The Life and Travels of Roaming Required in 2018 – Year Round Up

Last updated: 26 June 2023

Happy New Year, gosh can you believe it’s 2019 already? Perhaps it’s my sentimental side coming out, but I like to pause and reflect on the last twelve months. It’s been a particularly huge year for us and while I could write all day about the good stuff, so I’ve just picked out a couple of highlights and a few lessons we picked up along the way.

2018 in Numbers

Throughout 2018 we took six low cost carrier flights (if you’d asked me, I would have been certain this number was higher), we used three new airlines (two of those were in December) and took one new Eurostar route London to Rotterdam.

I like a good set of numbers as much as the next geek so I thought I’d share these with you. While we’re still huge fans of a road trip but with only a handful of trips it seems we took less in 2018 than other years.  

Trips Taken: 16

Countries Visited: 14

Percentage of Europe Covered To Date: 70%

New Countries: 3*

New Airlines: 3

Flights Taken: 22

Road trips had: 4

Kilometres Flown: Roughly 63,731km (39,601 mi) 

Longest Time Spent out of the UK (in one go): 11 days (Canada)

Furthest Latitude North Reached: 54.5973° N (Belfast)

Furthest Latitude South: 28.5462° N (Orlando International Airport)

Longest Flight: Direct: 9 hr 35 mins (Vancouver). With a layover: 36 hr (Georgia to London via Istanbul)

Where Did We Travel?

1. Florida
2. Nice, France
3. Ghent, Belgium
4. Philadelphia, USA
5. Belfast, UK
6. Canada
7. Rotterdam, NL
8. Aisne, France
9. Newcastle, UK
10. Portugal *
11. Czech Republic
12. Chester UK
13. Majorca, Spain
14. Bologna, Italy
15. Tbilisi, Georgia *
16. Istanbul, Turkey *

With 16 trips under our belt including 3 new countries, 2018 was a mammoth year for us. As we continued to juggle full-time jobs whilst exploring the world, this juggle wasn’t without its challenges. We started the year at a Flash-like pace, completing 5 trips in the first quarter. That’s one every 2.4 weeks. In hindsight, this pace was unsustainable.

By the time summer rolled around we had made a huge dent in our annual leave quota and were burnt out from the relentless travel schedules we’d set for ourselves. Cue 3 months of inertia to recoup and reset. We learned a lesson here, three months of not travelling turned out to be too much time at home and we both began to climb the walls.

Lesson: Balance travel, not too little and not too much.

Highlights from 2018

Swimming with Manatees

We welcomed the arrival of 2018 in Florida USA. Winter in Florida meant Manatee season and swimming with them was a dream come true. These gentle marine mammals, also known as sea cows, were slow-moving, peaceful creatures and swimming with them was a privilege. We floated in the springs in western Florida to discovered them to be curious creatures that tended to flock toward human activity in search of warmth and some attention. I was more than happy to oblige.

Lesson: Step outside your comfort zone and say yes to opportunities.

Learning to Love Art

I confess, I’m not a huge lover of art galleries. Our four day trip to Philadelphia was ambitious at best, but with the help of a local Philly blogger Suzanne PhilaTravelGirl we had a great schedule that encompassed the highlights of one of America’s most historic cities.

The Rodin Museum in Philly was something Russ wanted to do. A wise woman once told me that a good marriage was based on compromise, so I traded another visit to Reading Terminal Market in exchange for the Rodin Museum. Now is the time for me to eat my hat because I had a GREAT time in the Rodin.

This museum contains the largest collection of sculptor Rodin’s works outside of Paris. Each piece on display was accompanied by an explanation and detail about its meaning. I think this really helped me appreciate the work and why I’d visit again the museum the next time I’m in Philly.

Lesson: Be open minded and continue to try new things.

Canadian Road Trip

The itinerary was an ambitious one, to see Alberta and British Columbia in just 8 days amassing some 3000+ km on the hire car.

I struggle to find the words that describe how I felt as we drove the Icefields Parkway. A 232 km stretch of double-lane highway which winds along the Continental divide through soaring rocky mountain peaks, icefields and vast sweeping valleys. It truly is one of the most beautiful journeys on the planet.

A journey that should only took a few hours took us almost an entire day as we stopped everywhere possible. Picnics on the side of the road, listening to the ice cracking, watching bears forage for food after hibernating for the winter.  It was an EPIC trip and one I’ll remember for a lifetime.

Lesson: Be ambitious

Travel Conferences

2018 saw us go to two travel blogging conferences – Traverse & TBEX.  These have become a part of our regular travel routine. We learn a thing or two but more importantly, we catch up with loads of our travel blogging buddies who are scattered around the globe.  

TBEX conference in July was held in the city of Ostrava, on the eastern border of Czech Republic, close to Poland. After the 2-3 day conference Russ and I split up and discovered different parts of the Republic on trips arranged by the tourism board.  He went to South Bohemia and discovered cities like Cesky Krumlov, České Budějovice.

I went to the home of Pilsner beer, Pilsen. These trips reaffirmed our thoughts that there was much much more to a country than its capital city.  Don’t get me wrong, Prague was great, but it’s inundated with tourists that don’t venture further than the Old Town. Outside the souvenir shops and menus written in English lay a whole new world to discover, one with local customs and specialities that you wouldn’t otherwise find.

Lesson: See and enjoy the capital but recognise that it doesn’t make the country. Discover a different perspective by visiting the lesser known cities and villages.

Explore As Far and Wide As Possible

We’ve just returned from Georgia, no not the US state, but the country of Georgia. Situated on the Silk Road, the intersection of Europe and Asia and of the former Soviet republic.

We spent five days discovering the capital city of Tbilisi over Christmas.  I know this is the complete opposite of what I just said above, however on this trip we didn’t have the opportunity to leave the capital but that does give us a great excuse to return to Georgia for another visit.

One thing I loved about visiting Georgia was that the country was entirely unknown entity which meant that there were plenty of learning experiences around every corner. We tried to immerse ourselves in as much culture as possible to try and understand what makes Georgia so unique, including its turbulent history, geo-strategic importance in the Black Sea region (the Southern Caucasus is the only non-Russian route to connect Europe with oil and gas and the Caspian Sea), and it’s incredibly delicious national dishes.  

One of the most challenging parts of our visit to Georgia was attempting to learn its language. We always try hard to learn some of the essentials in every country we visit, it always helps to be respectful when talking to locals. At first glance, the Georgian language appears as a jumbled script which resembles something between Greek and Thai. Comprised of 3 unicase scripts, Georgian the most pervasive of the Kartvelian languages, though it is not Indo-European, Turkic, or Semitic. We learned that the scripts were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016 which is an incredible testament to the importance of the Georgian language.  

Fortunately, in a capital city like Tbilisi, we could get around relatively easily using English to mostly the younger generation. The older generations speak Georgian and Russian, a throwback to the Soviet-era.

Lesson: Explore as far and wide as possible and embrace every opportunity to learn as much as possible. Barriers are only an obstruction if you allow them to be.  

What’s Coming Up for 2019

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that we already have a few things locked in for the coming year, and our eyes are focused on finalising some tentative travel plans whilst leaving a little bit of wiggle room for surprises.

Heeding the lessons we learnt from 2018, I consider us to be almost at capacity for our travel quota for the first quarter of 2019.

We will start off the year with a trip to the Netherlands, The Hague to be exact. It’ll be a quick trip to get a taste for the area and a look around an area we’ve been longing to explore.  

After that we have few internal UK trips to Edinburgh and the Midlands, before jumping on planes to the continent. I’m off to Hamburg for a conference and Russ has a stag-do in the stunning Hungarian capital of Budapest.

We have some very dear blogger friends tying the knot in South Africa in March so we’re heading to the Southern Hemisphere to celebrate with them. Perhaps you remember this post? I wrote last year? #9 is Use Special Occasions/Destination Weddings as an excuse to discover somewhere new. So that’s exactly what we’re doing.  

Aside from travelling I’m going to try and squeeze a bit more wellness into my schedule. I’ve been struck down numerous times in 2018 with decent flu-like illnesses and I’d like to put that to an end.  Russ loves it, but I’ve tried mindfulness and I find it a bit of poppycock. My middle-ground is yoga and it’s something I can get on board with. Don’t expect me to be a vegan yogi anytime soon but I would like to be placid and zen in my day to day life.  

What was your personal travel highlight of 2018? And where are you heading first in 2019? We want to hear all about it so do be sure to leave us a comment below!