JANUARY 

ROVANIEMI, FINLAND

I always say this, but I really love winter trips. I love going to countries where I can enjoy the bitter cold winter weather but with magical snowy landscape scenery. And Alhamdulillah, it was no exception this year, we had the rezeki to enjoy Finland's snowy scenes.

Of course, our initial plan was to observe the aurora (third attempt already!) but again - no luck. Read about our experience here. But we did enjoy some husky-sledding experience though, which has been on my bucket list for the longest time, and it was a fantastic experience! Just exactly how amazing I imagined it would be, actually, better! 

APRIL

ORVIETO, ITALY

I have to say, and I've been to quite a few countries, I think Italy tops it on being one of my favourite countries that I have visited. I was in Orvieto for a conference and we were there for 3 days and 2 nights. I honestly fell in love with Italy because of Orvieto right here. It was a beautiful hilltop town, very peaceful with stunning landscape around it. We enjoyed walking through the town and taking photos at random beautiful corners and had delicious Italian pizza and gelatos every now and then (read my post about it here).

ROME, ITALY

We were supposed to go on a trip to Morocco. We had already booked out flights and accommodation for the end of April, but had to cancel due to some PhD work and time limitation issues. We were really frustrated as I had planned all the where-to-gos and what-to-dos in Morocco and camel-riding in the Sahara has been in my bucket list for a longggg time. Hopefully, there will be rezeki for us to visit Morocco in the future. :)

MAY

SOUTH ENGLAND (SEVEN SISTERS COUNTRY PARK, BRIGHTON, EAST SUSSEX, DORSET)

My older sister and her family came to visit us from Malaysia so we took the opportunity for a road trip down south. I had always wanted to go to a few places in the South of England especially the Seven Sisters Country Park and visit Brighton town. With this opportunity, we managed to witnessed the beautiful coastal English landscape that I can only imagine and had only seen on the internet and in books, and yet, here we are, with that exact landscape in the background. Alhamdulillah... :)



AUGUST

HITCHIN LAVENDER AND SUNFLOWER FARM

Lavender farm had been the talk of the town recently, (well at least among my friends). So we had to jump into the bandwagon and join in the hype. It was a really nice experience - we get to enjoy the scent of lavender and had lavender flavoured ice cream and had some fun getting lost in the tall sunflowers. Read more about it here. 

SEPTEMBER

LUND, SWEDEN

I never planned to visit Sweden nor Denmark, but there was a landscape conference that I wanted to attend because one of the speakers was my lecturer at the University of Sheffield (who also encouraged us to go) and many other great speakers in our field. So I thought we'd take this opportunity to attend the conference while also sight-seeing Lund. Lund is a very small town (I'd never even heard of it before this conference), so there really wasn't much to see. However, I was amazed and very impressed at how 'green' and sustainable it was; a lot of the streets and corners were filled with green walls. We also enjoyed a peaceful walk around a pretty Scandinavian neighbourhood. Read more about what we did in Lund here.

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

To get to Lund, it was easier and closer to land in Copenhagen Airport. So of course, we had to visit the famous Nyhavn Harbour, which was stunningly beautiful and colourful, and straight away lifts up your mood while walking along the waterfront - totally photos-worthy! Check them out here. But it was very unfortunate that we didn't get to go many places in Copenhagen as I'm sure it has a lot to offer, and I would love to observe more of the Danish culture, as they are known to be the happiest people in the world.