Looks like the first half of the Spain trip is trending towards the French Riviera, cruising down to Barca. Looks like the obvious place to fly into is Nice. Thinking Monday night and Tuesday night in Monaco area, drive to Marseilles for a night, then down to Barca on Thurs or Fri. Anybody been? Only thing I really know is it's beautiful and expensive AF
Planning on probably April 17th-21st to avoid Jazzfest. Would definitely enjoy it but I don't really want a music festival to be the main focus of the trip.
No not yet, still looking around at different resorts. Waiting to book the flights until after we pick the beach resort.
ive been looking at stuff but i havent really seen anything within your budget that fits that over water bungalow style thing. did yall end up deciding on what the most important aspects were besides bungalow to keep it within budget?
Please document your spending, except the festival, and post when you’re done. I think I speak for most when I say we want to do a trip like that but have no idea how much is needed.
every couple I know with children no longer travels, but you better duck if you tell them you don’t want children right now because you like to travel. them be fighting words.
Yeah I haven’t found many over water bungalows either so I’m kind of out on it. We preferably want our own room that is private or at least semi-private, has its own little pool (can be a tiny one) and is either on the beach or with a good view of the ocean. Have found plenty of these above our price range and some within as well. My biggest question now is do we go with a bigger island that has easier access to/from the airport but more expensive resorts or go with the smaller islands that take more effort to get to.
it's really just like 2 hours more each way to get to lanta and its pretty easy. I'd book the private transfer so you dont get jammed in a full minivan with 7 others. Lanta was great and super laid back. Way more to do on samui obviously
Safari was $530, but we also did the "Budget Beater 3 day." Staying in outfitted tents with A/C, think 'glamping.' You can spend as much as you want for as long as you want, this was one of the cheaper ones I saw. Shark diving was $180. I think it's going to be pretty cheap; like most big trips it depends on flights (and using points/miles).
That depends on what you want out of your traveling experiences. If you're going around the world looking for places to party all night, then, yeah, having kids will mess that up. But if you're just looking for worldly experiences, then you can certainly do that with kids; it's more expensive, and the experiences that you have are probably going to be more oriented toward them and their limitations, but you can certainly still travel. Wife and I only traveled out of the country once before kids. Then we started having kids, and traveling anywhere other than to and from grandparents' places came to a screeching halt. When youngest was 18 mos. we started taking them to Yosemite every year for six years, then the next year we took them to Disneyland. That was too much for them, so the next two years we took them to LegoLand, then back to Disneyland once they were 6-9-12. We've taken them to Hawaii three times now, the first time when they were 8-11-14, and Europe three times, the first time when they were 11-14-17. A large part of the fun is exposing them to new and interesting places and experiences. Rent an airbnb, let them stretch out, take a lot of electronics with you, don't go too heavy on the cathedrals and museums, and it's all good. Oldest is 19 now, and if he still wants to go with us overseas, he's certainly welcome to. It's a great investment in their personal development. Edit: I'm one of those people who actually enjoys my kids' company. Can't imagine traveling without them; it sends a bad message to them, that we parents have to "get away" from them to enjoy ourselves. We have friends who go to Paris for a week every year just to hang out and relax together, and they leave their kids here. I just have to bite my tongue when they talk in front of their kids about the good time they have.
If you want to feel super inadequate buy one of those scratch off world maps and check out all the shit you've never seen lol
have a giant one on our wall we also tried to create a spreadsheet of where we wanted to go then gave up when it basically became "everywhere we haven't been"
Yeah. The only nos for me are war torn legit dangerous places and that can change a shit load in my life time. Crazy to think of what places like the baltics were in the not so distant past and how drastically different they are now
yeah like ten years ago Turkey would have been near the top of my list but now I can't see myself going for a while
I know. A girl we made friends with went from ushuaia on a 27 day one but she paid way in advance and spent 24k aud. She met some people before she even got on the cruise that spent like a third of that
If you guys want a really good travel book. She did a bunch of travel mostly by herself across Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and parts of Africa before she was kidnapped.
Is it cheating to scratch off the entire country for visiting one city? I've had this internal debate before
Nah. You go somewhere like Croatia and you cant even tell you got to scratch anything off so when you hit the big ones you get the whole thing
Spent a week in Dubrovnik, but I've never been to Croatia Spent three days in Sarajevo but I've never been to Bosnia-Herzegovina Spent four days in Moscow, but I've never been to Russia Spent a week in Kiev, but I've never been to Ukraine Spent an afternoon in East Berlin but never uh umm OK I've been to Germany Cold War traveler
Country collecting is weird to me. It ignores the various regional differences in a big country. I guess as a reflection it’s fine but no to the people who, for example, won’t go back to Spain because they’ve been to Madrid and want to cross more countries off of the list.
Beginning to plan my first trip out of country. Will be going around Europe this summer for a few weeks. Gf is from Europe, so she has some experience. Planning on London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, then Chisinau (gf home country). May drop Brussels or Berlin but the others are pretty much set. Pretty excited.
Fiancee and I nixed Bora Bora for our honeymoon due to January being a bad time of year to visit there. Back to the drawing board. Looking for somewhere relaxing and reasonably warm that serves frozen drinks. Would like to do some outdoor activities for a day or so, but other than that just want to chill very hard. Based on that criteria, it's starting to look like the Caribbean or Central America. Any suggestions?
Instead of saving money, use all the money you would've spent in Bora Bora and hire a private sailboat/yacht to sail around the BVIs.
A female friend who just got back from Thailand did a good job of painting a bad picture of the place as a honeymoon destination, but it's something I've been trying to overcome. Another consideration I neglected to mention is a boat load of points with SPG/Marriott/whatever it's called that will be worth less on March 1 but a lot of the properties aren't really doing it for me. Hard to compare to an overwater bungalow.
There are so many different places to go in Thailand that I dont know how you paint the whole place in a bad light without being disingenuous.
If you go to Phuket of Koh Phangan, you'll have a terrible honeymoon. But there are plenty of exclusive, nice islands that will be an entirely different experience. Just need to do your homework.
Even Phuket has so many resorts that if you're trying to live that life there's something for you. I agree with you on the sailboat thing
i feel like traveling halfway around the world to sit on a beach and have frozen drinks is overkill go to hawaii or BVI or Mexico or something
Somebody ITT hired a sailboat and did St John and several of the BVIs, raved about it. Can’t remember who. Maybe Tiger Tiger Woods Y'all ?