Hello from our Atlantic Crossing cruise on Norwegian Epic! Epic is a beautiful ship and we’re off to a good start on our second cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines this year. I can’t check in to social media as often as I normally do because satellite internet at sea isn’t cheap. Connection is difficult, but …
I’m no princess. I’ve travelled on night buses many times. We take them as often as we can, it saves us paying for one night of accommodation but the night bus from Flores to Guatemala city was not my favourite, that being said, on a global scale, it’s not a bad bus at all, there …
The highlight of our time in Guatemala was Tikal National Park, the most incredible set of Mayan ruins in the world. But Tikal with kids, is that really going to work? Is it safe? Is it too hot, too high, too boring, too far? No way, the boys had a ball. It’s always important to learn …
Good Friday, two religions in one day. Ancient Mayan traditions in a steamy sub-tropical rainforest at Tikal and an evening Catholic procession in the town of Flores. During our month in Antigua Guatemala we saw the Sunday processions and flower carpets of the build-up to Easter in Antigua, the big day itself, Easter Sunday, will …
Wow, what a day, what a place, what a huge amount of learning! We are in Guatemala for Easter and it just happened that our visit to Tikal, the most incredible site in the Mayan world, fell on Good Friday. We’ve already experienced the huge build up to Easter in Antigua Guatemala, the biggest Easter …
Breakfast foods are possibly the most interesting and variable as you travel around the world. Through 6 years of travel, 50+ countries, we sampled traditional breakfasts in many countries. Here’s our take on the best, and worst, breakfasts from various countries around the world. Are you a morning person? I am, so that first coffee and …
Dedicated followers (there are a few!) will know that we just spent a whole month in Antigua Guatemala quietly getting on with life before catching the bus from Antigua to San Pedro La Laguna up on Lake Atitlan. It’s like stepping into another world. Antigua is lovely but we’re really falling in love with San …
Australia offers some amazing bushwalking opportunities and surprisingly, some of the best are within a few hours’ drive of the biggest cities. Sydney and Canberra have plenty of first-class bushwalks and hikes, from day treks to full week and longer hikes. If you can make it to Tasmania, the state is set up for bushwalking. …
A percentage of the global population think that travel is a waste of money. It had honestly never crossed my mind that anyone thought that way, until somebody on our Facebook page said that it had always been her belief. Gratifyingly, she went on to say that our adventures and enthusiasm for travel had played …
Sri Lankan curry for breakfast, you can’t beat it. Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day and Sri Lankan breakfast has been the highlight of my early morning eating experiences over the many years of our nomadic travel adventure. (Read more about who we are, what we’re doing and why, here.). We have a …
This post is about getting from Kandy to Dambulla to visit the Dambulla Cave Temples, the experience of visiting and the entrance fees. Dambulla is also a gateway for onward travel to Anuradhapura, Sigiriya, Jaffna, or Sri Lanka’s East Coast. Most people spend a few days in Kandy in Central Sri Lanka before travelling on to Dambulla and …
Ten million tourists visit Queensland’s Gold Coast every pre-Covid year, handily generating over $2.5 billion for the region. Whether they come for the excellent surfing and amusement parks or the stunning architectural landmarks, the Gold Coast is where holidays would holiday if they could. One of the city’s most popular sections is the suburb known …
Perimenopause has been a roller-coaster ride for sure. When we left home in 2013 I already knew that I was in the midst of this interesting time of life, but I didn’t expect my symptoms to get progressively worse and to cause us a few problems as we travel. I’m tough, really tough, not a delicate flower …
We’re cruise mad here at the moment, we’re taking our second Trans Atlantic Cruise in a couple of weeks and I’m on a mission to spread the word about how much fun cruising can be and how affordable cruising can be particularly as an alternative to flying.. There are things to do on a cruise …
When you think of things to do in Kandy the big-ticket attractions are what probably come to mind, places like the Temple of The Tooth and the Botanical Gardens are world-famous. But there are plenty of other things to do in Kandy Sri Lanka, some of them free, that we’ll share with you here. Just …
We are having a very nice time here in Antigua Guatemala, quietly living our lives for a month. the Guatemalan food culture in Antigua is very different to what we’re used to on the backpacker trail in Asia. For some reason we expected everywhere to have plenty of inexpensive eating options, it’s not really the …
We travel to find new and different experiences, but while being attacked by dogs in Antigua qualified for both categories, it was an experience we really could have done without yesterday. In some countries, street dogs are a problem, particularly for we runners and parents. We have had run-ins with dogs several times. We didn’t …
We think we found a great way of Getting to Guatemala from USA at the end of our 1 month USA road trip. It worked our cheaper for us to fly from the USA to El Salvador and enter Guatemala overland, than it would have been to fly direct to Guatemala City. We had no …
Cruising with kids, cruising can be a lot of fun for families with kids and also an affordable vacation or transport option. But is cruising safe for kids? The tragic February death of a child in a cruise ship’s pool has probably added more anxiety to the shoulders of the potential cruise parent. I can …
Much as we all love theme parks, most families need to find a few other things to do in Orlando for kids during their Florida holiday. One of our family favourites, for some non-theme-park fun, was Green Meadows Petting Farm. It was a welcome antidote to the hectic days of chasing around the parks and a lovely …
Flower carpets in Antigua Guatemala are an Easter tradition that we knew about before we arrived. We didn’t know that we’d be seeing them every Sunday during Lent, in the run up to Easter and throughout Holy Week. If you can possibly be in Guatemala at the right time, seeing these flower carpets and Easter …
Antigua Guatemala is a stunningly beautiful city in Guatemala. Its architecture, history, and culture are sure to delight, along with the volcanoes that smoke around it. Antigua is a vacation destination popular with many and a popular location for retirement and expats. We were lucky enough to spend a full month there to really get …
We took 2 10 day + cruises in a year a little while ago. We wouldn’t take a second or third if we hadn’t loved the experience of cruising and found it extremely affordable. We were budget travellers for that year, yet we managed to find 2 cheap cruises within our budget. Our repositioning cruises …
We set ourselves a challenge while we were in Orlando, Florida. Visiting four Disney parks in one day. Not only that, we wanted to ride all of the biggest and best rides. Do you think it’s possible? If you’re wondering if the queues will make visiting 4 parks in one day impossible, don’t. See my post …
When we left home to travel in 2013 we hoped we could travel indefinitely, or for several years, on our savings and a few small income sources. We travelled ultra-cheap back then, these days we don’t, but we made budget travel our mission as we stretched our cash. Our newish travel blog was doing OK and …
Why travel to El Salvador? Nobody goes to El Salvador. That’s what a family member said when she found out we were planning to visit El Salvador, the smallest country in Central America. It’s not your usual tourist destination, certainly not with kids, but we felt it was well worth a look. So where to go, …
Yesterday I pulled out all of my road trip with kids ninja skills for a 10 hour journey from Mississippi to Florida. For at least 9 of those hours we were sitting in a car. That’s me, my husband and two boys, aged 9 and 7. We’ve been road tripping with the kids, all over the USA …
Are you heading to the USA for a road-trip vacation? Good choice, this country is perfectly set up for that kind of touring. Cheap fuel, great roads, affordable and plentiful motels and a million diverse things to see and do make the USA a brilliant driving holiday destination. Everything we know on travel USA after …
We’ve just spent an amazing few days in New Orleans at Mardi Gras and, honestly, we spent a lot of that time eating. In our whole 1 month USA road trip, I think New Orleans offered us the best food, even on our moderate budget. We did wonder a little, where to eat out in New …
New Orleans Mardi Gras just happened to us by accident. We’re almost at the end of our 1 month USA road trip, New Orleans is our final destination, one I’d picked, I’d always wanted to see the Big Easy. As we left Orlando a few days ago we started having a quick look online for …
The town of Celebration , Florida, is community in Osceola County United States, located near Walt Disney World Resort (Disney Florida). The community was master-planned and originally developed by The Walt Disney Company and the design is very pleasing and clean-cut. Celebration is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee Metropolitan Statistical Area and has a population of around 10,000 people. If you’re staying in …
We’ve been moving around a lot over the last 3 weeks of our USA road trip. We’ve driven from NYC to Canada to Florida in a hire car. Petrol, car hire, road tolls, food, what’s the most expensive part of a USA road trip? Even travelling the way we do, as cheaply as possible, one …
Queues at Disney World and all of the Disney Parks can be long. Standing in line for over an hour for a ride isn’t unusual. But if you plan your day, get there early, and take advantage of queue-beating offers, queues become less of a headache. Here are some ways to beat the queues at …
We love finding unexpected things as we travel around the world, yesterday was a cracker. Finding the USA’s answer to Nessy in Darien Georgia came totally out of the blue and was a delight for all of us. No, we didn’t actually see her. But we talked to a lady who had a friend who …
We only stopped for a couple of hours in Charleston, South Carolina on our USA road trip but we absolutely loved it. We should have stayed longer. We try to pick where we spend the night based on a quick morning internet scan to see what accommodation prices are like. There was nothing under $50 …
We pulled into Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last night and headed straight for the beach for the boys to have a run around. They do amazingly well in the car, we’d had a relatively short drive by our standards, around 5 hours of sitting still. Those little limbs needed to move. Myrtle Beach is beautiful! …
There are two sides to Niagara Falls. No, not the US side and the Canada side. I mean the “Gosh isn’t nature amazing!” side and the crazy fun side. We enjoyed both, although the crazy fun side of Niagara falls, Clifton Hill, came as a complete surprise to us, we weren’t expecting that at all. We …
Yes Intercourse USA really exists and supposedly, it has the most stolen sign in the whole of the country. Intercourse PA, in Lancaster County Pennsylvania, is a bit of a tourist hot spot as it sits squarely in beautiful Amish Country. We had to visit Intercourse town as part of our USA road trip and this part …
Yesterday, on a whim, we drove for 6 hours to see Niagara Falls. We were in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and figured we were about as close to Niagara Falls as we would ever get, so why not? We were lucky enough to see Niagara Falls almost frozen solid, so this post is about that. Could you …
We came at New York pretty much blind, I’d done almost no research on what to do nor where to go. All we had organised was a 4-night stay in a Holiday Inn not far from Times Square. Times Square sounds like a good place to stay, right? It’s actually an expensive area of NYC, …
This morning the boys and I went to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not New York, just off Times Square in New York City. I’d never been to a museum like it before and I really didn’t know too much about it. We loved it! I thought it would be about Guinness World Record breakers mostly. …
Transatlantic cruise reviews, crossing the Atlantic on a cruise ship, what’s it like? And tips for transatlantic cruise crossings. Nerves got to me in Southampton in February before our journey across the Atlantic to New York. I had no idea what lay ahead on our voyage and weather conditions concerned me. Want to know the …
