Last Friday, I woke up at the crack of dawn. Actually, the crack of 3.50am, which is so much earlier than dawn I did consider whether it’d be better to just stay awake all night rather than have to haul myself out of bed in the middle of the night! Take note of what my eyeballs at the very start of the video for mega lols. I pretty much look like one of those white bunnies with the pink eyes! But, it was all for good reason!

I was heading off to Cologne for a whirlwind trip, courtesy of Marriott hotels. I hadn’t realised until this trip that Marriott have a vast range of hotel brands and chains that fall under their umbrella, from Ritz Carlton, Renaissance, Courtyard, and the Marriott hotels themselves. Marriott recently launched their 1000th Courtyard hotel, and so invited me and a handful of other bloggers and Instagrammers out to Cologne to celebrate with them! It was such a lovely trip- so fun to explore a new city I’d never been to before, so fun to meet bloggers and Instagrammers and so many other creative and professional people, so fun to travel solo (even though I’m totally terrified of flying and my heart beats like crazy the whole time we’re in the air!). I’m can’t even begin to express how grateful for the experiences this blog sends my way, really and truly.

Whilst in Cologne I was a mad camera lady- Instagram-ing, shooting photos with my proper camera for my blog, and vlogging for my YouTube channel too! My photo diary from the city will be up tomorrow, but today, you’ve got me in video form instead!

I’ve said before that this whole YouTube lark is still very much a work in progress for me, but I hope you enjoy watching the results of me learning on the job! Do let me know if there’s any specific type of video you’d like to see on my channel, and to stay tuned, click through to subscribe to Cider with Rosie on YouTube!

I’ll be back tomorrow with photos, but in the meantime, hope you enjoy my shaky video camera-work! ;)