Maybe it’s weird to start with a side note, but side note: I was looking through my pictures of our trip to England last year and I really liked this photo so I wanted to use it for this post. When I uploaded it, I saw that there’s a rainbow flag on top of that building. I didn’t even see that before. Go England!

Anyways, I told you guys that I (kind of) envied all those travel bloggers that don’t have a regular job, as traveling is their job. How amazing would that be? It got me thinking and I realized I don’t want that life (more about that later). But working doesn’t mean you can’t see the world. Okay, maybe you can’t go for a roadtrip through Australia for seven weeks, but you can travel and see the world. And this is how.

Go away for the weekend

I work four days, and my day off is usually on wednesday but I can change it if I want. Which is what I do if we want to get away. A lot of cities can be seen and experienced in a couple of days. You just have to pick where you want to go so you’re not rushing from one highlight to the other.

Last year, we went to see Venice. I worked monday till thursday and had my day off on friday. On thursday, when I was done working, I got home really fast, dropped our backpacks in the car (which is a bonus if you’re only going away for the weekend, you don’t have to bring much luggage) and drove to the airport. We were in Venice by midnight and it was raining, which was a wonderful romantic experience. We went to the hotel and the next day we had time to explore the city. On saturday, we went home again. It was a small trip but a terrific one. We had only one or two things we really wanted to do so we had enough time to just explore and enjoy.

We had sunday to relax and monday I started working again. Voila, a small trip without having to use any of my leave days at work! It’s that easy!
In other trips, we saw Dublin, York, and Paris in three days. We also did London in two days, but that was not such a good idea. I hadn’t been there before and I wanted to see all of the highlights. And London has a lot of them. It was a wonderful trip and we saw a lot, but we literally had to run from Buckingham Palace to Victoria Station to catch our bus back, and that was not so much fun. For London I would recommend a few more days than two, but for many cities, a weekend is just enough time to broaden your horizons. And if you have missed something, what’s the harm in going back for a second (or third, or fourth) time?

You don’t have to travel far away

Why do you like to travel? Do you want to get away as far as possible or do you want to see the world, experience new things, try new food and see new places? For me, it’s the latter. But do I have to get on an airplane to be able to do that? Why not search for the beauty in my own country and visit cities I’ve never been before?

Try to see what’s around you. Look for museums in your city or nearby cities, or try to google ‘most amazing places to visit in <typ your own country here>’. You’d probably be surprised to see what there is to see. For example, I live in the Netherlands and have never really thought of it as a beautiful country. But it has its perks. We have beautiful museums, some awesome castles and some lovely cities. I’ve been making a list of all the things I want to see and do in my own country, and most things are only an hour (or maybe two hours) away. You don’t need always need to go far away to see beautiful new things.