We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us
Hi guys! It’s been a while since I posted anything. So much has changed. I’m married now! My wedding was absolutely amazing and the most perfect day ever ♥ Two days later, we were on a cruise exploring the baltic sea. We have visited Oslo, Kopenhagen, Stockholm and many more beautiful cities, and of course, I’ll tell you all about them later. Right now, I’m quite busy with work and other exciting plans, but stay tuned 🙂
Happy New Year! I don’t know about you guys, but I am ready for a new start. 2022 is going to be amazing! So far, I already have some trips scheduled and it will also be the year of my wedding! I cannot wait ♥ Time to make a wishlist for 2022 of all the places I want to visit!
I talked about it already, but 2022 will be the year where I’ll get married and I am super excited, both for our wedding and our amazing honeymoon we’ve planned. We are going on a cruise!
Maybe not really traveling, but more along the lines of doing things in my own country, we have booked a private spa for my birthday, which is also something that I’m really looking forward to!
The vouchers we received when our trip to Iceland was cancelled due to the pandemic, are still lying in wait. Hopefully 2022 will be the year to use them, otherwise it will be 2023, which is when they expire…
We also already made plans to visit Disneyland again this year!
I would also really like to visit the UK this year, as we weren’t able to do so last year.
No definite plans yet, but I’d love to see Berlin. I haven’t been there before, but it isn’t that far away, so maybe I can manage to visit the city for a weekend in the coming year.
That is all for now. What are your travel plans in 2022?
Hi everyone! I hope you all had a very happy Christmas! As the new year is approaching, I’d like to look back at 2021. Just as last time, this year was different than we’d all hoped and expected. It’s easy to focus on the negative but I want to look at the positive things. Because a lot of good did happen this year for me and there was room to travel. It was a difficult year in some ways but there were also some events that I can happily look back on. Getting engaged was definitely the highlight of my year and I can surely say that my wedding will be one of the highlights for 2022!
Travelwise, there were still some really cool trips that I took. Time for an overview!
We had booked a tiny house called a Star Cubicle for a weekend in Januari. The idea was lovely, unplugging on the countryside, going on walks, visit the city of Ootmarsum, eating marshmallows by the fire, and watch the stars from our bed, as the tiny house had a glass dome on the roof. Two unexpected things happened this weekend. First, we didn’t see any stars because it was snowing (which doesn’t really happen a lot in my country) and secondly, I got engaged! Boyfriend asked me when we got home but the memory is still linked with this getaway ♥
A couple of months later, we went on another trip in our own country, namely a weekend getaway to the beach near Amsterdam: Zandvoort, where we also saw some tulip fields and tried to find some deer. It wasn’t the most exciting location for a getaway, but it was lovely and we had a great time.
I’ve wanted to do a yoga retreat for quite some time now, so last year, I thought, I’m just going to sign up for one! It got postponed again and again, but finally, in the summer of 2021, I was able to go. It was in my own country, not too far from my house, but it was a whole new experience for me. I wrote a very long blog about it, take a read if you haven’t yet!
When summer came, the lockdowns were over and we were free to go. Since covid started, I’ve been dying to visit Nice again and when the time came, we could finally go. We set out on a roadtrip, but had a stopover in Dijon before we headed towards the sea. Dijon was another really lovely city, with a whole different vibe than Nice.
Nice was amazing. The weather was fantastic, the sea as blue as it could be and we had an amazing time. We went to the beach, explored Cimiez Hill and got locked in a couple of times…
Unfortunately, the trip I had been looking forward to for years, was cut short due to some family circumstances. So we couldn’t stay as long as we had wanted. But that just meant that we could go back a month later, when the weather was even better and the sun was shining fiercely, and we the ocean was at the best possible temperature.
We were still able to do all the things we had wanted, like visit the old city, Castle Hill, Palais Lascaris, Museum Mamac and just spending some time relaxing. It was amazing and even though I now have been in this city twice this year, I still want to go back!
Because two times France in one year isn’t enough, we also went to Paris this year to shop for wedding rings! What better city to buy them in? And we decided to go for the weekend, so we could also do some sightseeing by night and visit the Louvre!
We also had some days out where we did fun things. We saw deer in Amsterdam, went to Delft and Breda, took a walk with alpaca’s, saw Bob Ross’ art and a lot of birds.
Travelwise, it was a pretty good year, still. I didn’t do all the things I had wanted. We didn’t really visit Belgium or Germany, or the United Kingdom, but we did go to Nice twice and visited Paris. Hopefully, next year will be filled with even more adventure!
In earlier posts about my upcoming wedding and honeymoon, I have written about looking for a destination. After a thorough brainstorm and research we landed on Australia as the perfect place to spend some quality time together after our wedding. But, 2021 wouldn’t be 2021 if covid wouldn’t interfere. Australia is closed off to tourists and we’re afraid the country won’t open in time. Also, a honeymoon should be, in our opinion, a time to rest and spend time together, and not a constant worry about having to quarantine and wondering if we will be able to get in or out of the country.
So sadly, the Australia trip is yet another one we have to postpone. I was really looking forward to it, but the stress of it all is just not worth it. Planning a wedding in covid times is stressful enough as it is.
But what then?
We started googling honeymoons – again, and though we would love to find a destination far away, it’s just not smart at this time. So we wanted something closer to home, but still something that we wouldn’t ordinarily do for a regular vacation. It needed to be something special. Something exclusive. And we found something that is absolutely perfect…
If you want to do something exclusive and luxurious, a cruise is perfect, if you ask me. I’ve never done something like this before (which is very understandable if you find out what this costs…). But it’s perfect. You have the thrill of traveling to different places, without the downside of public transportation and carrying your luggage around. You just take your bed, bath and restaurants with you!
It sounds amazing. The ship has several restaurants and bars with live music, a spa, a casino and a swimming pool (a swimming pool on a boat is something that my brain can’t quite capture…). If anything is luxurious, it’s this.
I for one, can’t wait. Have you ever done a cruise before?
When you get engaged, there’s quite a lot of planning that needs to be done and things you need to think about. One such thing is the wedding rings. There are many jewelry stores that offer wedding rings and most of them look a lot alike. As is often the case with wedding rings. I keep saying that, for a lot of people, if they were to take off their rings and put them on a table with a bunch of other people’s rings, none of them would recognize their own ring anymore.
And I don’t want that. I want something fun and unique, but also not too expensive as I would feel very uncomfortable wearing them. It was kind of a pickle.
We have been searching for rings for quite some time, but never found any that felt like us. Until, somehow, I stumbled upon the website of Edenly. A French boutique that sells not-that-expensive but gorgeous and original rings. We could easily pick out what we liked from the website and order them online.
But where’s the fun in that?
For our anniversary, we usually book a trip to celebrate. We went to Venice in 2018, the German Eifel in 2019 and in 2020 Covid hit so we had to stay home. This year, it was the same story and we couldn’t go anywhere. So we were thinking to maybe celebrate our 7,5 year anniversary instead of our 7 years with a trip. And though we were thinking to visit Vienna, a new city, we rather opted for a city that we already knew, so we wouldn’t have to spend too much time planning.
And as the one and only Edenly Boutique happened to be in Paris, the decision was easily made to celebrate our anniversary in the city. It was perfect.
The Edenly Boutique is small and has a lot of charm. It was a perfect little haven. The women in the store were really sweet and showed us a lot of rings for us to try on. After trying a couple, I put one on that I had already seen on the website and it clicked. This was MY ring and I didn’t want to take it off anymore (except for that it wasn’t my size and probable a dummy, but whatever). It was perfect! I’m so glad we went to Paris to check out the rings!
Boyfriend didn’t have an immediate click, as the one he had had in mind, didn’t look that great on his finger. He tried some others and found another beautiful ring he was really happy with.
We found wedding rings in the city of love. Could it have been more perfect? They are ordered and should be here before Christmas. I for one, cannot wait ♥
In an earlier post I told you about our wedding plans and the first search for our honeymoon. When asked the question: if you had a million euros to spend on your wedding, what would you spend it on, my answer came quickly: a trip around the world for a honeymoon. Of course, we don’t have that kind of money so it’s not an option, but it did put things into perspective. The honeymoon will be an important part of our wedding. I am not surprised. Traveling the world has always been my dream and what better excuse to fly to the other side of the world than to celebrate our love?
We did a lot of searching for the perfect location. I bought Lonely Planet’s Honeymoon Handbook which came in very handy, as we had absolutely no idea of where we’d wanted to go, only places we didn’t want to. But I read the entire book, jotted down the places that sounded most interesting and then gave the book to my fiancé, so he could read it too. He just looked at my list and narrowed it down to three locations:
Firstly, we decided we wanted to go to New Zealand. We hadn’t made the decision official but every time we thought about it, New Zealand seemed perfect. I have already done a thorough search of authors from the area and books that are set there as well.
But then a colleague of mine told me that if we wanted to go in may, it would be autumn in New Zealand. And when we googled what the weather would be like, we saw that it would be a meager 10 degrees celcius. Yikes. I want to spend time on the beach, swimming, enjoying the sun and with this weather, that was just not gonna happen.
So, we crossed out New Zealand and then there were two. We googled for a bit but it wasn’t a hard decision. One just sounds way more appealing.
Now the actual planning can finally begin. We will go for about three weeks so we really have to cut down what we wanna see. I already asked the question on my Instagram what I should definitely see, and got some amazing responses, such as Whitsunday Islands and the Red Center. It all looks so dreamy! I am currently going through my own books to see what the best spots for Australia are. I’ve made an excel sheet of all the areas and now I’m jotting down the amazing sights we wanna see. Hopefully, one or two areas will stand out and we can make our choice. For now, the Whitsunday Islands took my breath away, so I’m thinking starting there, in Queensland, see the great barrier reef, renting a camper to drive along the coast, visit the Koala Hospital from which I adopted a koala bear last year with the heavy forest fires and then drive towards Sydney, learn to surf at Bondi Beach and see the sunrise and the Opera House.
I cannot wait!
Hey guys! How are you doing? I hope everyone is well and getting vaccinated soon! I cannot wait until the world opens up again and we can do all the things we love so much: see our friends and family, travel, go to restaurants and museums… For now, we in the Netherlands are still in lockdown, and it’s harder and harder to stay sane and happy. I can imagine I’m not the only one feeling like this, so today I wanted to write on how you can survive this lockdown if it’s getting hard on you.
Continue reading “Ten Tips on How to survive this lockdown” For those of you who don’t follow me on instagram (you should!), or who just missed it: I have some big news:
Remember our weekend away to Twente where we slept under the stars that were covered by clouds? Boyfriend had planned to propose to me there. Unfortunately, because of the clouds, it wasn’t as romantic as he’d hoped, so instead he did it when we were home. It was the cutest thing and the ring is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It’s gonna be tough to find a matching wedding band that I love just as much 😀
Anyways, butterflies aside for a moment, we’re currently really busy planning our wedding. We have more than a year, but because of covid, three wedding seasons (who knew there was such a thing as a wedding season?) are to be squeezed into one: the summer of 2022. So some things have to be booked fast. Or at least, that is what I tell myself and everyone around me, but I’m actually just really excited by all of it that I can’t stop planning 🙂
We have a date, a location, some photographers that we like and we are talking to a band that we really love. There is so much more to do and one of those things is of course: The Honeymoon! What wanderluster would I be if i didn’t start early with thinking/dreaming/planning about our honeymoon?
And that’s the thing. I have no idea where I wanna go, and Boyfriend Fiancé doesn’t have any plans either. What we want is a combination of culture and nature, which is what we always want, and I would really love to spend some time on a beach. Also, we don’t want to have a location that is too cliché, so at least it won’t be:
I’m thinking maybe New Zealand or Canada. or Australia. I have the feeling that this should be a special place where you wouldn’t go very soon, or at least some place you haven’t been before. I always love Italy and Greece also seems amazing, but I think I wanna do something special. Or at least be able to check off some items of my bucketlist.
The search continues! I’ll keep you posted 🙂
Where would your ultimate honeymoon take place?
Happy last day of the year! Tomorrow, a new year starts and we will be able to open a whole new book with empty pages, screaming to be filled with the greatest travel adventures. Though covid is far from over, the vaccinating progress has started in a lot of countries which means that we can see the end of it. Maybe it’s a bit too optimistic to talk about the travels for 2021, but sometimes we all need a little bit of optimism, am I right?
Anyhoo, I have planned two weekends away already and made some plans for the rest of the year. I hope they will all work out…
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Wanderlust Wonderland 