Save cash in style
General tips for saving time, money or effort when travelling
Maternity/paternity leave is an excellent time to travel. Not needing to coordinate with others or timetables for holiday booking can give you the opportunity to take holidays when you previously wouldn’t have been able to. This is especially true for anyone who works in education who would have previously been restricted to travelling during school holidays.
Continue reading “Baby’s first flight – Tips and Experience”
We discovered quite early in our travels that one of the best ways to truly experience a destination is to eat where local people eat. This is especially true in more developed holiday locations where the local populace have a reasonable amount of disposable income. On top of this, one of the best and easiest ways to eat like a local is to eat in a food court. For the point of this article a food court is a location with shared seating and a number of permanent food service venues (not popup food markets which is something quite different). These locations can be as simple as a food court in a mall or shopping centre, or bespoke dining destinations such as the Timeout food courts model.
Continue reading “Eat like a local – In honour of food courts”
For our honeymoon, Shleah and I chose to do a road trip in Florida, starting in Miami, driving down to the Key West, then driving to Sarasota and Naples before returning to Miami. I took it upon myself to ensure that I had booked everything so we wouldn’t have to figure things out when we got there.
After arriving at Miami International Airport, we had to get a bus to the car hire centre. On this bus I looked at my car booking and realised that the car had been booked for the month I had booked it in rather than the current month we were travelling, My voucher was two months out of date. Thinking back I remembered that the booking website had timed out when I had originally tried to make the booking leading to the date resetting.
Continue reading “Trip Organisers”
If you are limited for time, it can often be tempting to try and visit one location, check into one hotel at the beginning of the hotel and then return home. Personally I have quite a short attention span so I tend to limit stays in a particular hotel to 4-5 days or less. This means on a two week holiday we are often in 4 or 5 hotels and have taken multiple flights. We once took 12 flights over the course of a three week holiday to Singapore, Bali, Kuala Lumpur and central Vietnam. On that same trip we also took two boats, three trains and numerous taxis to get between our bases. Moving around tends to be all about maximising your time and prioritising what you want to do in a specific location.
Continue reading “Multi Destination Holidays”
One of the most complicated things about going on a trip to somewhere that uses a different currency to you is how to pay for things when you get there. Over the years there have been many many different solutions such as buying cash, travellers cheques, prepaid debit cards, debit cards and credit cards. In 2012 I applied for a fee free travel credit card and since then it has become the only way that I either get foreign currency or pay for items when travelling. I always pay off the balance in full via direct debit and further will make a faster payment on the card after a withdrawal since it accrues interest on cash withdrawals.
Continue reading “Travel Money”
Most people’s least favourite part of getting ready to go on holiday is packing. Figuring out what to bring and vice versa can be quite intimidating, especially if you are visiting somewhere which is very different to where you have been before. We have a few useful tips when it comes to packing that have helped us to manage some very complicated holidays.
Continue reading “Packing”
Over the course of our travels we have always found that one of the best ways to get to know a particular location is to shop with the locals. This can vary between going to a big supermarket, visiting a convenience store, or buying something from a non-tourist market.
Continue reading “Shopping in Supermarkets”
The world is a big place and it can be quite daunting to try and figure out which parts of it you most want to see. Most people only have so much money and only so much time. This is one of the reasons that I recommend making a ranked list of where you want to visit. This list does not need to be based on any conventional logic and should be personal to yourself. It can be tempting to try and visit places you have seen other people go just because they are popular now, rather than putting in the effort to figure out what exactly it is you want in your holiday.
Continue reading “Travel Aspirations”
We have found that one of the best ways to appreciate a destination is to visit the spa there. Prior to moving to Bath, we visited the Thermae Bath Spa which gave us a real connection to the history of the city considering that people have been bathing in these waters for over 2000 years. Visiting a local spa and having the most authentic experience possible is a really great way of appreciating the intricacies of a destination.
Continue reading “Spa Tourism”
We took Little Person on her first holiday when she was two months old (Alicante), her second when she was four months old (Barbados), her third at five months (New Zealand and Bangkok) and her fourth at six months (Egypt). This was the most travelling we have done in a 6 month period ever. This may seem a little bit crazy and looking back on it if I hadn’t done it myself I would doubt it happened, but truthfully, for a full time working mother, maternity leave is quite possibly the perfect time to travel.
Your sleep schedule is messed up anyway since you are having to be up with the baby so jet lag has less effect on you. If you are a teacher you can for the first time travel outside of school holidays and your baby doesn’t actually require any entertaining, since the only thing he/she wants to do is eat and sleep.
We learnt some really good lessons from our time travelling with Little Person and I thought it would be nice to share them here.
Continue reading “Flying with a baby”