Travel Stories

 

Why Lille is my kids' new favourite destination

After an extraordinarily exhausting week, last weekend we decided to do a weekend outside Brussels. I booked a hotel last minute -literally on Friday, after we decided that Lille would be our next destination. We wanted to go somewhere not too far, but we wanted to go some place we've never been before. Since we recently took the kids to Rotterdam's Oceanium and Amsterdam's zoo, we decided to drive the opposite side this time: France. Lille is only 130 km away... (read more)

 

7 Fun things to do in Rabat with kids

Our first-born had a one-week long carnival holiday at the end of February this year, and we thought we could go somewhere warmer than Belgium, so I started looking for (cheap) flights and ended up buying our tickets to Rabat. We knew we'd have fun there, but we didn't have any expectation. Two questions asked mostly when we told our friends about our plan were: "why would you go to Morocco with kids, isn't it unsafe there?" and "surely you'd be in some resort there?"... (read more)

5 day-trips with kids from Brussels (part one)-

One of the things we were most looking forward to when moving to Brussels was the fact that it's a really good base city for many day-trips. The city is surrounded by many other beautiful cities reachable within two-hour drive by car (or train, if you fancy). The obvious destinations from Brussels are Paris and Amsterdam, but we decided to first explore Belgian cities before going to the surrounding countries... (read more)

 

A little piece of heaven on earth

I had seen this place virtually so many times before. Travel blogs, sites, magazines, everywhere I looked, I'd end up reading about this place. Usually on some high ranked position in the list of "the most unique lodging" or "the best glamping place" sort of articles. Garden Village Bled, that's the name of the place. It's a small resort near Bled lake in Slovenia that offers unique lodging experience in pier tents on the river, tree-houses... (read more)

 

5 Tips for guilt-free mom trip (and London itinerary, too)

As we realized I was turning 30, my husband asked me what I was planning to do for my 30th birthday. I immediately said I'd like to go on a weekend trip, without him, without the kids. I might go alone, or I'd take friends along. Destination didn't really matter. At the time of my birthday, our firstborn was 4 and our younger just a little over 1. I immediately texted my good friend (I'd call her Poppy -although that's not... (read more)

Business trips are my vacation

It's pretty often when I see memes on my facebook timeline with similar phrases to "vacations with kids are basically business trip". And in my personal opinion, it's also the other way around: when you have kids, business trips are basically vacations. Well don't get me wrong, I enjoy traveling and vacationing with kids. As you might have noticed from my previous posts, we travel and vacation a lot with kids. However... (read more)

Cruising with little kids: Our story

Two years ago we planned to go on a cruise. After a couple of years of saving and planning, we booked to sail in late summer of 2016. But then I got pregnant with our youngest and we had to delay sailing until I give birth. We re-booked for late summer 2017 and we finally sailed last week with Costa Pacifica, with two little kids instead of one.The ship departs from Savona, Italy, 800km from Zagreb, where... (read more)

Our best family summer vacation: a camp!

Growing up, my husband's and my family were not camping families. We never stayed in a camp for a summer holiday. We had always stayed in a hotel, a hostel, or a private rented apartment. But both of us had always, always wanted to try camping for summer vacation. Now with two kids, for some (stupid) reason, we had been always delaying this plan. This summer finally we decided to at least try to be... (read more)

The kids' first festival

The whole idea of going to the festival was, of course, my husband's. He accidentally found out that one of his favorite bands during his adolescence, Ugly Kid Joe, was part of the three-day long "Beer and Flowers Festival" organized annually in Laško, a small town in Slovenia. Taking a toddler and a baby to a rock concert, although not mainstream, sounded acceptable to me. But taking them to a three-day... (read more) 

My first child-free trip in three years

"Did you write anything on your blog about China?" my husband asked me yesterday. "I didn't plan to, why?" I asked him back. "Well, because it's very interesting, I think it makes a good story". Then a friend texted me, one day after my arrival back to Zagreb (read: I was heavily jet-lagged and exhausted) to, literally, ask me to let my husband come to his place to drink, alone, and leave the kids with me, because... (read more) 

How I survive the trip of my life, on mother's day

The day of THE trip had come and the girls and I were heading home to Croatia from Indonesia. 11.000 km without my husband, just the kids (a three-year-old and a four-month-old) and I. On mother's day. Chances are, I'd never go alone with a toddler and a baby this far without my husband ever again, unless we get another child. We had to fly three times... (read more)

2 kids. 30 hours. 11,000 kilometers. A million memories.

This trip was nothing but boring. But then again, with us it's always about lots of surprises. The day we traveled to Indonesia (about the trip here) was the day the new Zagreb airport was opened for the first time for public. We expected chaos, confused staff, bad organization and surprises. Our flight was at 6:30pm and my husband had to work until 3:30pm, then he took a cab from work to home, picked us all home... (read more) 

Turin: Why you should visit it, and we should come back

When you think of Italy, you think of Rome. Venice. Florence. Probably Milan. No one thinks of Turin. Turin is underrated. Lots of people think it's just an ordinary industrial city. I did, too. And the city proved me wrong. There are tons of reasons why you should book your next Italian trip to Turin. For once, it was the first capital city of Italy. Yup, you probably didn't know that. (read more)

Postojna Cave: making a dark and cold cave child-friendly

My obsession with Postojna Cave started in 2010 when I moved to Croatia. Wherever I go and whenever I look in Croatia, there's advertisement of Slovenia's Postojna Cave. The worst thing was actually the fact that we didn't manage to visit the freaking cave since 2010. So when we finally did this trip, my husband made fun of me every single day for the week, sending me pictures to my cell and leaving me leaflets of the cave everywhere... (read more)

Slovenian coast: Ankaran, Izola, Portorož and Koper

Although we thought we're officially done with this year's summer vacation (read the post about our summer vacation here) now that we're in Ljubljana (read the post about the reason why we're in Ljubljana here) we decided to spend one weekend at the Slovenian coast. Slovenian coastline is only 43 kilometers long so we basically saw most of it in one weekend. It might be short... (read more)

The beginning of our Croatian National Parks tour -Krka

Last year my husband won two free tickets to enter Paklenica National Park. Sadly, we never managed to visit Paklenica until the end of the validity period of the tickets. As we're very sorry to never make it to visit Paklenica with the free tickets, we decided to commit ourselves to visit all eight National Parks of Croatia, at least one park in one year... (read more)

Eating Vienna, with a toddler

So my husband and I met when we took a Master study together in Nice, France, seven years ago. We both graduated in summer 2010 and are still in contact with some of the friends we studied with back then. Several months ago we agreed to all meet in Vienna for a weekend in July this year. Friends were coming from all over the world to meet up, so we decided to drive to Vienna for a weekend getaway... (read more)

Paris with a toddler

There are lots of "firsts" on our Paris trip this time. It's the first time my husband and I came back to Paris since baby, it's the first time babygirl flew on her own plane seat (no longer a lap child), and most importantly, it's the first time we travel without diapers (yup, she's potty trained, by herself).Unlike my previous Paris trips, this time we didn't have itinerary. We didn't have high expectation about our sightseeing coverage, and we didn't plan anything special to do and to see. Mostly because we had visited most of the things, been in most of the museums and climbed all things tall. Other reason was because we wanted babygirl to lead .. (read more)

Why child miles collection program is a good idea

If you fly frequently, whether for business or pleasure, you're probably familiar with miles collecting program. There are the ones that are provided by alliances that consist of many airline companies such as Miles and More program from Star alliances and Frequent flyer program from Skyteam... (read more)

Post holiday syndrome (Daycare problems!)

Baby girl started to go to the daycare right after her first birthday because my maternity leave ended on the day she turned one. I had to go back to work, and we didn't really have other choice except daycare. It took us two full weeks to get used to life in the daycare. She was still breastfeeding (she still is), and she spent her whole first year of life only with me, more or less. It's not that my husband didn't get involved with the upbringing... (read more)

The story about ER in Bali -Buy travel health insurance!

Being an Indonesian born, I never had the habit of buying travel health insurance. In the country where I was born, probably until recently, health insurance is an unknown concept for most of the people. The absence of an obligatory health insurance get the people used of the idea of sickness as a risk. If you get sick, you're going to need to pay... (read more)