great. Virtually all of the resort is open and conditions are excellent - I am also skiing there mid-week and so the place will be relatively quiet too. It is kinda nice to have a stress-free holiday, where my local friend will take care of me because Australia and New Zealand was actually fairly stressful given the amount of crap I had with flights being cancelled and having to change my plans at the last minute - oh please, no, not the kind of stress you need on holiday!

In mid February, I am off to Northern Finland, to the town of Oulu where it is currently - 14. Oh yeah, I certainly live up to my nickname El Pinguino (the penguin, in Spanish) because of my love of sub-zero weather and how I am always going on holiday in such cold places. I have hosted my Finnish friend Kai in London and Singapore before, so I did ask him if I could join him on a visit to his hometown of Oulu in the middle of winter, when it would be especially cold. Oulu will be the most northerly city I would have ever visited, for it is even further north than Reykjavik in Iceland where I visited in 2009. It is a smallish city with about 200,000 inhabitants and I will be accompanying Kai on his visit to his mother where we will be staying. The flights were expensive - ouch. My flights to Malaga in Spain only costed me £40 return, but to get to Oulu, I have to fly via Helsinki and it came up to £162 return - but oh well, I have always wanted to visited northern Scandinavia in the dead of winter to experience a proper winter and I am hoping to be able to see the Northern Lights. It is about hovering around 4 to 5 degrees in London these days, grey, rainy but still too warm for snow - meh. Do make sure you follow me on Instagram where I will be posting loads of pictures of me on my travels. Many thanks for reading.