Tag: How To

Categories
Musings

How To Travel With Your Sibling

How To Travel With Your Sibling
 

Travelling with siblings can be awesome if you get on well with each other. Having lived with each other for such a long period of time as children, now that you’ve both grown up you know each other’s likes and dislikes, and when you each need your space. Since they care about you, they’ll be considerate of what you want from your vacation time (and vice versa). And they’ll be there to reminisce with once the holiday’s over.

I’ve been on two trips with my brother over the years: a visit to Belgium, France, and the UK in 2014, and a trip to the US and Ireland in 2016. Though I initially had some concerns about how well we’d travel together before we left for our trip in 2014, it all turned out well, and we’re even throwing around some ideas about doing a road trip of Scandinavia in 2018!

However, no matter how well you get on with each other, and how well you think you know your sibling, there are still a few things you should do in order to make sure the trip is memorable for all the right reasons:

The Planning Stages

So you’ve decided to go travelling with your family. What do you need to do to get organised?

Decide where you want to go

Perhaps the most obvious place to start would be deciding where you’d like to go. This could take some time, especially if you’ve both got long bucket lists of dream destinations. Find places you both want to go to, or work together to find some inspiration for destinations you both want to travel to.

Work out your Must-Do list

Once you’ve agreed on your destination, take the time to separately write down a list of what you would like to do and see at each place.

After you’ve each compiled your lists, compare them. Some things may be the same. If so, great! Add them in to your itinerary as they are important to both of you. If there are things that are different, and it’s not something you’re remotely interested in, compromise. Maybe when they go and do that, you’ll do something else on your list that they don’t particularly want to see.

While You’re There

So you’ve packed your bags, arrived at your destination and checked in to your accommodation. Excellent! Now how do you make sure everything runs smoothly from here?

Give each other space

When I’m visiting a city, I love to discover it’s history, and explore the heritage buildings, whereas my brother loves to hit the shops in the hope of finding something he can’t buy back home.

While I can spend part of my holiday shopping, and he can spend part of his time learning more about the history and culture of the destination we’re visiting, we get drained if we spend too much time on the thing the other person loves.

Therefore, we accept that we’re interested in seeing different things, and plan out our travelling days so that we’re together for the sights we both want to see, but also allow for time to split up and fulfill our own wish lists. Doing this also stops us from getting tired of being around each other 24/7.

Compromise

Compromise is important when you’re travelling with other people. If you chose the restaurant you all ate at last night, perhaps tonight it’s the other person’s choice. Though you may not have as much freedom to do whatever you like when you’re with someone else as you do when you’re travelling solo, letting someone else choose may lead you to discover something fantastic that you wouldn’t have chosen yourself.

Don’t hold grudges

Nothing ruins a holiday faster than if you harbour regrets or antagonism towards the person you’re travelling with. On our recent visit to New York, my brother would stay up late and sleep in until lunch time, whereas I’d wake up in time to see the sunrise and want to start exploring. Instead of hanging around waiting for him to be ready, I went for morning walks by myself (avoiding the famous landmarks we both wanted to see), and therefore got to see Lincoln Centre, spend time in Greenwich Village, and explore the city on my own terms. If I hadn’t done this, I would have been angry at him for what I saw as wasting precious travel time. If something doesn’t go the way you wanted it to, either accept it or find a way to work around it. Don’t let your attitude ruin your holiday.

Hopefully these tips help get you in the right frame of mind when you’re travelling with your brother/s or sister/s! If you have any other tips you would like to share, feel free to write them in the comment section below.

And just before you go: today is my brother’s birthday! He has his own YouTube channel and vlogged our trip to the US and Ireland (blog posts to come soon!) last year. Check the vlogs out below for some travel inspiration!

New York

The Republic of Ireland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6gINn5peIQ

Northern Ireland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QtEOAF29vY

Categories
Travel Plans

How to Choose Your Next Adventure

How to Choose Your Next Adventure
 

It’s the start of 2017 and you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to ‘travel more’. However, there are so many places you could go in the world – 193 countries spread over seven continents – how do you choose where to go?

From other people’s travels

Have you started back at work this week only to hear about the great trip your colleague took over the holidays? Are you drooling over a location on your Instagram feed? Does one of your friends constantly talk of how great their recent vacation was?

Sometimes the best destinations come from the recommendations of others. Iceland didn’t become a must-see destination for me until it seemed like everyone I met during my travels had visited and loved it. Now it’s one of my favourite places in the world. My decision to go to Canada last year was made partly because of the stories my parents told me of their trip there, and partly because of the amazing photos I’d see on the Internet (yes, it really does look like that over there!).

Moraine Lake
Moraine Lake in Alberta, Canada. (Make sure you take the path up to the top of the Rockpile when visiting. There’s a lot of steps to climb but the view is absolutely worth it!)

From your favourite book

Whether fiction or non-fiction, some books describe a place in so much detail that we long to visit for ourselves. You could also flick through travel magazines at your local newsagency, or drop into the library and look through the travel guides for inspiration on where to travel in 2017.

From your favourite movie or TV show

How many Harry Potter fans have planned to visit Platform 9 3/4 in King’s Cross station, or to see the “Harry Potter bridge” in Scotland (otherwise known as the Glenfinnan Viaduct)?

Since movies and TV shows are so visual, their locations capture our attention and make us think “I’d love to go there!”. From visiting Sycamore Gap where a scene from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was filmed, to the locations in the Isle of Skye and Iceland that were featured in Stardust, movie filming locations are often the inspiration for my travel plans!

The Quiraing on the Isle of Skye
The Quiraing on the Isle of Skye: one of the locations for the movie Stardust

From your childhood dreams

Remnants of memories from when you were little could inspire you to re-visit that beach your family always went to during the summer. Or you could visit the real-world equivalents of the fairytales your parents read to you at night: the stories of Sleeping Beauty, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the Three Musicians of Bremen and the Goose Girl come alive along Germany’s Fairytale Route. Then there’s one of the biggest childhood dreams of all: a trip to Disneyland!

Throw a dart at a globe

Just want to get away? Close your eyes and point at a random spot on the map, and see how that location makes you feel. If your first location doesn’t excite you, you could always try it a second time and see if you are more inspired by your second choice!

Follow your heart

Sometimes you just feel like going to a place without really knowing why. Something about the culture, history or ambience of the location calls out to you. Permit yourself to follow your heart – it won’t lead you astray!

Categories
France

Where to buy the Paris Museum Pass

Where to buy the Paris Museum Pass

If you’re heading to the City of Light this July, you might have heard of the Paris Museum Pass – a multi-day pass giving you entry (and in some places the ability to bypass the queues) to more than sixty museums, art galleries, and monuments in and around Paris.

While you can buy it online, if you’re anything like me, you might not make up your mind about the Paris Museum Pass until after your plane has landed at Charles de Gaulle. If you find yourself in Paris before you’ve had a chance to order a pass online, should you rush out to get it? And where can you get your hands on one when you’re on the ground in Paris?

Is the Paris Museum Pass worth it?

Before buying the Pass, make sure you will get value for money. If you’re not going to save money by getting the Pass, then perhaps buying tickets at each of the museums that you visit is a better option for you. For a guide on how I spent my time in Paris using a four-day Museum Pass, see the following posts:

Where can I buy the Paris Museum Pass?

You can buy the Paris Museum Pass online, or according to the Paris Museum Pass website it can be bought at the ticket desk of most museums.

I have purchased the Paris Museum Pass twice, and both times I waited until I was in Paris. I have bought it from:

  • From the tourist information stand in front of Notre Dame de Paris. In July 2012 I purchased a Paris Museum Pass from a tourist information stand outside of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. The stand might only be set up during the peak tourist season – when I returned to Paris in November it wasn’t there.
  • From the Museum’s membership centre on the Allée du Grand Louvre. We tried buying a pass from the Louvre ticket desk, and they sent us to the membership centre, in between the large pyramid and the Galerie du Carrousel arcade. They also offer Friends of the Louvre memberships here, if you think you’ll come back to the Louvre often.

Have you bought the Paris Museum Pass? Where did you buy it from? Did you think it was worth it? Let us know in the comments!