How to do the London NYE fireworks, by a newly qualified expert

When I told my friends that his year I was going to watch the London New Year’s Eve fireworks not from the safety and the comfort of my sofa but from the banks of the river Thames, they were concerned for my sanity.

One friend even sent me a compelling TikTok reel from a previous year’s disgruntled NYE reveller, in which he called the experience a fing sht, never to be repeated.

To be fair to him, he paid £45 for his ticket, so he was possibly justified in his discontent with a spot behind a row of portaloos behind the London Eye.

Not easily discouraged, and reluctant to change plans once we’ve made them, we went anyway.

It was great!

We did not buy tickets.

We did not camp out by the river from early afternoon.

We did not heed the ubiquitous online advice to leave the car at home.

We drove right into the eye of the storm, and parked a few minutes’ walk from Lambeth Bridge. As I am still buzzing from the night before, I am happy to share my parking slot here, even though one of you is now probably going to take it from me next year. Whitgift Street, free weekday parking from 6.30pm, yards from the NYE road closures.

We got there at 10pm. We walked up to the river and we inititially made a mistake of turning towards the London Eye. We soon noticed that everybody else was heading in the opposite direction, so we turned round and followed the crowd. We walked briskly back towards Lambeth Bridge, but we missed our chance to get on it by a few minutes. The police tannoy announced that the Bridge was now closed and would not reopen before midnight.

We kept walking away from the London Eye, with a new plan to get onto Vauxhall Bridge, which was still open.

In the end we abandoned that idea and settled on a spot half way between the two bridges. It was perfect.
We had less than an hour to wait now, and we spent it chatting, laughing, glancing at the river, checking phones and watches.

From where we stood, the fireworks did not disappoint. Since we had a sideway view of the London Eye, we missed the Wicked 2 product placement entirely, so we had no reason to be ‘outraged’ by it, unlike, allegedly, thousands of ticket-holders watching it face on from the North side of the river.

After the last blasts of the display went down in smoke, an unexpected exhilarating event broke up next to us, as small crowds of Asian men performed energetic dances to music.

The six of us provided momentary entertainment to a nearby group of tourists too, when we linked hands and sang auld lang syne at the top of our voices.

After that it was time to head home and that was the only time we experienced the tiniest teeny little glitch in our otherwise perfect night. We got stuck in back roads traffic for a very long time, which meant that the 6.5 mile journey home took nearly two hours. But we are not here to sweat the small stuff.
We got home at 2.40am and ended the night with Morley’s chicken and chips.

Happy New 2026 to all my Friends and Family!

Ithaca

“Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, left his home many years ago and has not returned. This is his story.”

This is the opening line of my debut book, The Odyssey, which I wrote at the age of 7.

It was inspired by the TV series of the same title, which was showing in Poland at the time. I loved the storyline, and started writing long before the brave Trojan War hero returned to the shores of his kingdom.

I felt I was onto something special, and hoped that nobody else would have the same idea and that I would be the only one who put it onto paper. When, two months later my parents told me that some guy called Homer had beaten me to it 28 centuries before, I sulked for a week.

Amelia and I stayed in Kefalonia for ten days earlier this month. Ithaca is a stone’s throw from Kefalonia, 45 minutes by ferry to be precise, so we knew it had to be done. We booked ourselves on a day trip to the tiny island and it was lovely.

Ithaca has no tourist resorts or sandy beaches to speak of, but it still attracts large number of visitors, mainly day-trippers like us, brought here on the strong winds of cultural, literary and historical snobbery.

Ithaca’s entire PR effort is geared towards Odysseus and Homer. The statues are everywhere. The port of Sami, where ferries to Ithaca depart from, features Odysseus Theme Park.

Our guide, Vanna, spoke pretty much non-stop. If I had a Euro for each time she described something as ‘gorgeous’, I could have probably paid for the pork souvlaki and Greek salad lunch for everybody on the coach. To be fair to Vanna, Ithaca is gorgeous.

Our first stop was Vathy, the island’s capital. Amelia and I took a long walk around the bay, snapping happy as we went.

After that, it was a hairpin bend ascent to the Kathara Monastery, which offered us, yes, you guessed it, gorgeous views of the coastline.

Next stop was Kioni, for an unrushed lunch break. Kioni, like every other village in Ithaca, was a quaint little place, busy with sailboats coming and going at a steady pace.

Our final stop was Stavros, hailed as the Odysseus birthplace, but I had a strong suspicion we stopped there mainly so that Vanna was able to earn her commission from a local cafe. She herded us inside and gently nudged us towards the ‘local delicacy’, a rice and honey sweet called Rovani. It was an okay tasting rice pudding, which Amelia polished off happily.

Athens

This post is based on my trip to Athens in September 2023. I wrote it, saved it in the drafts folder and promptly forgot it. Publishing now, because I think it can be quite useful for any good people debating whether to check out Athens or head straight to the islands.

“Athens is not a graceful city. It looks terrible from just about every approach, its air pollution is dire, and its traffic and postwar architecture are a disaster.”

Greece, The Rough Guide

Athens has such bad rep among travel books writers, it sounds almost personal. Having visited Athens earlier this month, I would like to say that the reputation is unfair and undeserved.

My daughter Amelia and I spent three days in Athens.

First half day was dutifully taken up by the Acropolis.

September is meant to be the month when the tourist traffic begins to calm down, but it was still pretty heaving on the uphill paths.

Despite every website telling us to, we did not pre-book, and spent about half an hour queuing up for the Acropolis tickets. There was one, ONE digital ticket machine available.

Tip: Acropolis, as well as every other piece of antiquity in Athens, is free of charge for under-25 EU citizens, the photo on the phone is sufficient to prove your European provenance.

The Acropolis hill was everything we were hoping for. It was beautiful, humbling, moving, fascinating, amazing, ancient, awe-inspiring, thought provoking and full of cats.

When we got our fill of the Parthenon, Theatre of Dionysus, and the rest of it, we walked down to the Roman Agora, followed by the Ancient Agora, where we feasted our eyes on the Temple of Hephaestus, the Stoa of Attalos, and more cats. It was so beautiful and peaceful, we stayed until closing time.

The Acropolis done, we could relax and spent the next day walking around the city. We set off from our accommodation, Kolonaki Nest (a masterpiece of Booking.com creative photography, but it served the purpose of giving us a bed in Athens), stopped for breakfast at Syntagma Square, and headed towards Panathenaic Stadium, followed by the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and ended up near the Acropolis again, loitered around tourist shops and restaurants in Plaka and took the Metro back to Syntagma, and took the funicular to the top of Lycabettus Hill (Lykavitos) for the most stunning views of Athens and beyond. Highly recommended, if a little bit out of the way.

After Lycabettus, we went back to Syntagma Square, which was a great find. It is the main square in Athens, the Greek Parliament building stands to the side of it, and it also turns into the roadman capital of Athens by night.

In the true Heasley sightseeing style, we clocked up well over 25,000 steps that day. We would have done even more, but were frequently slowed down by cats. Amelia is physically incapable of walking past a cat without stopping to stroke them, and take several carefully composed photos of them. And there are a lot of cats in Athens.

The third and last day in Athens, we took a bus to Cape Sounion and the dramatically placed Temple of Poseidon, which was just under two hours drive along the coast. We spent the whole day hanging about Cape Sounion, waiting for the sunset, when Amelia took hundreds of photos, and we took the last bus back to Athens.

Champagne sunset trips to Cape Sounion are being sold to cruise ship loads of Americans daily, and, unbelievable as it sounds, they really do sip the bubbly from elegant champagne flutes, perched on the rocks around the temple, by their thousands.

And finally.

Do not listen to disparaging guidebook opinions, and go to Athens! It is a great place to spend a few days. Amelia and I had the best time there.

The only word of advice, you would be wise to skip the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The best thing about it is its name. Other than that, it’s just two tall columns and a lot of scaffolding, on the side of a football stadium size load of burnt grass and rubble. Still, you will probably ignore my advice and head to the Temple of Zeus on your second day in Athens, like we did, because he is Zeus, the big guy.

Taghazout Last Day. Final bits and bobs.

Time flows differently here. The practice of looking at your watch every few minutes is virtually unknown. If you only have half an hour for a coffee, or an hour for a tagine, you might run out of time in some Taghazout seafront restaurants.

Cats are everywhere. On the beach, on the chair next to you in a cafe, under your table. There are thousands of them and new ones are born all the time. Not all of them are in the best of health, some of them look like they’ve been in wars.

Taghazout is a cash only village. Leave your cards safely locked away in your room with your passport.

Everything is cheap, but because it’s so cheap, it’s only too easy to lose track of how much you spend a day on all these cheap things.

When you are buying souvenirs, and you hear that something costs 200 dirhams, please say 150 or go as low as you dare. Mild haggling is expected as part of every transaction with street sellers. You will know when you’ve gone too low, because they will stop smiling and will shake their heads firmly. I was mindful not to go too low in Taghzaout. I did that years ago in Egypt, the seller walked away, and as he did, he shouted at me ‘you no good woman!’. I felt ashamed and very small. Since then, I have probably overpaid for many bracelets and fridge magnets, just to make sure I did not offend a North African market trader again.

Be careful who and what you photograph. Do not try to take sneaky snaps of old men in their hooded jalebi robes. The ones who look most Instagram worthy already know it and they do not wish to feature in your reel. When they spot what you are doing, they will shake their walking sticks at you in a menacing way, and will give you a dirty look and you will feel ashamed of yourself, as you should.

Dress code. To state the obvious, Morocco is a Muslim country. You will be more comfortable wearing loose modest clothing to blend in and to show respect for the culture. Leave sexy outifts for Magaluf or somewhere they will be appreciated. Tshirts and 3/4 trousers or long skirts rather than short shorts and revealing vests in town. Beachwear on the beach only.

Taghazout Day 4. Surf life.

I am staying at Onda Surf hostel. Every place in Taghazout seems to be a surf hostel.

If you don’t surf, don’t do yoga, don’t sketch or at the very least are not half way through writing a book, why are you even here?

Onda Surf offers the perfect view of the sea and a long stretch of the Sable D’Or beach. Additionally, I was tricked by booking.com clever photography of Onda’s dreamy balcony into thinking this was going to be my private balcony. It is not. It’s a communal rooftop, a focal point of every surf hostel in Taghazout. Rooftop is where breakfast is served, from 9am to 10.30. Rooftop is where guests bring their sketchbooks, their George Orwells, and their surf stories. It’s where they mingle. It’s where I watch them and where I write.

It’s also where I am most acutely aware of my age, because no matter how earnestly my son tries to convince me otherwise, hostels are ruthlessly agist, even if they do not mean to be. They make me feel I had missed the vibe by 25 years, give or take a few.

In the evenings, I loiter on the rooftop anyway. I come up every night after dinner to make my Lipton Yellow Label.

I align my tea time with the communal dinner time, which gives me a chance to eavesdrop shamelessly whilst my tea mug gives me a reason to be here and the feeling that I belong on the rooftop too. Almost.

The other guests are all surfers, they come from all over Europe. They have strong bodies, piercings, tattoos, and flawless skin. A lot of them smoke, which was a surprise. They wear cool baggy clothes and are all so bloody young. Quite a few of them are here on solo adventures, with no definite end date. They are living their best lives, and they use the rooftop dinner time to swap stories of how their day went.

They are friendly to me, and we have had some perfunctory chats, but I feel acutely out of place. Not badly enough to give up my rooftop tea time, but pretty awkward.

Taghazout beach is a beginner surfer’s paradise. Surfboards are everywhere, and surfers get in your way, cut in front of you along narrow winding streets of Taghzaout, akin to cyclists in London.

They give themselves the right of way, and if you know what’s good for you, you do not argue with a surfboard.

Today I went to Anchor Point, some 20 minutes walk out of town in the opposite direction to the vast long beach on one end of it. Do not ever ask me for directions.

I was told Anchor Point was where more experienced surfers strutted their rubber-clad stuff, so I thought I’d check it out.

I perched myself on a comfy rock, and stared at the sea littered with black figures gyrating acrobatically in gusts of wind. It took me two hours to realise that my brain had not registered a single full surf run. I totally zoned out and could not zone back in.

I got up and walked back to the village. It was time for another cappuccino.

Taghazout has a vegan cafe, called Red Clay. I made a mistake and asked for normal milk with my cappuccino, but normal turned out to be oats milk at the Red Clay.

Put that in your pipe, Costa.

Taghazout, Morocco Day 2

Today’s undisputed highlight goes to watching a cow’s head getting de-brained, if that’s the correct term for it.

As I set off on my first solo stroll around Taghazout, a half-skinned cow’s head, ears still on, caught my attention. I subtly edged closer to where the head sat on butcher’s block, and casually hovered and lingered, as the young man made a hole in the cow’s forehead with a few swift hacks of an axe. He then removed the brain, perfectly intact, and scooped it into his hand. Glued to the spot by this sight, I stared at the neat folds of the perfectly spherical brain until the butcher started throwing me dirty, lady you ok? sideway glances.

Other things happened too.

On my first full day in Morocco, I woke up to the sound of a rooster fine tuning his vocal cords, followed by a call to prayer, followed by motorbikes revving up all around.

My solo travelling experience was put to the first real test this morning. Breakfast is served on the rooftop from 9.00 till 10.30. I was there at a stroke of nine and proceeded to spend the next few awkward minutes fidgeting around the open kitchen area, not sure what to do. I was saved by a softly spoken young woman, who greeted me and asked me if I wanted tea or coffee with my breakfast. Structure and order thus restored, I could sit down and eat.

After breakfast, the day sort of whizzed by punctuated by a series of short activities. I walked up and down Taghazout Sable D’Or beach twice, got my feet wet in the cold sea, took photos of camels, cats and dogs, had coffee, walked a bit more, had tagine lunch with my son, had another coffee and a banana milkshake, eyed up some possible gifts trinkets, watched my son surf, watched the sunset, had dinner, had an after dinner pancake by the mosque, said goodnight to my son and went onto the rooftop of my hostel. As I climbed up, I got suddenly struck by a genius idea that since they were serving dinner, I could ask them for a cup of tea. They were very happy to serve me tea, as long as I was happy with Moroccan mint tea. I was not. I climbed five floors down, went to the shop next door to my hostel, and without holding out much hope I asked if they had tea. Moroccan tea? No, not Moroccan. This one? The shopkeeper pointed out to a box of Lipton Yellow Label. Happiness is a box of Lipton Yellow Label in Taghazout! Climbed the five floors to the rooftop in seconds, fine, a minute per floor, and asked the young man working there if I could have this tea please. He tried to dissauade me at first, and said it was too late in the day for black tea, and I might have trouble falling asleep. Bless him. Half an hour later, with two mugs of Lipton Yellow Label in my belly, 26,846 steps under my belt, my day two was truly complete.

Morocco!

Intro.

Inspired by a friend who had recently left her well established London life and went to Africa to write and to re-assess everything, I have decided to keep a diary of my trip to Morocco. My trip was booked before I found out about my friend going to Africa, so I didn’t copy her and anyway 10 days holiday hardly gives me the scope for the journey of self-discovery, but she inspired me to write while I am on my break. It might lead to something bigger later. It might not.

I am writing this to myself and for myself, writing for the sake of writing, a gentle stretching exercise after a period of inactivity. To see if I still can, if it flows, if it still makes sense. To me.

I am flying to Agadir today, then it’s off to a village of Taghazout, where my son is spending his winter months. He is cool like that.

Day 1

The holiday is going well.

Except, Weatherspoons at Gatwick North stopped serving Eggs Benedict and Eggs Royale at 11am. Who knew. So it is possible even for me to arrive too late to the airport. Actually. On the day of travel, I live for the moment I get to choose between the Eggs Benedict and Eggs Royale. Oh, well. I have 3 hours before boarding, so I search the whole airport for the eggs, I find a place called The Breakfast Club and have my Royale.

I’ve had better. My eye catches the price on the recept. £23.50, including the smallest cappuccino in the South East. Oh, well.

Next, my very slick very stylish also very not 45 cm x 30cm x 20cm Sanquist backpack failed the Cinderella glass slipper test and didn’t fit into the metal cage for small backpacks. It was painful to watch as it got stuck half way down, Boris-on-the-zip-wire style.

Oh, well. Win some lose some. I knew I was taking chances. Travelling light was never my thing.

Onwards and upwards. No children on the flight. Not one. Yay!

Spoke too soon. There was one. ‘I am hungry’, the mini-person announced as she waddled past me, stuffing her face from an open bag of Cadbury’s originals Sugar Rush.

I am in 20F, window. I am next to two well-nourished ladies. I battle for the arm rest with the 20E. I lose. The two of them sip white wine and Sprite like the pros.

We are cruising over Spain, we are told, as I write this. The white cotton wool fluff above Spain hides the rest of Spain.

The 20E and 20D are on their third small bottle each.

I can’t decide how I feel about this solo travelling business.

Window seat next to strangers is all well and good, but what if need the bathroom. The air between me and the 20E is still thick with the recent armrest hostilities. Their tables are littered with wine bottles, cans of Sprite, chocolate wrappers and plastic cups. Folding them to let me pass would mean a fuss. I amuse myself by playing out a scenario whereby I nimbly hop from armrest to armrest to get out.

They have bought crisps now so the smell of white wine mixes with the whiff of ready salted. They reach into their crisp packets with slow synchronicity. If only I could see Spain.

The dulcet tones of Joan Baez in my headphones make it all soothingly unreal.

I sleep.

I wake up with a panicked thought that I must wake up the foster kids for school and college.

The 20E is sinking her teeth into a Snickers bar.

I have given up on Spain, if indeed we are still over it.

I need this holiday so badly.

Half an hour to landing. I read five pages of Flowers for Algernon, had a lukewarm Easyjet tea, and am now on my peach tea bottle. It’s such a bliss being stuck in my cramped 20F, with nothing to do, no emails, no calls, no Tesco, no hungry cats, no arrogant teenagers, no wind, no rain, nothing.

Coastline.

The flight flew by. Three and a half hours.

Passport control. The queue is something else. There is an option for Rapid queue for 300 dirhams. Not many takers. We crawl forward.

A blue rinse lady from the plane strikes up a conversation. Turns out my glass slipper backpack attracted some attention, and now a small group of my fellow Easyjetters want to know if I was the woman who was pulled over.

Did they let you go? Well, clearly.

Did you have to pay extra? Yes.

How much?They roll their eyes in horror and disbelief.

My rebellious side takes over. ‘I don’t mind, I don’t care’.

Free airport WiFi is a tease. I am yet to find an airport where WiFi works for longer than five seconds.

None of this matters any more. I am outside.

A crowd of taxi drivers with signs awaits. Looking for my name. Nope. No Ania Heasley anywhere. Did three rounds, no joy. Found somebody with Sundesk sign. That’s where my son lives, so looking promising. Yes! He is my man. Muhammad is a taxi driver of few words. It’s now dark outside, getting darker by the minute. Obligatory silhouettes palm trees and the last blood orange vestiges of daylight. Sewage smell as we drive. Exciting stuff.

I kept asking Muhammad questions until finally he gave in and told me everything that his limited English allowed him to say.

One hour later, I met Matty and we went for chicken tagine, followed by whirlwind tour of Taghazaout. Proper first impression will need to wait till tomorrow, but for now I can say it’s a pretty laid back place, chilled, chaotic, warm, did I mention chilled, cats are everywhere, trendy looking tourists stroll around, the sea is 5 minutes walk away, can’t wait to see it all properly in the daylight.

My room at Onda Surf hostel has three beds, towels, blankets and a private bathroom with toilet and shower room. No kettle. I didn’t think there would be one. Coffee at communal breakfast on the rooftop at 9am.