Hello! In a way, this will be a slightly different post than usual. Because I realized I do not have satisfactory pictures to post much more in my "Travelling With Love" series, I decided to stop for a while with travel posts. What inspired me to actually write this one was the fact that me and my girlfriend are getting into the planning phase for our summer holiday - which this time we aim to take in early June, to avoid the biggest crowds.

In this post, I want to talk about what is important for us when we plan our trips - I will take one of our previous trips as an example, but also talk about what we are considering for the upcoming holiday. Expect quite a bit of rambling in that part, as I get a little too excited whenever planning a holiday! We'll go over the destinations, the financial issues, most important goals for a trip and much more! Let's dive in and I hope it will be a fun, or maybe even a helpful read!

Our Summer 2019 Trip

Summer 2019 was exciting, because it was our first ever summer holiday together. Due to this, I really wanted to make sure it is planned perfectly and spent A LOT of time on attempting to find the best way to incorporate both what I like, as well as what my girlfriend likes, into this trip. Maybe let's start this post by saying what we actually like doing - let's try to keep it sort of structured.

In general, we have fairly similar tastes in what we like to do while travelling, as well as places we'd like to visit. We love taking photos - not for social media or anything (although I do post them on HIVE!), but for our own collection and the printed albums that we do for each year. This means that the places we visit have to be good for photography. I have to admit we do check all kinds of instagram accounts and blogs on the web to ensure there is something "instagrammable" in our potential destinations.

Additionally, we like to be active. Beach holidays are nice and we still do those, but no way we are going to spend 2 weeks laying on sand. If there is nothing exciting to see, no cool hikes to take, it is quite likely we are not visiting. Historical and cultural significance is a big plus, but we don't mind straying off the beaten path for sure.

On a more personal level, I am a big fan of going to places unknown or underrated, with a special place in my heart for microstates and small countries. My girlfriend loves to be able to swim in the sea or ocean at least once during a summer trip.

In order to not only enjoy our time together, but also fulfill each of our personal aims while travelling, we try to divide our holiday trips in parts. That way, instead of trying endlessly to find the perfect location that has beaches, hikes and microstates.. We can actually visit multiple places. Because of other responsibilities, as well as financial restrictions, the length is a little restricted - usually it is 10-14 days that we aim for, although we know that for some places, we will want a month at least. Those we sadly have to leave for later.

In 2019, we used Skyscanner and Booking in order to find out the best potential trips for ourselves. With the aid of an Excel sheet, we highlighted a few options which were within our grasp financially but also made sense time-wise and set off to compare them.

In the end, our choice was set for the following trip:

• Flight to Bologna and spending a near full day in there, with 1 night (23-24 June) - this was mainly due to low price flight and the proximity to San Marino, but we were also curious about this city.
• Travelling by train to Rimini and then bus to San Marino - San Marino is a tiny republic nested in Italy. With only 33 thousand inhabitants it is one of the smallest countries on the planet. I obviously was ecstatic to have a chance to go there. (24-26 June)
• Travel by Flixbus to Milan, sleeping there and then train to Bergamo to fly to next destination - This didn't work as the hotel randomly cancelled on us on the day we were in Milan (?) and we ended up going to Bergamo after just a few hours in Milan, then sleeping there. (26-27 June)
• Flight to Malta from Bergamo and spending almost a week there. We wanted to have a beach holiday and Malta is also one of the smaller countries in Europe. On top of that, there are a lot of sights, both inland as well as on the coast. (27 June - 3 July)
• Early morning flight to Seville, our (almost) final destination - Seville is a city with the most Andalucian vibes, famous for some of its landmarks and old palaces, where the fusion of Spanish and Moorish architecture is very visible. This ended up being the highlight of our trip. (3 July - 5 July)
• Carsharing through Blablacar to Malaga, where we took our flight back to the Netherlands.

In the end this 12 day trip cost us just under 1200€ for sleep and all travel included. Of course we spent more on food in some places, as well as souvenirs and gifts for our families, but in the end it really was not bad for visiting a total of 4 countries and making multiple flights, train- and bus rides. While we were also quite lucky with all the connections, this was probably our most elaborate trip to date - probably much thanks to COVID which stopped us from taking these for a while.

Here's some pictures to reward you for the wall of text - I tried my best to ensure I do not reuse any content from my posts about these destinations, but apologies if they did make their way here somehow.

Here's some San Marino.

Mdina in Malta.

Blue Lagoon in Malta.

Us at Plaza de Espana in Seville.

The Ideas for 2022

This part will be slightly shorter, but I will just list a few places that we are considering for our holidays - and why we are doing so. For bookkeeping purposes - the trip will be at the beginning of June and everything from the part above applies: beach, hikes, activities and beautiful pictures! We are looking at travelling more than to just one place - but are not against just being in multiple parts of one country. Here's a few of our options:

Southern France

The first of the ideas came to be through my girlfriend's passion for aviation. The headquarters as well as an airplane factory of Airbus is places in Toulouse, making it one of the cities my girlfriend would love to visit at some point. While we considered doing it as a city trip, why not simply make it a part of a bigger holiday?!

With just a little bit of research, which consists of googling what to do in XXX, checking Skyscanner, Booking, AirBnB, as well as the prices of train and bus tickets, we ended up with a shortlist of interesting places that are approachable at a decent price within and outside of France. Interestingly enough, this time such a trip would only require us to take 2 airplane flights. In the end, this is the trip in question:

Eindhoven (start point) -> Nice -> Monaco -> Marseille -> Andorra -> Toulouse -> Eindhoven

Nice and Marseille are both situated at the sea, with especially Marseille being friendly to those who want to enjoy the beaches and the water. Andorra as well as Monaco are tiny countries/microstates which lets me fulfill my need of visiting those - Andorra also allows for a good hike! When it comes to things to see, especially Marseille is full of points of interest, but all of the places have its share of fascinating spots.

Greece

This is the one option where we do not visit more than one country - instead this is more of an island hopping holiday. Truth be told, we have not had a true beach holiday since Malta (if we conveniently ignore the fact that my girlfriend's family home is in Varna, which is right at the Black Sea.) and Greece would be great for that. It is a known destination and some of its islands are incredibly picturesque. Here's the initial plan - although this option will be fleshed out over the weekend, as we had just began the research on this one.

Eindhoven (start point) -> Thessaloniki -> Athens -> Santorini -> Creta -> Eindhoven

I would love to have the possibility to go both to the Aegean and Ionian Seas here, likely through visiting Zakynthos, but that might just end up being too costly - and there's nothing stopping us from visiting Zakynthos another time. While this trip does focus on the beautiful and picturesque beach destinations in Santorini and Creta, we also get the chance to visit the place with one of the biggest historical significances in Europe - Athens. Never having been there is one of my biggest "regrets" so far as a traveller, considering I am European, so this could be the time to change it!

Croatia

This was a trip initially planned in 2020, before we were hit by the first COVID wave and lockdown. I have been in Croatia before, as my parents use it as their budget holiday of choice - and we also considered it heavily because if we plan something a bit more on a budget, we are more likely to be able to be joined by a friend that we enjoy travelling with. She's just got a little less savings and does not want to overspend.

Because it is a little cheaper, it would also allow us to take a few more detours or experience more luxurious adventures while still staying within our normal travelling budget. So what would the trip really be?

Eindhoven (start point) -> Zadar -> Split -> Mostar(Bosnia) -> Dubrovnik -> Rotterdam

Visiting more than one country in one trip always makes me happy, so being able to incorporate a trip to the famously instagrammable Mostar would be great. Staying there for a little longer than a day also gives us a chance to visit some of the nature in Bosnia that I heard can be beautiful. Split would allow us a little bit of a beach time, while Zadar has a fairly easy access to the Plitvice National Park - and Croatia has some beautiful nature in there. Finally, Dubrovnik is a pretty famous site on its own.

Closing Words

A lot goes into planning a trip - especially when you are as picky about it as we are. We avoid all-inclusive trips, never have been to a travel agent and we do not plan on doing so. While it can be a lot of work to plan all this.. It is actually also a great activity to do together. We'll sit down either in the morning or an evening and simply look through all these websites with flight tickets, overnight stays and much more, just to make sure those 2 weeks will be magical. Somehow, we haven't failed yet!

You can certainly expect multiple travel posts from wherever we end up going - with beautiful pictures and hopefully interesting descriptions!

All images in this post are mine and my girlfriend's.