Tag: Travel Posts

I realized this morning that I haven’t really given an update since I was smack-dab in the middle of our lockdown here in Spain. Most of us here spent 98 days essentially locked up in our apartments, only venturing outside to quickly get some groceries or to go to a pharmacy. It was one of the most intense and invasive lockdowns of any country anywhere, and many people here really struggled to cope with it. While I didn’t mind being at home, especially since I had many renovation projects on the go, the inability to even go for a walk […]

In about ten days I’ll be jumping in the vehicle with my girlfriend and driving across North America, yet again. We moved out to Ontario last year from the British Columbia-area to spend a year in Hamilton, and were forced to do the drive in four days due to commitments that were waiting for us. Thankfully we are going to do the drive back in about nine days, which should be a lot more enjoyable. This is actually my fourth time moving across the country, and I’ve done this song and dance enough times that I thought I would give […]

As much as I love travelling to new places, you’ll often hear me complaining about how much I dislike the process of travelling – the airports, customs line-ups, security line-ups, crappy airport food, turbulence, jet-lag and many more. For new travellers, these things are somewhat exciting in their own right, but after a while they grow old and tiring. With that in mind, I was recently reading Anthony Bourdain’s travel tips via a link on Facebook (most of which are great) and thought I would follow up with a point-by-point comparison of some of my tips. The first thing I […]

One of the first things I did when I committed myself to travelling around the world was to set up a blog. Indeed, I recently just assisted two other people in getting theirs up, one for a trip around the world, and one for a yearly RV trip down to Arizona. This post will give you easy instructions for how to set up a blog using WordPress. Part of the motivation I find with most people is the desire to share some of their experiences, both positive and negative, with others. Since so much of travel research is done these […]

I started my long-term travel adventures in January of 2011, almost 2.5 years ago. Looking back, I really had no idea how the airline systems worked: I wasn’t really collecting any sort of air-miles, didn’t know how to fly for free, nor was I trying to get to any type of elite status (I didn’t even really know how to be honest). After 2.5 years though, I’ve finally hit my travel groove. So lately I’ve been dedicating efforts towards taking advantage of some of the cracks in the system to make the most of my travel adventures and to fly […]

There are a few privileged travelers that you encounter from time to time who don’t really seem to have any sort of budget. Often they have saved for several years and intend to continue traveling until it simply runs out. But for the rest of us, traveling for more than a week or two often means that we have to stick to a pre-defined budget for a particular trip. I know personally that spending money is the one main aspect of traveling that causes me stress, more so than worrying about theft or how to get to and from places. […]

Whenever a person goes to a new destination, one of the first things they need to decide is what they are going to bring. And for most people, that depends on the duration of the trip and likely how far they will be traveling. If I go anywhere for a month or more, I often take one of my larger suitcases to minimize laundry. I figure since I am allowed to check a bag on the plane, I may as well take advantage of it. And since I usually rent a full apartment in a new location, I have room […]

In the movie The Hunt For Red October the Russian submarine captains use a technique called a Crazy Ivan by the Americans. Basically every once and a while the Russian captains will make the submarine do a complete circle, startling any potential followers behind them. Unless the other submarine is extremely careful, the Crazy Ivan is meant to detect them since it will likely catch them by surprise. I have a similar technique I use for keeping safe while traveling, in that every so often, usually every few minutes, I do a full scan of everything and everyone around me. […]

If you travel outside of North America you’ll quickly realize just how different we do things with regards to power. First, power in North America is typically around 110V, but can range from around 100V all the way up to around 125V. In Europe and many other parts of the world, a voltage of around 220V is normal. In the old days, prior to intelligent power adapters, if you plugged a device designed for 110V into a wall socket wired for 220V, you could pretty much kiss that device goodbye as it would likely fry with a puff of smoke. […]

Last month I blogged the first part in my ongoing series in how to make money from a travel blog. You can read How to Make Money from a Travel Blog: Part One here. Basically my goal has been to find a way to make a modest amount of money from my website so that I can offset some of the rather large expenses I incur while travelling around the world. While I’ve become quite adept at finding good deals, airfare and hotels are still expensive. So I set out with a rather modest goal of trying to make an […]