PJ's travel blog: It's a Small World After all !

Hello!

Here's my feeble attempt at a travel blog. Troy is really the solid writer in our family but I'll give this a go and see if I can make it make some sense; at least to me if nobody else.

So we like to travel. This obsession started when we were young. Troy first caught the travel bug as a teenager when he'd accompany his grandma on trips around the world.

For me, it came a few years later when I began flying the friendly skies.

Eventually we were married and found ourselves living on my tiny income, with him in school full time. But we had unlimited travel benefits, compliments of United Airlines. We began creating little travel adventure trips. It was cheap to get there and back but everything in the middle wasn't always so cheap. With much research, we found lots of ways to cut corners and save money. For example, our first big trip was three weeks in Europe with backpacks. Staying in youth hostels was even out of our budget so we would sleep in trains each night. We had an unlimited Eurail pass that allowed us unlimited train rides. We literally zig zagged our way through Europe for 3 weeks. Each day, we'd look at the train schedule and find a destination about 9 hours away and that's where we'd go.

Food is another expense that will eat through your budget quickly. Sharing baguettes of bread, shopping at markets, and refilling our water bottles in all of the many public fountains helped us keep that cost down.

That first grand adventure ignited a spark that would lead to many more adventures; some with our children, some without.

We've learned to pack light. Extremely light. Basically we just take a backpack or a backpack sized suitcase on wheels. It's amazing how much stuff you don't need. Seeing people, mostly Americans, drag multiple giant suitcases over cobblestone streets is pretty comical. Escalators are not very common outside the US; schlepping bags up and down staircases is bound to put anyone in a bad mood. It's just not necessary or practical. Packing light is a very freeing concept.