Personal

This post is hard to write because our family lifestyle has very little consistency, nothing is fixed and the sands are always shifting. But people ask and people assume, so I’ll do my best to tell you about family life on the road, as it is. We’ve been travelling for 3.5 years now with two …

This post is about learning to be parents on the road. How we handled parenting children while travelling, without routine, without consistency, schedule, or any of the things the parenting rule books will preach. We believe in throwing rule books out of the window. Parenting and Travel is an extract, edited, from our e-Book, The …

This is the post that has to be written, how we, the owners of World Travel Family travel blog, get to travel full-time or even permanently, as a family. We’re not unique, there are plenty of other globe-trotting, full-time travelling families on the world circuit, but to the vast majority of people what we do …

Almost 7 years ago Chef and I sat on the patio and hatched the plan that became an indefinite round the world trip that would change our lives. We were to set off for a family gap year that became a never-ending travel lifestyle. We became nomadic long-term travellers.  Last week saw us returning home. …

We’ve had 5 Christmases on the road in the last almost 6 years of full-time family travel. Another one is coming up fast and this one will be “at home” for the first time.  Did you know we’re almost home? I’m going to count this one as a Christmas while travelling too because returning to an …

Yes, it happened, the day we never anticipated. After 5 and a half years of full time travel we met our first major booking related problem. We turned up to board our flight to be told that no, actually, we weren’t getting on their plane today. Our tickets didn’t exist, our flights had been cancelled …

Why do people travel? People travel for many reasons and love travel for different reasons too. Some people don’t enjoy travel, but they still have to travel for many reasons. Reasons can involve work, family, health or medical treatment, social or economic needs. People who love to travel enjoy relaxation, new cultures, foreign food or …

We’ve been on the road well over 5 years now and finally we decided to get our rabies vaccinations. When we first set out for South East Asia with a 6 year old and 8 year old, we decided that rabies jabs for travel weren’t necessary, so why, after 50 or so countries including India, …

We left home over 5 years ago to travel the world and we never wanted to go back. Becoming a modern day nomadic family, a digital nomad family, and adopting the lifestyle worked well for us. We visited around 50 countries, several of those 4 or 5 times. We’ve been to 5 continents and flipped between …

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, …

This will be a short post. I’m having one of those unsettled days where I think far too much. I find it’s often best to put troublesome ideas down in writing and share them. That way they’re easier to acknowledge, process and move on. If I were to ask you what you thought were the …

Hi guys, greetings from London where we’re sweltering in the final throws of summer. We made the mistake of taking the tube into China Town on the hottest day of the year for a family lunch today.  It was a great lunch, it’s a family tradition of ours to do lunch on Chef’s day off, …

I get ideas for posts in all kinds of ways, sometimes I want to tell a story about some cool  place we’ve been, sometimes I want to help or inspire, sometimes ideas just pop into my head and sometimes, like today, I get ideas from other people’s words. Earlier this week I read a post …

My husband (Chef) was on the phone to his sister. She asked where we were, what we were up to, where we were going next, “Well right now I’m eating breakfast in a hostel in Kuala Lumpur, but tomorrow? No idea” Yesterday our great-grand-nanna asked where we’d be next week. I said I didn’t know. “And …

4 amazing years of seeing the world, somewhere between 35 and 50+ countries each, an amazing education for the kids and a new career for me. More family time, more fun, less work. But to some it must look crazy. How can we prefer backpacks to bedrooms, co-working spaces to steady jobs and challenging destinations …

This post, and entire “Living Differently” series, was written when I finally woke up to what we’d achieved, and realised that we were living life differently and loving it. It was the moment everything changed for us and our website’s following and monthly views started going through the roof. It was when I first came …

Shhhh! They’re all asleep. Wiped out like a small pride of lions after a big day on the savannah.  All 4 of us in this little apartment, 2 big beds, happy as can be. Chef has his first day off today, he can sleep in. Boo lost a tooth yesterday, he’ll wake to find 2 …

I’m going to say what I really feel (surprised, right?) and that is, long-term family house sitting as part of family travel, isn’t for us. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not for you, plenty of families house sit with kids, find good house sits, and enjoy house sitting with kids. But for us, as …

Why do we do this crazy thing, why travel with kids? More importantly, why we think you should travel with your kids, or at least give it some serious thought. By travel I don’t mean a 2 week vacation, that’s fine and absolutely better than nothing but what we’re talking about here is a complete …

It may look like we’ve spent most of 2015 not travelling, sitting here in our little house in Romania, but we’ve been to 16 countries this year. I know! I couldn’t believe it either. They haven’t all been short trips, a month here, a month there, a few flying visits and long stays in London and Romania, …

“You’ll have to drag me back to India kicking and screaming.” Great. That’s what my elder son, light of my life, apple of my eye, clone of his mum in many ways, said to a visitor last night. It seems this kid does not want to travel. This from the child that, when we were actually …

Many people talk of travel when they win the lottery. That would be what it would take for them to really start living, start travelling and have more free time. It’s not true you know. You don’t have to win the lottery to make big changes to the way you live. I commented on our …

World Travel Family, a name picked for SEO reasons, we don’t call ourselves that in real life. We are just a normal family, like yours, the only thing different about us is our passion for travel and education and our tendency to share destinations and travel experiences on our websites and social media. We hope, and …

One day we were enjoying India in beautiful Kovalam, planning our next-day flight to Kathmandu and subsequent overland return to North India, the next we were landing in Heathrow, tired, displaced, confused, sick and thoroughly disorientated. It was a very weird experience, India one day, London the next. We hadn’t had enough, a month in …

We’ve been in Istanbul now for almost 2 weeks so I thought I’d do one of those posts where I tell you about life on the road, what we’re doing, why we’re doing, what’s Istanbul like and what is there to see and do. The Istanbul Blog We love Istanbul. We’ve explored and roamed this …

A new year is just around the corner, all sparkly and shiny and waiting for you and me to enjoy. It’s there, like a gift full of surprises, fun and excitement. I feel like that about mornings too. Guess I’m lucky.  But, and this is a big fat BUT worthy of capitalisation, I’ve been having an …

Yesterday, a potential hotel sponsor asked me “Can your readers afford us?” That’s a perfectly reasonable question, we’ve written post after post about doing things on the cheap, saving money to travel and finding great deals. I can see where she was coming from. I replied, explained our demographic and our philosophy and I’m thrilled to report, …

We are what’s called a digital nomad family. This means that our ability to generate a location independent income while homeschooling (some call it worldschooling) our 2 children, leaves us free to travel and explore the world. It’s about freedom, learning, adventures and stimulation, but it’s also about making memories for the kids and for …

We’ve been “Living the Dream” for 2 years now. We’ve been travelling full-time, seeing the world and spending most of our time together as a family while hardly working, other than on the blogs. Before we set off on this journey we weren’t rich, we were a very normal family struggling to make ends meet …

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 …

How do you start an adventure? I started mine with my first ever blog post on my free wordpress.com site. I took it down when I started a self-hosted blog with my own domain name. (Read how to do that here, I know a lot more about the business of blogging these days, but the …

If you read my last post about Chef’s hospitalisation, you’ll know that I wasn’t feeling too good. I’d even asked at the pharmacy for Xanax, I felt that bad. I was experiencing palpitations, shortness of breath ( probably through anxiety), headaches, hot flushes and a few other things that I didn’t mention. All these symptoms …

The boys and I are starting our family adventure in Malaysia early with a bit of single parent travel, we’re travelling without Dad, he’ll join us once he’s got the house, car and cat dealt with. We’ve changed the dates on our Air Asia flights, brought them forward, and payed the difference in price between the two …

Am I scared to leave home and travel the world indefinitely, with no fixed plans? Not really. I can’t wait to go. If I was scared last time we took off round the world back in 2001 on our first RTW, I can’t remember. Maybe I was anxious about finding accommodation or getting off the …

What to pack for a round the world trip is largely personal choice. However, there are certain things to take into consideration that we talk about below. Some items of clothing are absolutely essential along with certain items of travel gear for an around the world trip. We’ve spent at least 7 years of our …

Several years ago, a not very rich family set out to travel the world. Today, they’re still travelling. It’s been an incredible ride, we’ve loved it and we’ve had many adventures. The financial aspect, well, it’s complex. We had a lump sum when we left home and over the years we’ve learned to make money …

I’m going to tell you my story, it’s not just about finding love through travel, it’s about having the guts to change things. I was deeply unhappy for a long time, but I somehow found the strength to change that. This is how a fairly nice Welsh girl ended up switching continents and sweltering in …

Many people will regret not travelling. But does anyone actually regret travel? A group of travel bloggers look at their biggest travel regrets. “I regret travelling around the world; I wish I’d stayed home instead,” said no-one ever. Man Vs World I love that quote. So do I have any travel regrets? I don’t think …

My husband laughs at my packing. He laughed even harder when I mentioned that I was going to blog about packing for, you see, in the last 4 years of full time travel, of constantly moving on to pastures new, packing anxiety has been my constant companion. I hate packing! I really, really can’t stand …

A chef’s widow is a term used to refer to a person who is married to a chef. Chefs spend so many hours in work, at antisocial hours, that their wives and partners barely see them. I am married to a chef, a blog post about life, work, travel, and kids as a chef wife. …