About
Travel notes, food and more
We are a family couple travelling around Europe and other parts of the world since 1997. Although we live in Dorset, England now, we have lived in quite a few other places before – Latvia, Scotland and a little bit in Morocco. This blog, I call it Travel Notes, is about travel, food and more, which means it is not only about sightseeing, hiking and similar activities; it is also about the culture of places we visit, habits of local people and their lifestyle, including food, traditions etc.
There are so many beautiful places out there and, sometimes, only local people are able to tell you where to go and what to do. Those destinations often are away from usual tourist routes and cannot be found reading general travel guides.
As it appears, even in such places travellers may find exciting attractions, convenient hotels or guest houses and comfortable camping sites. What we get in return is a relaxed way of living and a real opportunity to feel free and enjoy the way we wish to live – no rush, no stress and only our choice of priorities. As much as possible, I am providing practical information and travel tips for particular areas. Initially, we started our journeys and drove all the way from our host country, Latvia at that time. However, later we started using airlines to get closer to our destination and continuing our trip using locally rented cars or public transport.
Many of our destinations are related to hiking and climbing in national parks and mountains, visiting nature preserves and exciting objects listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Often, we choose to book self-catering apartments to be independent of scheduled catering and to be able to enjoy food you can get in local grocery shops or food markets.
Individually planned trip around Europe or anywhere else is an amazing opportunity to choose your own destination, places to visit and time to spend for every place you choose. This travel blog offers short guides related to European and other destinations. I hope it will help you to plan your own holiday or weekend trips to enjoy exciting places wherever you choose to go.
Planning trips
A little bit about our travel destinations here. So far, we have visited some fifty different countries and two states in the USA since 1997. Of course, there are many more we would like to visit, however, that is what we were able to afford timewise taking into consideration that both we are working full time. It means we tend to arrange shorter trips two or three times per year.
A couple of times we were able to go on a trip, which lasted from three weeks to almost two months – those were to France, Japan and South-East Asia. Living in different countries, for example, Scotland and England, we have been exploring those countries much more of course. So there may be many more blog entries dedicated to some particular countries – this started in summer 2020 and is all now in progress.
It usually takes quite a few months to plan an exciting trip. Experience, either good or even not so good, gained during many trips is always useful. Every trip generates huge emotions and also provides some practical benefits. Those may be deeper knowledge about local cuisine and eating and drinking habits discovered in particular areas.
Our approach
We would normally not return to a place we have already visited, although there are several countries we have visited more than once. For example, such travel destinations as Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Thailand, Morocco, Croatia and Austria are on this list. Those are not always necessarily large countries, however, every region may be significantly different and offers new unexpected discoveries.
This travel blog only contains a small portion of locations we have visited because I started writing my first travel notes occasionally only after 2005 and, after some efforts, stopped doing it. In the meantime, I was contributing to Google Maps with around 300 reviews and ratings; my more than 500 uploaded photographs have more than seven million views as of November 2023. So, here on this blog are some notes written a while ago, although the vast majority of those have been updated in 2023 and 2024.
This travel blog only contains a small portion of locations we have visited because I started writing my first travel notes occasionally only after 2005 and, after some efforts, stopped doing it. In the meantime, I was contributing to Google Maps with around 300 reviews and ratings; my more than 500 uploaded photographs have more than seven million views as of November 2023. So, here on this blog are some notes written a while ago, although the vast majority of those have been updated in 2023 and 2024.
Hope you will enjoy reading this blog and find something useful for yourselves.
Travel and enjoy the simple pleasures of life!