Category Archives: travel

Snail Mail Collective | Intan & Reima

I have had the pleasure of doing Melyssa and Chelsea’s Snail Mail Collective for July and August. Thanks to the post offices of the world, packages being lost, and how slow it has taken Royal Mail to get my packages to their final destinations it has taken me until October to be able to do my SMC recap.

I understand the phenomenon around socks disappearing in the wash, not that I know where they go. However I really do not think the same thing should happen when it comes to sending things in the mail. Since moving to England it has happened to me more often than ever other time in my life. I spent a good amount of money to have a Wonder Woman chest piece made for a costume that could be tracked as far as when it left the US but never made to my home in England. My sister had sent a christmas present for the boys that included my favourite H&M jacket that she had and it never made it to my home in England. My mum had made really cute toys that looked like ‘peeps’ for Easter for the boys that again…never made it to England. So when my friend Intan told me her package from me never arrived in Singapore, I was ready hit a wall. I am not sure why the post has a vendetta against me, but it can stop anytime now. Similarly her package never arrived in England but then never left the post office in Singapore either. We tried a second time and thank the powers that be we both just received each other’s Snail Mail Collective packages!

Intan has spoiled me with my favourite candies…white rabbits. I think they were in every package that was included in her envelope. I have not had these since I was in Australia back in 2002 and had forgotten about them. It really put a smile on my face. I have been sharing the rest of the candy with my sons so they wanted to make sure that I told Intan thank you on the blog….THANK YOU! You are just so sweet as well. Thank you for that beautiful card with the B and the Rose, it could not be more perfect for me. I am so sorry we had the worst luck with the post office but so glad we got a happy ending for this mail saga in the end.

Make sure to check out Intan’s blog as it is full of photos not only from Singapore but her travels too!

SYFNZ SAYS: http://syfnzsays.blogspot.co.uk/

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My Snail Mail Collective partner for August was Reima from sunny California. I loved that even though we both had really busy schedules she kept us going in communication with lovely ‘get to know you’ emails. It was so brill to see how much we had in common. From loving dark chocolate, to using coconut oil and she even gave me a neat recipe for a scrub. Which I wanted to share from her to you all today in this post:

Here’s a scrub recipe my friend just gave me and it is so nice.

Makes my skin smooth for days!

3-4 tbsp coconut oil

2 cups sea salt

Zest of one lime

Combine and it should feel similar to snow!

What I love most about Reima is getting to know more about her love of travel. She has a solid sense of adventure and a really brave girl! If you want to know more about what I mean, you will need to check out her post about bicycling on one of the most dangerous roads in the world! I honestly do not think I could or would want to myself. Which makes me more in awe of how gustsy this girl is!

Find out more about this beautiful travel loving free spirit on her blog:
Love a Traveler: http://loveatraveler.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/snail-mail-collective-august.html

Thank you so much to these lovely ladies. You guys are awesome and I so enjoyed getting to know more about you. I am proud to call you my friends and look forward to continue reading your blogs!

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Q: Have you participated in the SMC or a similar penpal project?

Favourite Travel Photo

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For Travel Tuesday today I asked you to share with you a favourite travel photo for our first every Travel Tuesday prompt. We will do these prompts on first Tuesday of every month.

This is a photo I took in the summer of 2012 when I returned ‘home’ to bella Napoli. I had not been back to Italy since coming to see my friends graduate in the summer of 2001. Napoli, Italy had been my home for 4-6 grade and 9-11 grade but this was my first time to every bring my husband ‘home’ with me. It was a very special trip for both of us. Between the two of us and our cameras and phones we must have taken thousand of photographs while we were there. This photo is a pure favourite however because it is so iconic of my home. The beautiful bay of Napoli, Mt. Vesuvius in the background, and the coastline dotted with so many colours of homes, green trees, and pretty boats in the marina. This is definitely one photograph I would love to have blown up and put up in our family room.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY!
A Weekly Travel Linkup.

Share your Travel stories
and wanderlust addictions.

Here’s how it works:

1. Share a post about travel! From road trips to trips abroad and from past travels to dream vacations. You can write about travel tips and tricks, favorite places to stay, or anything in between! Just make it about traveling somewhere!

2. Grab the lovely button. If you run into trouble, just make sure to mention Bonnie in a link! 😉

3. Linkup goes live every Tuesday at 8 am GMT.

4. Hop around and meet new travel loving bloggers! Link up will be open for a few days, make sure to check back to visit some of the newer travel posts!

5. Please only one linked up post per blogger. Save other posts for future linkups!

6. The First Tuesday of every month will be a themed prompt if you want to join in!

Q: Do you have a favourite travel photograph and why does it mean so much to you?

Travel is Life

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Monday morning my internet went out and my blogging every day streak got postponed while I waited on the powers that be at Sky to fix the problem. Luckily today my internet and landline are back to working. So I apologize for not having Travel Tuesday up and hope you have all been able to link up with Belinda this week! If you have not linked up yet I have the link up below. This is Belinda’s last week of co-hosting the Travel Tuesday link up with me as she focuses on other avenues with her blog. Please make sure to let her know how much you loved having her as a cohost.

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Travel is life. Short and sweet that message has been my life. The fact that I have not lived in one place for longer than three years at a time solidifies that statement even more. Even if I am not traveling this month, on a plane to another country I feel like I am traveling in lifestyle. I have only lived in my current city for the last nine months and in three months we will be moving again. Not out of England but perhaps to another town. It is just my life of a highly nomadic person who constantly feels called to be somewhere else.

Next Trip. The next place I have my heart set on traveling to is Austria. It holds a lot of special memories for me with my life growing up in Europe. It is the one place that I really feel closest to my dad. We used to go snowboarding and skiing there through out the years. If you have read my blog for a while you will have heard me mention Germknödel as a food I miss eating in Austria. Germknödel is a fluffy yeast dough dumpling with a mix of poppy seeds and sugar, filled with spicy plum jam and melted butter on top, often eaten with custard on top. I used to love ordering it after a day of snowboarding. I have not had it in so long that I think of it a lot. Which brings me back to what it is like when travel is life. You travel and move so much that you miss things all over the world. Things that you can not easily satisfy and may take years in waiting. But I would not give up or trade this life for any other.

TRAVEL TUESDAY!
Together with my cohost Belinda
fromFound Love. Now What?
a Weekly Travel Linkup.
Share your Travel stories
and wanderlust addictions.

Grab button for A Compass Rose's Travel Tuesdays

Reliving: Travel Memories in Italy

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It is the next edition of Travel Tuesday with my cohost Belinda. I look forward to reading all your posts in the link up this week. While it may take me a bit to comment on all your posts, I do read every single one. We are proud to announce a new exciting update starting next month! While we do Travel Tuesday every Tuesday, the first Tuesday of every month will be our themed prompts. On October 1st it will be the first Tuesday of the month and the prompt is: “Show us your most favourite photo from all your travels and tell us why it means so much to you”.

Also would like to bring to focus one of my favourites…of course I loved them all…Travel Tuesday posts from last week. Danielle from the Lifestyle Project blog had a great post about meeting boy in Cambodia. This story touched me on a personal level as I related to one of the sweet girls I met while I was in Cambodia. I still have the painting she did that I bought from her to bring home. She had one of the sweetest smiles I have ever seen.

This is also the next installment of Blogtember with Jenni. The prompt for today states, “A Memory You Would Love to Relive.”

A memory I would like to relive. There are so many that would be awesome to relive like old devolved films re-watch end over in my mind many times over. I thought of how easy it could be to mention my late father again or in the height of my baby fever about the birth of both of my sons. Then it hit me in preparation for my Travel Tuesday post just how special traveling is in my life. How there are certain trips that once taken cannot simply be revisited with a return flight. Which got me to focus on my memories of taking my husband ‘home’ for the first time.

Normally you bring your spouse home before you get married or shortly after depending on the circumstances. For me I brought Ryan to bella Napoli in Italia eleven years after we first met at University and nine years after we got married. It was not because I did not want him to see the place I have still lived longest than anywhere else in my life. But we had spent the majority of our relationship stateside, despite our best endeavors to find a way abroad.

Unfortunately the photos I took on my phone of Ryan’s first couple of days in Italy including our day in Rome and our first night in Napoli were gone when I got my phone stolen days later in that trip. You can read about my night in an Italian Jail for the story on that one.

So I would love to relive all of Ryan’s firsts in Italy again. To look into his eyes as he saw Rome for the first time after we got off the plane in Italy. To watch him try his first bite of pasta in Rome. His first real taste of gelato, the nectar from the gods. Of course his first bite of pizza in its birth place of Italy. It was one of those trips you cannot simply experience the same way again the second or third time around.

However my sons have yet to go to Italy. So on our next trip ‘home’ it will be my husband and I together watching as our sons experience the beauty if Italy for the first time. Smelling the Mediterranean salt air, tasting their first authentic pizza margherita, listening to the chorus of loud Neapolitan voices in the bush city streets, and watching their young eyes as they see where their mum grew up as a girl. Well for a total of six years in two different times of my life. For the other places that will be another trip here and another trip there. More memories to make together and more moments in time that I will live over and over again in my mind.

Q: Where would you like to go again from the places where you have traveled?

Here’s how it works:

2. Grab the lovely button. If you run into trouble, just make sure to mention Bonnie & Belinda in a link! 😉

3. Linkup goes live every Tuesday at 8 am GMT.

4. Hop around and meet new travel loving bloggers! Link up will be open for a few days, make sure to check back to visit some of the newer travel posts!

5. Please only one linked up post per blogger. Save other posts for future linkups!

Travel Q&A: September Sponsors & Giveaway!

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Travel Q&A: I asked all my sponsors this question, “What landmark or attraction would you love to see next and why?” See what answers we all gave and let me know in the comments what your answer would be too!

“I would love to watch the Northern Lights in Scandinavia. I have heard that Tromso, Norway is the best place to see the Aurora Borealis and so that is definitely on my list. I have always loved Norway since I went to Oslo as a girl and definitely want to go back.” – B

“I love to see unusual landmarks, oddities, and museums, such as the grave of the man who invented the word robot (which is in Prague). The one I’d love to see next is the Forevertron in Wisconsin!” – Gladley

“I have never gotten the chance to travel outside of the US. But, one place that is top on my travel list would have to be Venice, Italy! Hopefully I get the chance to travel there sometime in the future!” – The Skinny Student

“Torres del Paine National Park and Patagonia National Park in South America. The panoramic views of the ice fields and the glaciers on the Andes mountains with the crystal blue water under neath are out of this world.” – A Broad’s World

“The Circle K in Tempe, Arizona has been top of the list for a while, as it’s THE Circle K from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. There wouldn’t be much to do except buy a drink, take a photo and quote lines from the movie to my embarrassed husband, but they’d probably be the best few minutes of my life.” – Little Black Suitcase

“I would love to see the Taj Mahal in India. We’ve spent some time exploring Europe now. I’d love to broaden my horizons and visit someplace more exotic and challenging India. My husband loves India and I’m eager to explore it with him.” – Selena the Places

“I would love to see the Coliseum in Rome — just for the pure history of it all (plus, I want to go to Italy and eat tons of pizzas and have pasta and gelato and the Lizzie McGuire experience)!” – Chimerikal

“My one dream in life is to explore the countryside of England. I was raised on a strict diet of British comedy which spread into an obsession with all things UK. I’ve never been to England but believe me that’s the first place I plan on going overseas.” – Mocha Fox

A GIVEAWAY!

Say what? Yes. A Giveaway and the first ever to be hosted here at A Compass Rose.

You can win ad space from ACR and several of my September Sponsors.

Bonnie Rose – A Compass Rose

Brand new and first time ever available on ACR, an In-Post ad space for 30 days

Gillian – Gladley

200x ad space for 30 days

Merrie – The Skinny Student

A+ ad spot 300×400 for 30 days

Lindsey – A Broad’s World

250×200 ad space for 30 days

Jess – Mocha Fox

300×200 ad space for 30 days

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

*images original to ACR

Travel: Cymer Abbey & Family Portraits

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So glad everyone is looking to these Travel Tuesdays! I have been looking for ways to make this even better so will be sharing my favourite posts every week as well as starting a once a month themed Travel Tuesday which we will start in October. More news about that next week so keep your ears opened! I want to say that sometimes travels are not just about pretty photos…it is about the times that go wrong. Who could have written it better than Claire from the Grass is Dancing. Check out this expat’s post from last week! Also do not forget you can win 45 days of ad space from me at ACR on my blogtember post yesterday.

Exploring Ruins.

In Wales near the town of Dolgella, in the village of Llanelltyd, are the ruins of a Cistercian abbey that was founded in 1158. The Cymer Abbey is just beautiful and it became a perfect backdrop for family photographs for us while we were in Wales. So for Travel Tuesday today I want to share with you how you can have family photographs while on vacation. All you need is to bring a professional photographer with you….like me! Here are some of my favourites from the day as my friend Miriam was expecting her fourth baby during this shoot.

Here’s how it works:

2. Grab the lovely button.

3. Linkup goes live every Tuesday at 8 am GMT.

4. Hop around and meet new travel loving bloggers! Link up will be open for a few days, make sure to check back to visit some of the newer travel posts!

5. Please only one linked up post per blogger. Save other posts for future linkups!

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I have a new featured sponsor on the Blog this month! Meet the stunning red head of The Skinny Girl blog. She is a girl after my own heart because even though she not yet left the US, her first destination goal is Italy! I will love getting to explore her first time in Venice having grown up in Napoli. Her blog is fun as she focuses around good recipes and fitness posts. You must check out this super yummy Salsa recipe. As an expat living in England I really miss a good salsa! Visit her blog and let me know what your favourite recipe is that you find!

Q: Have you ever thought of bringing a photographer with you on vacation?

Travel: Talyllyn, Wales

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Find out about what life is like where I live in Bath, England by seeing my guest post on Alesha’s blog: Lifeology. Another week begins in September and I look forward to telling you more about our time in Wales. Today it is about our rainy day spent in the town of Talyllyn, Wales. To get here we took a ride on one of the steam engines in Wales, which I blogged about last week. We were quite ready for lunch so we walked through the town and found a perfect little cafe where inside we hit out from the rain. I ordered the tomato soup with a side of chips and it ended up being the best possible choice for lunch. Not only was the soup made fresh that morning, but the chips were made from scratch upon order. It was my family’s turn to cook dinner that night so we stopped at the butcher in Talyllyn before heading home. My husband purchased two different kinds of sausages to go with our sweet potato mash. All in all it was the end to another perfect day, even with the rain.