2017 Sri Lanka travel, for single, couple and family travellers. All our Sri Lanka blog posts, tips, advice, essentials and recommendations in one blog page. This page ties information together, easier for you to find for your … read the blog...
Family Travel & Travel With Kids
Family Summer Travel Accessories You Need Now!
Summer holidays, summer vacations, whatever you call them, it's that time of year! For many families it's their annual chance to get out there, see a bit of the world and have some safe family fun with no stress. Here I'm going to show you some family summer travel accessories to make your vacation or holiday so much easier, safer and more … More travel ..
Highlights of Thailand for Families
Thailand is a fantastic and relatively easy destination for you and your kids, we'd certainly rate it easiest in South East Asia, particularly for families. Thailand combines low prices, ultra friendly, child-loving people, stunning clean beaches with varied watersports, wonderful wildlife and a host of cultural experiences. Along with all of this, … More travel ..
Travel Gear Recommendations for Family Travellers
Microfibre Travel Towel Best Guide 2017
I have my own microfibre travel towel as does my husband and both of the children. We've been travelling with them full-time for the last 4 years and before that we'd take them on shorter vacations and use them for sports, for visiting the pool, we even use them at home. They're smaller to pack, smaller to store, easier to wash, quicker to dry, … More travel gear..
Best Carry On Bags and Backpacks for Air Asia Size Regulations
Before you buy a carry on bag or backpack, read this. Yesterday I was ready to buy the immensely popular Farpoint 40L Backpack for my son. It's a great bag, good quality and has everything you could ask for but, just as I reached for my credit card, the shop assistant mentioned that although the Farpoint ( or Fairpoint for women) is the maximum … More travel gear..
Travel Blog Latest…
Best Family Hotels in Bangkok. Reviews and Recommendations
It's hard to know where to stay in Bangkok and finding family accommodation in Thailand's vibrant capital is harder still. We're hunting the best family hotel in Bangkok and we're sharing our findings here. Many hotels cater for singles and couples, but we've searched for the best family hotels in Bangkok, tried many and can share our reviews and recommendations here with you.We've found the hotels with the family rooms and the family-friendly establishments from budget to luxury. We list family-friendly hostels that have private family rooms here too, they are often a good choice and there are a couple that we use regularly for short stopovers. Modern hostels can be swanky and …
How to Travel With Carry On Only
If you've been following us right from the start, you'll know that I always said I'd never travel with carry on only. I even wrote a post about why we'd never travel light, we just had too much stuff as long-term travellers and the children were too small for their own, decent sized, packs. Well that was then, this is now and lately we've turned to carry on only travel and become quite proficient as our circumstances have changed. These days we're more like you, we're taking shorter trips and we have our home base in beautiful Romania to stash the toys and school books along with the all-weather travel gear. Travel is more of a holiday or vacation for us now, rather than our lifestyle so the …
How to Save Money on Flights with Skyscanner
Of all the tools we use for finding bargains in the travel world, Skyscanner is number 1. This week we saved ourselves £100 per person, £300 total, on flights to Sri Lanka, just through using the Skyscanner tips we share here. Let's take a look at how to use Skyscanner to find the best bargains. We still prefer Skyscanner to new flight comparison tools, including Kiwi, it also often gives us cheaper prices than going direct to the airlines themselves. Skyscanner Tips, Tricks and Hacks to Save Money On Flights We all want to save money on flights, right? Let me walk you through a few Skyscanner tips. Of course, you need to be flexible, if you need a direct flight on a certain day you …
Travel Gifts for Kids and Families 2017
If you are keen world travellers or you know a travelling family, you'll like our ideas for travel gifts for kids and families. In this post we include travel related gifts, often educational, as well as small gifts to pack in a suitcase or backpack for children and families on the road. Buying travel gifts for kids on the move is tricky, will they take their gift with them, or leave it at home through lack of space? We know what gifts have worked with our kids and which we've gladly received as a family, from expensive main presents to stocking fillers.We've been given some gifts that have made it and plenty that have had to be culled as we've been on the road for 4 years . You could buy …
5 Weeks in London, Costs and Experiences
The cost of living in London is billed as high and on previous visits taking rentals, lets or AirBnb apartments we've needed a lot of cash just to support ourselves. This time, our full 5 weeks gave us zero housing or accommodation costs, we've been taking care of friend's beautiful cats and borrowing their home while they're on holiday. We don't use a house sitting agency, so no affiliate links here, this was simply an arrangement with friends and one that has cut our costs to almost nothing. So what have these 5 weeks in London cost us in food, transport and entertainment and what's the bottom line, how cheaply can you "do" London? What Have We Been Doing in London, How Are we …
Visiting the Somme Battlefields, a Must-Do in France
When we left our hotel just north of Paris to make our way to the ferry port at the end of our trans Europe road trip we didn't know that our evening's accommodation was in one of the most fascinating and historic parts as France. Not far from Amiens and our hotel, I spotted a sign for the Somme Valley. A little later a second sign for a memorial cemetery, 2 and 2 made a certainty, we were on the Somme Battlefields. Rolling fields newly harvested and quaint rural villages dotted the landscape as we took a diversion and followed the signs to the first cemetery of many in just one fac=scinating and memorable afternoon. The kids whined, they just wanted wi-fi and hotel comforts, but even they …
Europe Road Trip Costs
A reader asked me to post about our European road trip posts, so we collected the data, saved every receipt and collected all the information you need on driving around Europe for almost 2 weeks into this post. We have petrol ( diesel) costs for all of the European countries we visited, road toll charges, vignette costs and regulations as well as hotel, some food and attraction prices. You'll see that travelling by road in Europe is an expensive business. Italy in particular cost us a lot with high road tolls and high fuel costs but it was fun and we saw some highlights of Europe along the way. We drove through Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, France and finally the UK, to London, we took …
Getting Back to Fitness After 50
Around Christmas time, at home in Romania, we borrowed a friend's hacksaw to try to cut my engagement ring off. Drastic measures to resolve a simple problem, I'd put on so much weight that my rings were wedged on causing me pain. The hacksaw plan didn't work so I decided to lose the weight instead, a long tortuous process that sounded, back then, like deprivation and suffering. My heart wasn't in it and my resolve crumbled within days. Fast forward to July and I've dropped a large amount of weight in the last week. The wedding ring is off but the engagement ring is still stuck, give me another week on that one. I'm going to tell you how and why here. Discaimer: This post has very …
New Bloggers’ Help & Support. Let’s Get Started
For the last few months a small group of us has been coming together to talk blogging. Most of the other members of our group are beginners but there's also me ( Hi, I'm Alyson, this is my main blog and family income source) and a few more seasoned bloggers and creatives. In July 2017 we made our group a paid, formal enterprise, I was stretching myself too thinly, repeating myself too much and not finding time for the rest of my life by helping people one on one here and there. Our little private group has been going strong and many of my trainee blogging crew have been making huge strides forward, growing readership, improving authority and creating income through the help I've been able to …
Parc Asterix Review, Meet Dogmatix!
My boys adore the Asterix and Obelix books as did their dad before them. They played a big part in their learning to love books as they pulled every volume of the series from library shelves and read them over and over again. These gorgeous cartoons also introduced historical concepts into small heads. Think about it, they were discovering the concept of Roman soldiers and battles across Europe, sewing the seeds of Cleopatra and Vikings, it's a good starting place for kids to develop an interest. Now my teen and tween still read them, a couple of well-thumbed copies inhabit our globetrotting backpacks, so imagine the excitement when we discovered that an Asterix Theme Park existed just …
3 Days in Slovenia
3 days was enough time to fall head over heels in love with Slovenia. Why didn't I know how beautiful Slovenia is? Why haven't we visited a million times? why haven't we taken the kids to the lakes to enjoy every kind of outdoor adventure? I'm forever saying that Romania is the most beautiful place on Earth, well it has some tough competition in Slovenia. We only had a few days, we were on a road trip from Romania to London and had deadlines to meet but as Slovenia is small we managed to see a lot. We will be going back to this country to fully enjoy everything Slovenia has to offer, I can even see us settling there for a while to enjoy stunning scenery and outdoor opportunities along with …
