We adored our visit to Vancouver a few years ago – the stunning scenery, the friendly locals, the whale watching – and it elicited a desire to explore even more of the incredible Canadian landscapes. We would return in a heartbeat. Disclosure: this post was commissioned by e-visa.co.uk (an online visa bureau).
Vancouver had always been our travel Avalon – a mystical dream that we never thought we would ever turn into reality.
We’ve all done it. Booked a crazy early flight, or a flight that lands so late that you’ll struggle to get the last train from Stansted Airport and across London to get home. It’s taken me years not to trust the ‘oh, it’ll be ok’ thought when booking and settle on one hotel where to stay near Stansted Airport.
I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to step off a plane late at night and walk through the foyer of the Hampton by Hilton hotel. Or, wake up early in the morning between the crisp, fresh sheets and meander over to the Airport check-in desks.
I wish my travel superpowers were awesome.
Gorgeous photo taken by the lovely Jess on Thames!
I would love to be able to time travel like Doctor Who (it would make living on the opposite side of the world SO much easier – I could pop to my Dad’s for a cuppa just as soon as he’s put the kettle on or as soon as the bacon & egg pie is out of the oven), I wish I could invisibly skip queues at popular events (though fast passes definitely help with *most* queues) and the ability to heal myself or my travel companion when we get sick on holiday (something which seems to be like the cruellest karmic torture) would be ace.
You know how you have Travel Dreams (the ones complete with capital letters) that you keep in your heart of hearts? Well, this one involves my passport, a reliable set of wheels and an enormous map of the States. One day, one day in the future we’d love to take a whole year off and pick up an RV or two as we travel on a USA road trip of a lifetime. Disclaimer: This post was commissioned by RVshare who are running an amazing Smoky Mountains RV trip giveaway – if you’re in the US, enter before the 1st July 2019!
It’s really difficult to pick only a few USA road trip highlights to fit into a single blog post – especially as a year would be an incredible amount of time to explore the continental US – so I’ve just selected a handful of the really meaningful things that we would love to see and do. They are mostly inspired by people that we adore, some of whom have hung out with me in London and shared some of their amazing homes with me via the medium of the internets. (You know who you are!)
Every journey begins with a single step – and if I’m entirely honest, this month’s travel linkup on green travel and being more sustainable was more of a challenge than usual. It’s never been the most important consideration when we’re planning travel – we can definitely do some work on that.
We try and do our very best on a human scale; we don’t own a car and use public transport when at home and travelling where possible (not to mention the wai-wai express – that’s walking to non-NZers), reduce/reuse/recycle as much as we possibly can, and we adopted a small wild animal into our home – who definitely has a zero carbon paw-print. (She’s also worn a bell for years to protect birds & local animals – now she’s a bit too old and lazy.)