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Travel highlights from the first 1 year of a multi-year trip. Yes, it’s true, we’re just coming up to one year of non-stop travel. It’s flown past, it really has. We thought we’d share our travel highlights, our absolute favourites, the things still fresh in our memories and the things that make us go wow! These are travel highlights from a family gap year, a multi-year gap year.
Sometimes we can’t pick single one-off events to be our travel highlights, we’ll just go with an overall experience, but these are they, in no particular order. We hope they inspire you to get out there and make your own family memories in the world.
The Disney Parks in Florida. We’re crazy about Disney and the kids and I are converts to the biggest, scream-making-est rides. Read how we visited 4 Disney parks in one day and rode all the biggest and best roller-coasters. Oh that Rock and Roller-coaster! Disney Animal Kingdom was a particular favourite with the kids, with the Expedition Everest ride being a highlight of the park.
Travel Highlights – Cruising
Taking 2 Trans Atlantic Cruises We’ll never stop raving about cruising, it’s our new not-so-secret weapon in our travel armoury. Who’d have thought that the budget-est of budget travellers would end up taking 2 trans Atlantic cruises? See how to make cruising affordable here.
Travel Highlights – Thailand
6 Weeks on Ko Phangan 6 Blissful weeks of island life in a simple villa on the beach. It was here that chef was hospitalised and where we crashed our scooter, but despite the setbacks, this time was precious. The kids perfected their kayaking and became independent on the water, we enjoyed great food ( see our guide to Thai food here) and made new friends.
Fun in Bangkok on the Khao San Rd. We always enjoy Bangkok and for us just hanging out on the Khao San Rd. is a big part of that. It’s crazy, it’s wild and it’s fun!
Chilling on the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi. Staying on a very simple barge floating on the River Kwai was a blissful time, so relaxing. Again, great food and the war history in Kanchanaburi was really intense.
Travel Highlights – Laos
6 weeks in Laos. We are in love with Laos! We hope to go back again next year, lovely people, great food, stunning scenery and temples. Visit our Laos archives here.
Airboat Ride on the Everglades. This hour or so on the Everglades was incredible, it really stands out from all the things we did in the last year. I can’t say enough good things about it, read the post here.
Sunset Dinner on Key Largo. Beautiful Key Largo, a great meal, sunset, feeding the giant tarpon, good music and a glass or two of wine. This was heavenly. We don’t treat ourselves to fancy dinners very often, but this was so worth it. We’re big fans of Florida, more posts to come.
Travel Highlights – Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka We adore Sri Lanka, her people, beaches, food, wildlife, hills, trains, buses and culture. Explore Sri Lanka with us via our Sri Lanka home page. We spent a month there in 2013, we’ll certainly be back for more.
Travel Highlights – Malaysia
Legoland Malaysia We surprised ourselves with how much we enjoyed this one, it was a great family day out and our first Lego park experience.
Travel Highlights – Canada
Seeing Niagara Falls and Visiting Canada. We saw Niagara falls frozen solid in January as part of our Canada to Key West road trip. It was stunning. We only had 3 days in Canada but that was enough to be smitten. Seeing more of Canada is very high on our priority list.
Travel Highlights – USA
The Amish in Pennsylvania. A few things were on our wish list when we left Australia, visiting the Amish in Pennsylvania was one of them, we really enjoyed this part of the world and our Amish experiences didn’t disappoint.
Travel Highlights – Spain
The Dali Museum in Figueres Catalonia. Another place that was on our pre-trip wish list. This was my 3rd visit, the kids’ and chef’s first. We loved our day in Figueres and the Theatre Museum Dali was stunning.
Travel Highlights – UK
The UK, Wales at Christmas and now fabulous London.
An incredible day out at the FREE museum of Welsh life near Cardiff
Being away from home has made all our hearts grow fonder. We’ve loved coming back to the UK, Wales was stunning and now London. We’ll be in London with the kids for a while enjoying the free museums, gorgeous parks and immense history of the UK’s capitol. Lots more posts to come!
Was that what you expected? Are our travel highlights similar to yours? I’m actually surprised by all the western attractions in there, this year was supposed to be all about Asia but we somehow got sidetracked. Sometimes the best experiences happen by accident. Happy travels!
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About the author
Alyson Long
Alyson Long is a British medical scientist who jumped ship to chase dreams. A former Chief Biomedical Scientist at London's West Middlesex Hospital she started in website creation and travel writing in 2011.
Alyson is a full-time blogger and travel writer, a published author, and owns several websites. World Travel Family is the biggest.
A lifetime of wanderlust and over 6 years of full-time travel, plus a separate 12 month gap year, has given Alyson and the family some travel expert smarts to share with you on this world travel site.
Today Alyson still travels extensively to update this site and continue her mission to visit every country, but she's often at home on her farm in Australia.
Great site. My family & I have visited some of the same destinations so I was very interested to read your experiences.
Your blog is inspiring & I am looking forward to reading more as we begin our latest trip through the Far East & NE Australia on our way to New Zealand.
Hey Alyson,
What you have done is offer the world to your children, and they no doubt can benefit greatly from your amazing accomplishment. I commend you on your courage to just do it! Super fantastic journey!
Wishing you safe and happy travels,
Josie
A fantastic set of highlights, for sure! And yes, for a year that was going to be “all about Asia” you certainly got to a few places that are most certainly not in Asia! But breaking the plan is part of the fun.
Wow! Has it been a year already, that has flown by. We discovered your blog just after we decided to sell our house and head off ourselves, and we have LOVED following every minute of your journey. Watching your travels unfold, the highs and the lows and all the amazing experiences in between, has helped our confidence grow, and increased our excitement for all the possibilities that are out there for traveling families. Thank you so much, keep up the amazing work, and we hope to see you on the road one day 🙂
Fantastic year! Cheers to many more that make you just as happy. I am going to have to refer to this for places to stay, once we are in Southeast Asia.
So glad you did this with your family. We did it over 4 years and loved it. Guilty pleasure? Cruise ships are awesome, though we never went on one til we were done with our trip. Will you be writing a book?
Gran Canaria would be new to us! Yes, a lot, and I haven’t even mentioned some of the countries we visited. It’s the fun stuff that stands out when you’re travelling as a family, those crazy fun days where everyone laughs together.
Fantastic post! I can’t believe it has already been a year…?!? I love that the slow 6 wk stays in an idyllic countryside of southern Asia rate on the same list as Disney & Legoland parks for your kids.
Wow what an amazing year you guys have had. I am very very jealous! I am glad to see Sri Lanka made the list. We are hoping to make it there next year. In the meantime, hopefully we will be at Legoland in August so we can give that a go! Good luck for the next part of your “journey” in London.
Loved the list and seeing all the places our world has to offer. Drop me a line if you’d like to be a part of our podcast encouraging other families.
Great site. My family & I have visited some of the same destinations so I was very interested to read your experiences.
Your blog is inspiring & I am looking forward to reading more as we begin our latest trip through the Far East & NE Australia on our way to New Zealand.
An amazing year! I look forward to following you in your second year. Happy Travels!! 🙂
Hey Alyson,
What you have done is offer the world to your children, and they no doubt can benefit greatly from your amazing accomplishment. I commend you on your courage to just do it! Super fantastic journey!
Wishing you safe and happy travels,
Josie
A fantastic set of highlights, for sure! And yes, for a year that was going to be “all about Asia” you certainly got to a few places that are most certainly not in Asia! But breaking the plan is part of the fun.
What a year! So excited to have followed you through it. Congrats! Hope to meet you in the second year 🙂
Wow! Has it been a year already, that has flown by. We discovered your blog just after we decided to sell our house and head off ourselves, and we have LOVED following every minute of your journey. Watching your travels unfold, the highs and the lows and all the amazing experiences in between, has helped our confidence grow, and increased our excitement for all the possibilities that are out there for traveling families. Thank you so much, keep up the amazing work, and we hope to see you on the road one day 🙂
Fantastic year! Cheers to many more that make you just as happy. I am going to have to refer to this for places to stay, once we are in Southeast Asia.
So glad you did this with your family. We did it over 4 years and loved it. Guilty pleasure? Cruise ships are awesome, though we never went on one til we were done with our trip. Will you be writing a book?
Wow, you packed so many great places in. We particularly like the look of Laos. Asia is somewhere we’ve yet to get to.
Gran Canaria would be new to us! Yes, a lot, and I haven’t even mentioned some of the countries we visited. It’s the fun stuff that stands out when you’re travelling as a family, those crazy fun days where everyone laughs together.
Fantastic post! I can’t believe it has already been a year…?!? I love that the slow 6 wk stays in an idyllic countryside of southern Asia rate on the same list as Disney & Legoland parks for your kids.
I was surprised to read so many Florida locations on the list! I live here, so I guess I often take the state for granted. I loved reading the list!
Hi Lisa, us too, we surprised ourselves by being so crazy about Florida, it;s truly an incredible part of the world for so many diverse reasons.
i love you and love your adventures. so proud of you. gabi
Mwah!!! Gabi and all the Klafs!
Wow what an amazing year you guys have had. I am very very jealous! I am glad to see Sri Lanka made the list. We are hoping to make it there next year. In the meantime, hopefully we will be at Legoland in August so we can give that a go! Good luck for the next part of your “journey” in London.