Category Archives: travel

Meet Your New Co-Hosts | Travel Tuesday

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Welcome to a new batch of #TravelTuesday co-hosts!  This is my most favourite part is introducing you to some new lovely ladies.  One of my most favourite things is finding new blogs to read and new bloggers to befriend.  It makes the world that much smaller as your network gets that much bigger, and more friends to further encourage your wanderlust to grow.  Plus now you can find out where to find them online through their favourite social media sites and click through their banners to read their blogs.  I look forward to getting to know them much more over the next few months and I hope you do too! Make sure to pop around and introduce yourself to them and check out the link ups below!

caity

 

 

cella

 

michelle

amanda



Throw Away Travel Books

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I am in Spring cleaning mode already at home. This means going through each room by room deciding what we really need to keep and what can go.  It can be a daunting task but afterwards it is freeing to just have less and feel like you have gained ‘more’.  More space.  More time.  More contentment.  More happiness.  Yet despite the growing boxes of books marked for the charity shop, there are certain books I just cannot seem to part with yet.
To throw away travel books seems to be an easy task.  Is it an outtdated book?  Has the trip already been taken?  Would it be a trip we would be taking in the next year?  Any of my travel books could have been easily given or tossed away many times since in the  last few years.  Yet these books have made the cut through each spring cleaning task.
I love my travel books.  I have only gotten rid of one, from Hawaii, and not before I cut up many of the maps inside for a heart inspired art piece of a few canvases I had to put up on our walls.  The books are from past trips and ones yet to be taken.  These books are like friends.  I should probably explain.
In the decade I lived in the US (from age 17 onwards) I was dealing with issues of being an undiagnosed Third Culture Kid (TCK), culture shock, and home sickness.  I would often fill up hours of my day by going to a bookstore, getting lost in the travel section, and then reading about places where I had once called ‘home’ through the eyes of a travel writer.  It was the one way I dealt with being landlocked in the US and missing all the places I had left pieces of my heart.
Now that I finally live overseas again I find I still like picking up and rereading these books.  Reading the notes I wrote in the books while on travels, in pencil scribbled in the margins.  Reading about the places I traveled too after spending many hours organizing every detail of the trip.  Still also reading about the places I have spent significant parts of my life, places I long to return ‘home’ to one day.
So maybe I will not be throwing away my travel books this time around, but right now that suits me okay.  Probably helps that I have a travel & map themed living room for these paper weights to be displayed.
Q: Do you keep your travel books, how long for, or what do you do with them?
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Our nominated girls for next week are:  Marcella from What a Wonderful World, Caity from Where the Heart is,  Michelle from MishFish13, and Amanda from Rhyme and Ribbons blog.  Will be contacting you lovely ladies this week for more information. If you know these girls on social media, send them a shout out of congrats!
Remember to link up this week!

New Travel Tuesday Co-Hosts for 2015

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We have come to announce the new travel co-hosts for the next bit of 2015.  Before we do I want to let each of the girls that nonimated the next lovely ladies to have another chance to to share with you here at A Compass Rose.  I have been so blessed to have had such wonderful people to share with you guys these last three months, it has been a blast!

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Yalanda from We Laugh Anyway blog.
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This blog started in early 2014. We were fairly newly wed. Not quite bored, a little bit restless and certainly not ready to settle down. We looked around and realized we were not living the life we wanted to live. So we decided to make a change. We sold our first home, packed our bags and moved to South Korea. About a month later, our furry little shrimp cat named Clark, joined us. The three of us currently call Seoul home and we are pretty flipping excited about it! We do have an end goal in mind, but first, we’re indulging a bit of wanderlust.

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Social Media: 

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Cynthia from Adventurings blogcythnia2

Cynthia is an American in her late-twenties who became an “accidental expat” in the Czech Republic. After quitting her job and buying a one-way ticket to the UK, she made her way over to the “Heart of Europe” +2 years ago and hasn’t yet returned! She writes about her expat life and travels on her blog, Adventurings, and is currently planning her wedding this year from abroad. Stay tuned!

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Bloglovin: http://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/adventurings-12865391

courtney3Courtney from Adelante blog

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Courtney is a Seattle native living in Madrid, Spain and working as an assistant English teacher. Besides venturing around Europe, she likes drinking tinto de verano in the sunshine, tapas crawling, embarrassing herself by trying to speak the local language, and attempting to seek out the best brunch in Madrid. You can follow along with her expat adventures on her blog Adelante, as well as on Instagram and Twitter.

courtney1

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Our nominated girls for next week are:  Marcella from What a Wonderful World, Caity from Where the Heart is,  Michelle from MishFish13, and Amanda from Rhyme and Ribbons blog.  Will be contacting you lovely ladies this week for more information. If you know these girls on social media, send them a shout out of congrats!
Remember to link up this week!

Travel Misadventures in Jail

It is our last Travel Tuesday of January and this week you can write a post, link up, and share with us all about your Travel Misadventures. Have you ever had a trip where everything went wrong, a trip that you looked forward to but was an epic failure, or a trip that was great except that one crazy mishap? =

Things are bound to go wrong. One such memory I have is on the tail end of my several week long solo adventure in Australia. I was coming home and was on one of a few planes to get me to my final destination. I was coming home with many great memories and momentos from the weeks that had passed. Up until this trip Australia had been my numero uno place to visit and I had greeted it like an excited school girl. That summer of 2002 after my first year of Uni under my belt, had been everything I had hoped it would be.

That is when I am on the plane and I have a flight attendant come up to me and talk to me about my bags. This is after we have experienced a delay due to something about luggage. I can already feel the heat rushing to my face. One of my souveniors is a huge size bottle of cordial, a syrupy substance you dilute heavily with water to make a sweet drink. Apparently it had exploded or at least the plastic bottle had cracked open. It sounded like it had made quite a mess and now I was quite embarrassed. When I finally got to my destination and picked up my luggage I was saddened to find out that not only had it gotten over pretty much the majority of my things but it had ruined a few of them too. A souvenior Aussie rules football magazine from the game I went too that I got for my then boyfriend (my now husband of 11.5 years) was pretty much a goner. Word to the wise watch what you decide to take home with you.

In more recent travels it makes me think about what happened when I took my husband home to Naples, Italy with me. It was a much anticiapted trip as he had heard me talking about my years growing up in bella Italia since 2001 and it was now 2012. You can read all about it in my night in an Italian Jail.

 

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Stay tuned for next week when I will announce the new Travel Tuesday co-hosts for next week and with a final goodbye to our current hosts on next week’s post!

 

 

There and Back Again

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If you could return to a place you have traveled before, where would you go?  This is just about as easy as a question for me to answer as is “Where would you go that you have never been before?”  For me I am personally fueled to return to places so that my family can experience it with me too.  Most of the travels I have done have been before or without my husband and kids.  In fact my children have yet to step forth on mainland Europe and I am so eager to take them to all the places I visited and lived growing up as an Air Force child.  Some of the places on my list are:

 1. Germany/Austria/Switzerland: I have lumped all these countries together because it is apart of Europe that I really love so much. I hold fond memories of summers and winters spent across that region with my dad as a young girl and teenager. I want to go camping and hiking in the mountains, to go snowboarding, eat germknodel, and experience a German Christmas. Really I could list a whole blog of reasons for each country but to suffice to say that I cannot wait to return there with my familia.

2. Italy. I have since moving back to Europe have returned here with my husband. However my kids have yet to taste ‘real’ pizza and visit a gelataria. I cannot wait to take them home to Napoli so they can meet my Italian familia.

3. Norway/Sweden/Denmark. We traveled here as a young girl with my family and I really want to return and also to add Finland to the mix.

Those are my top three places and I kinda cheated a bit by lumping several places all together. But when you have let places touch your heart like I have it is hard to leave anything out. Speaking of which I cannot wait to return to Cambodia & Thailand, Japan (and see more than just the airport), Australia (and then see New Zealand) and will have to return home to Hawaii nei one day too. Travel anyone?

Q: Where would you return to and why? Or better yet link up with a blog post about travel for the link up!

Music & Travel

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Music seems to be synonymous with travel.  I love especially how songs can be tied to memories and all it takes is listening to a piece of music to take you back to a precious trip.  It can be the best way to travel vicariously when you are currently having a staycation.  As a fan of Spotify I have been looking at different music that reminds me of places and trips around the world.  As I was looking up some of the most popular travel songs while updating my growing list of spotify playlists I found some good travel related songs.  Many of which I am still a huge fan of like:

 Peter, Paul and Mary: ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ (1967)
Bruce Springsteen: ‘Born to Run’ (1975)
Willie Nelson: ‘On the Road Again’ (1980)
Simon and Garfunkel: ‘Homeward Bound’ (1966)
The Go-Go’s: ‘Vacation’ (1982)
Iggy Pop: ‘The Passenger’ (1977)

But now I need your help! What other great songs should I add to the travel playlist?

 

Travel Tuesday Co-Hosts of 2014

My favourite thing of Travel blogging is meeting and working with travellers and expats from all over the globe. This year I had the amazing opportunity of working with several here on A Compass Rose blog for #TravelTuesday in 2014.  For our themed prompt this week of favourite travel for the year I wanted to share these lovely ladies again who have made my wanderlust list ever long.travelcohostselection

Starting of with Melanie of Melanie Fontaine blog and Tina of Girl Meets Globe.  I  had the great opportunity to meet these ladies in person at a bloggers tea in London and have loved following their blogs ever since.

After the two months ended I had Melanie and Tina nominate bloggers to follow in their footsteps and I was then accompanied by Sammy, Van, and Kaelene.

sammyTo the Days like This with Sammy

vanSnow in Tromso with Van

kaeleneUnlocking Kiki with Kaelene
This was my first time having three co-hosts and I really enjoyed seeing the varying places where they lived and the travels they shared.  When they finished the next three lovely ladies were joining Travel Tuesday.
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Amy and the Great World (http://www.amyandthegreatworld.com), Two Feet, One World is the travel blog of the adventures of Jessi (www.twofeet-oneworld.com), and Things I am Crazy for with Camila (http://thethingsiamcrazyfor.wordpress.com/).
Of course I now have three new bloggers on board for November through January, with one month left and you can follow them and our Travel Tuesday link up through their blog posts today too!
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Now is your chance to meet and check out the blogs of the lovely new co-hosts for #TravelTuesday who are living in Spain,  Czech Republic, and South Korea. Courtney blogs at Adelante, Cynthia blogs at Adventurings, and Yalanda blogs at Laugh Anyway.  You can also see more of these lovely ladies by checking out the Girl Gone International account on Instagram in the last few week as each has been a featured GGI recently.  (@girlgoneinternational)

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