The pandemic has allowed me to explore places closer to home. It's easy to forget that I live in a city that ranks the second most popular in the world for international visitors and so I've spent this spring and summer walking around and exploring new parts of the city.

From my travels around the world, I've realised that London is a relatively 'green' city and that's largely thanks to the eight Royal Parks of London, as well as some of the non-royal ones (a Royal Park is one originally owned by the monarchy and is now preserved as an open access public park). In this article I review each park in order of size, from smallest to largest - with a ranking of my favourites at the end.

Segregation, provocative marches and murals, relative deprivation and not a lot of brown people. You'd think I would have hated my time in Belfast, but I didn't. It's probably the most interesting city in the UK - and yes that includes London. Not for the landmarks it has, or the things you can do - but to study and understand the effects of two groups of people who live in close proximity but who couldn't be more different in their world views. You can read my in depth review of Belfast here, but below are the 5 things I loved about Belfast. 

(Disclaimer: I took the photo above from the Emirates Cable cars - not from the climb)

​I've been to the O2 a few times, but I've never managed to experience Up at the O2 - an opportunity to climb the famous dome and see the London skyline from a different perspective. 

So when my friend decided to take me along for a climb, I was looking forward to ticking off something from my London list..

When I make a list of my favourite cities in the world, you can bet that Edinburgh will feature somewhere on it. An often overlooked destination in the UK, Edinburgh has history, culture, creative energy and it's the perfect size to explore in a short amount of time. Perhaps best of all, it's one of the most beautiful cities that I have had the privilege of visiting, thanks to its almost uniform Georgian architecture. You can read detailed notes about my visit to the Scottish capital here, but here are the 5 things I most loved about Edinburgh.