We visited continental Portugal in the autumn of 2019 and had a fantastic time. Portugal has such a wide variety of sights and activities that it is likely that even the pickiest of travellers would be able to find something to enjoy. We split our vacation between the Algarve and Greater Lisbon which gave us a perfect balance of stunning natural scenery and man made marvels. In this guide I hope I can inspire you to visit and to save some money while you are at it.
On our way to spend Christmas in the Philippines, our flights were actually starting in Paris, since flights from there during school holidays were considerably cheaper than flights from the UK. Since we were flying out of Paris on Sunday, I thought it might be a nice idea to fly out on Saturday Morning, and spend some time in Paris before our departure.
Shortly before little person turned one, we decided it would be nice to visit Tuscany. Tuscany is obviously one of the most popular tourist destinations on earth and for good reason. It has the combination of beautiful natural scenery, breathtaking monuments, world class art and most importantly in our opinion amazing food.
On our trip to the Western USA and Hawaii in 2019, we were flying to San Francisco from London on Air Canada via Toronto. We had a seven hour stopover in Toronto and initially planned to get out into the city for a look around. The day before we were due to leave, I suddenly had the idea of hiring a car and driving to Niagara falls instead, since we would not be affected by the traffic leaving Toronto in the evening. I quickly booked a car hire and thus began one of our more ambitious stopover adventures.
Our first major long haul trip as a couple was to Bali in 2013. We were flying Singapore Airlines and I discovered both that Singapore had the highest rated airport in the world and also that Singapore was one of the highest rated stopover destinations globally. As such at the end of our 22 days in Bali, I decided to add an eight hour stopover in Singapore.
Nowadays. Everyone seems to be in a rush to get to wherever they are going as quickly and as conveniently as possible. Many people are willing to pay a premium to ensure they can get a non stop flight to their destination of choice. This series is going to discuss the merits of abandoning that as a goal and taking advantage of what stopovers can give you. To date we have had meaningful stopovers involving exploration in several locations including Singapore, Taipei, Toronto, Ho Chi Minh City and Cairo. I will have further posts to discuss the particulars of these stopovers but there are several advantages that are common to all of them.
Santorini almost always comes up when you are looking for an idyllic honeymoon spot. Scenes of people in pools looking out over the caldera have become synonymous with ultimate couple luxury. We had originally short listed Santorini as a potential site for our own honeymoon but in the end we decided it would take too much travel to get there from the location of our wedding, Barbados. Years later, after Little Person arrived, I decided that I would finally tick Santorini off of our list and was challenged with planning a relatively inexpensive but comfortable trip where we could hopefully experience all that Santorini had to offer.
Indonesia is a massive country with over sixteen thousand islands and the fourth highest population on the planet. As such there is no shortage of places to visit though some are much easier to visit than others. The destination with the highest level of accessibility is Jakarta, which contains the best connected airport in the entirety of the Asia Pacific region. This is followed by Bali which is incredibly popular with holidaymakers, especially from Australia. I have already written about our feelings regarding Bali (we love it) and they can be found by following this link. Today, however, I want to talk about a less popular destination in Indonesia, which shares the island of Java with Jakarta, Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta).
When I was planning our first trip to Bali, I had managed to find out about a rather impressive temple on the island of Java that was worth leaving Bali to see. That temple was Borobudur, the largest Buddhist temple in the world. I found out that the easiest way to get to Borobudur was to fly into Yogyakarta airport. As such, I decided it would be worth spending a couple days in Yogyakarta to see something different to Bali.
I was never particularly convinced by the Maldives, thinking that I would be too bored stuck on an island with nothing to do for a week. Then I learnt how to dive and started to think that going on a liveaboard in the Maldives would probably be very exciting indeed, but a shore holiday would likely still be boring and too expensive. Then Covid happened and our Christmas trip to the Canaries could no longer go ahead due to governmental restrictions. When this happened I immediately went through the list of places the UK government said I could go as well as whether I would be able to connect to get there without any trouble. I also didn’t want to have to quarantine for any length of time, since four or more days of quarantine during a seven day holiday would barely make it worth it to go. Due to our possible departure dates, considering when school term ended, a four day quarantine would mean we would be in quarantine for Christmas day which is definitely not ideal.
The only destination which was able to meet all the criteria I had was the Maldives, with no need to quarantine on arrival once you had a negative PCR test. I surprisingly found some inexpensive flights on Etihad, especially considering we were flying during Christmas holiday, and set about the biggest challenge finding accommodation that would not require me to sell a kidney.
We have been to Bali three times and if it was up to Shleah that number would keep going up. It is currently the holiday location that we have spent the most cumulative time in, racking up 36 days there, which considering both the size of the island and the constraints we have around travelling is really quite a lot. I thought I would run through what we like about Bali as well as provide some tips as to how to ensure you have the best holiday there possible.
