Planning

When you head out on a long-term trip, every single person you meet will ask you what your favorite experience has been. We have been asked this question hundreds if not thousands of times, and for several months it was very hard to answer as we have had just too many great experiences to pick the very best.

As a way to share our favorite experiences and give you inspirations for activities to do on your own long-term trip, we decided to put together a ranked list of our Top 10 experiences, destinations, restaurants, and moments from around the world.

When reading, keep in mind that we haven’t been everywhere. This list represents our favorite experiences, from all of the destinations we’ve been to, and will be updated as we travel more and find great experiences that make the Top 10.

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For the first route change of our year-and-a-half long trip, we were hit with a big one.

Just a few weeks before heading to Egypt a new batch of protests began. These protests were not like the previous ones, and I had a horrible feeling that our plans were about to change.

Within days of the protests, the US government released warnings to avoid travel to Egypt as well as a “global warning” that was mainly focused on travel to the Middle East.

After discussing it with a friend who was coming to visit us in Egypt, we decided to change our plans.

We had one problem: Angie and I had already booked $857 worth of non-refundable plane ticket from Expedia for an itinerary of Istanbul to Cairo (Egypt Air),  Cairo to Istanbul (Egypt Air), and Istanbul to Bucharest (Tarom).

Not resigning ourselves to lose that money, our quest to cancel our Expedia itinerary and get a refund began.

If you find yourself in a similar scenario, you may need to try one of the following methods to get a refund for your non-refundable plane ticket.

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I never really fancied myself much of a shopper. I like to think that I do not value things- I like experiences, and generally feel very minimalist at home. But when it comes to traveling, some of that logic goes out the window.

This started on my very first overseas trip when I accidentally started buying a shot glass and a display piece from every country I visited. That trend has continued, and now I have roughly 82 shot glasses and some form of art from almost every country I’ve visited (even if, as of right now, I still don’t actually have my shot glasses out on display).

But over time, we have become quite the shoppers when we travel, and we have expanded our shopping purchases to include food items (ones that can travel, at least), wine and spirits, rugs and blankets, and more. If we can have our house decorated with travel memories and our pantry stocked with international food? Well, that’s almost an experience on its own.

So, we shop- a lot. We didn’t realize just how much we shop when traveling until a friend commented that our shopping was effectively “goals”, and since then, we’ve had many inquiries about how we can pack just so much in our suitcases without having to mail boxes.

In this one, we wanted to share our secrets.

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If you are able to work remotely, odds are good you’ve thought about taking a workcation.

Workcations are often the best of all worlds. You get to work in a cool destination, enjoy the area in your free time, and do it all with little (if any!) paid time off.

But planning a workcation isn’t quite like planning a regular trip. There are a number of special considerations you will want to keep in mind for your work. So in this one, we thought we’d share some of our best tips to get the best out of your workcation!

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