Lisbon, Ljubljana, Tallinn, Berlin… This month our heads are spinning with potential digital nomad destinations in Europe as we try to choose the perfect base to work from this autumn. With that in mind, this week we met up with our friend Alyson from World Travel Family, who was our Airbnb host at the very start of our 2013 trip in Port Douglas, Australia. At the time, Alyson was getting ready to travel the world with her husband and two boys and now runs hugely successful travel and homeschool blogs while exploring from a new base: Romania. So, what’s life in Romania like and how does the country shape up as a digital nomad destination?
It’s six am and a cat is prodding me. Now, I can hear the dogs rucking around downstairs followed by the insistent snorting of pigs in the garden. Yes, pigs. Welcome to our first London house sit of the summer! We’ve taken up temporary residence in a beautiful, leafy part of west London that we’d never in a million years be able to afford to really live in. Have I mentioned how much we love house sitting?
Want to know one of my biggest travel oversights? I’ve never been to Paris. Although it lies just across the channel from the UK and I’ve visited France many times, I’ve just never made it to the iconic capital. Since we’ll be heading back from Prague to the UK for Christmas, could this be the year when I finally get to fulfil my Paris wish list?
We’ve stayed in some pretty special places while travelling, including a boat on the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, a wood cabin in Maine and a chic apartment in Chiang Mai. When it comes to fancy accommodation though, Sri Lanka wins hands down. We started our trip with a stay in a secluded jungle hideaway and continued with perhaps our most lavish hotel experience ever at the Theva Residency.
How much does it cost to go to Everest Base Camp? Sure, trekking to the highest mountain in the world doesn’t come cheap, but if you hike independently and without a porter like we did, it doesn’t have to break the bank either. From $2 per night accommodation to £100 hiking shoes, here’s our two-week Everest Base Camp trek cost breakdown.
After a tranquil stay in our jungle hideaway, Kandy was an assault on the senses. Cars and colourful tuk tuks choked the roads as our driver stuttered through the modern centre of Sri Lanka’s second-largest city. Although the streets were crammed with people and noise, they were also surrounded by forested mountains and in the distance, Kandy Lake lay sparkling like a jewel in the city’s heart.
Are you planning to take on Nepal’s most famous trek to see the world’s mightiest mountain? Then trust me, you’re in for one hell of an adventure. Our journey to Everest Base Camp turned out to be one of our most incredible, challenging travel experiences to date. Before you begin, check out this Everest Base Camp trek itinerary we used during our epic hike.
Hello from a very uncharacteristically warm UK! In fact, news channels have been declaring that we’re in the midst of a heat wave (or at least we were last week when I drafted this post). As always, it’s good to return to The Island for our annual summer visit, but future travels are never far from our minds. So, what are our plans for the rest of the year?
There are some trips that work best as unplanned, spontaneous adventures, but trekking to Everest Base Camp isn’t one of them. We did some serious planning for our epic hike and spent hours researching gear, routes and costs before we even set foot in Nepal. As we wanted to trek independently without a porter, we knew we’d have to carry every item on our backs, each painful step of the way. So what did we take with us? Here’s a look at our Everest Base Camp Packing list.