Hello lovely reader and welcome to BeeLoved City!
If you are on this page, that means you want to know a bit more about this website and about me so let’s get started!
Bonjour!
My name is Pauline. I am from France but have been living abroad since 2015.
I’ve always been passionate about other cultures, languages and places.
Travelling has always been my ultimate dream. From a very young age, I would dream about all these places in the world I wanted to see.
Back then though, I didn’t really have the option to travel so I started following my dream with work. I have a degree in marketing specialised in the travel industry.
From the age of 19 I started working in digital marketing for the tourism industry in the beautiful city of Toulouse in France.
I was mainly a copywriter at the time. I would write about European destinations for various websites within the camping industry.
I, then, became a project manager and was working on a variety of travel sites.
All of this until 2015, when I made the decision that would change my life forever: dropping everything and move to Australia for a year, on a working holiday visa.
Living, working and travelling in Australia
In 2015, I took the flight that would change my life. Paris to Melbourne, Australia.
I landed in the beautiful city of Melbourne and immediately fell in love with this city. I stayed there for a while and then started doing my regional work so I could have a second year visa.
This brought me to a few places such as Young in NSW, Coffs Harbour in QLD and finally, the stunning Kangaroo Island in South Australia where I stayed for a few months.
It was an incredible experience. Spending so much time living on a small island gave me a chance to truly know the area but also the locals and their habits.
Once the season was over, it was finally time to travel with my friends. We spent 6 months exploring Australia. We drove from Kangaroo Island to Adelaide, then up to Uluru through the Outback, then Darwin, Cairns, Brisbane, The Whitsundays, Fraser Island, Sydney and finally back in Melbourne.
After travelling all around this beautiful country, I got the chance to discover so much about it! I didn’t just travel around, I experienced Australia!
Culture tours, living with locals, outdoor activities, eating local food… I wanted to see and understand everything that Australia had to offer.
Our planet is beautiful and understanding it, whether it’s cultural or natural, makes travelling such a beautiful and amazing thing.
I always loved listening to stories. Firstly, because I find them passionating and entertaining.
Secondly, because I remember them and the more you get to hear, the more you can relate them to each other.
Every time I visit a new place, I hear stories that are somehow related to another place I’ve been to. It’s absolutely fascinating to see how amazing the Earth is!
Moving to the UK
After Australia, I decided to move to the UK and it has been home ever since!
In all honesty, I never thought I would stay in the UK. I went there so I could work on my English in a different professional context and as it turns out, I just fell in love with the place!
So much so, that I decided to stay and even recently became British!
Settling down in Manchester
I started down south and then eventually settled in Manchester, in the North West.
While the weather is not exactly of my liking, I have to admit, I absolutely love this city.
It has everything! People are so incredibly friendly, it’s lively, there are plenty of things to do… I simply love it. This is also why I eventually created a website entirely dedicated to Manchester.
It’s called Manchester Pocket Guide and you can find on it all my local tips!
My professional life and travel experiences
When I moved to the UK, I had a ‘normal’ 9 to 5 job which means that I was left with only my holiday allowance and bank holidays to travel.
But let me tell you something, 5 weeks can go a long way!
I always loved hunting for the best prices for flights and accommodation so I always made sure I would travel a lot, even with a job.
For years, I would do at least one trip abroad per month and would spend the rest of my spare time exploring the UK.
From Wales to Cornwall and Scotland, I would go everywhere.
Eventually, I went to Florida for work for a few months and this completely changed my vision of things. That’s at that point that I decided to create my blog to share my experiences and help other travellers make the best of their trips.
The site started slowly and then grew to a point where I was able to leave my day job and completely focus on the site.
At that point, I had more flexibility which meant I could travel even more!
This is when I applied to be a tour leader for an adventure tour group company in the UK. This has been a fabulous opportunity and since then, I got to travel to even more places in the world.
It has also helped me be a better travel writer since organising trips for groups of 15 people requires a lot of organisation and skills.
It has also given me more insight into travellers worries and wishes so now, when I put together itineraries for you, I can be as helpful as possible.
You can find below some of the destinations I went to: Cuba, Japan, Peru, Jordan, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Morocco, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Poland…
