Europe trip 2023

As I start to write this in December I realise why I stopped writing my blogs, I was utterly exhausted, burning the candle at both ends!! 

So the next few blogs weren’t written as I was on the go. They’re written months later you’ll probably notice a wee bit of a different style, a bit less detail!

We chose not to pay the $80NZD vignette toll as we entered into Switzerland, we’d barely be in the country 2 days and it seemed a ridiculous amount to pay. So we informed our navigation to NOT take us on those roads, country back roads for us it was!! Which actually was extra beautiful.

We arrived to our Airbnb with a pool, kids were STOKED!!! And in they got! 

The next morning we piled in our Peugeot for the final time as a family. We back roaded our way the mini country of Lichtenstein which was 40 minutes away. We found a lovely cafe for morning tea, it was expensive but great service and food!! Little R found some donkeys so was itching to leave the cafe and stand by a paddock watching the donkeys. One kind of came up to her which just made her day!! I looked round some shops by myself. Actually can’t remember what the boys did! Ha!

After a drive round to see a bit more, we back roaded back to our Airbnb. Gave the car a clean out then BK spent the afternoon driving west to Basel, Frace to drop it off. He then train back to us. Took him ages but he enjoyed the drive as he popped back into Germany to use the autobahns!! Swiss trains are pretty spectacular too, along with the scenery!!

A second great experience with Peugeot Euro drive. Loved it. Most DEFINITELY recommend. 

The kids and I stayed at the Airbnb, they swum and I downsized our gear and packed and packed and packed!!!

BK returned and carried on packing, it turns out we’d accumulated a bunch of stuff while we had our own wheels! 

The following morning it was up early for a travel day….it was meant to be easy, it wasn’t!!

Till next time,

Claire

This is a bit out of order and more ‘real time’ Thought I’d put some thoughts down as we have got to the half way point.

Well here we are again. Heading out on the road. 

Covid you kinda held us up a bit, but better late than never! 

This adventure was planned about 6 months after I got home from our last trip. I was hopeful for 2022, but by the time Prime Minister Jacinda said no more MIQ, it was 6 weeks till I wanted to be leaving…and even with my epic planning and logistic skills, I just couldn’t pull that off!!

This time we’re away 15 weeks.
Europe, popping down into Morocco and on the way home we have a quick 11 hour stop over in Asia.
We haven’t rented our house this time, BK’s sister is looking after it, along with our cat/bunny/fish. We’ll call her SK for this blog! 

The kids will be missing all of term 2. I’m not so stressed about their education this time. In fact I’m almost at totally and utterly unconcerned. Yes I just told the school how it was again, and yes they again told me I still had to pay, lucky I was expecting that!

We are hoping to get through about 25 country’s, some of the old favourites – England/France/Netherlands/Germany, and of course some new ones as I fill gaps on the bits of Europe we’ve missed. 

By the time we get home I would have covered pretty much anywhere you want to go in Europe, so if you ever need advice for your own planning on what’s worth it or what’s NOT! Let’s connect to talk (hours of) travel tricks and tips!
I like vanilla thickshakes and long walks by the water 😝

Highlights I’m looking forward to : 

🔅Getting on the plane and leaving! 

🔅Morocco

🔅Portuguese Camino (the last 130km ish of it)

🔅A west end show in London

🔅Seeing familiar faces of family and friends

🔅Seeing a bit more of Eastern Europe – we absolutely loved Croatia/Slovenia/Bosnia last time, what else you got to offer us Eastern Europe? 

Yes, again, there’s a budget and yes I do plan to keep my family on the straight and narrow!
I’ve found airbnbs already to be a bit pricier than I would have liked but I’ve only booked the first 6 weeks and it’s city to city via public transport rather than getting out in the suburbs. Hopefully once we get into Eastern Europe with a car they’ll still be well priced and I’ll get great airbnbs for the price I’m willing to pay per night.

And everyone’s favourite question or interest…What about money? What about work?
This trip has been budgeted out and fully saved for!
My workload has been divided out amongst my team – thanks gals! I have 11 weeks of annual leave so will be on normal-ish pay the entire time I’m away. BK will be at half power with annual leave covering the rest of it.
What. A. Blessing. 

So I’ll update you along the way. I’ll also schedule photos to pump through the Team Knowles Facebook page about 6.30am NZT

Everything runs a week plus behind for safety reasons but if you really want to know where I am, message me, or ask my Mum …she’s got the itinerary and tracks my phone! No she’s not joining us this time, yes she should be coming do the Portuguese Camino with us, I agree!

Right, that’s the first blog done! Let’s get this party started! 

Till next time,

Claire

A bit of a different blog this week, I didn’t much like Bangkok and we didn’t really get up to much. We saw the Grand Palace with everyone else, it was very gold and pretty. I tried to wear the correct clothes but got pulled up on my leggings which were too tight so I purchased a skirt. It was very hot!

 

So it’s been a month on the road.

It’s been a month of excitement but also a month of getting used to Asia and being put out of our, ok ok, MY comfort zone.

 

A few things I’ve noticed….

A smile and trying to say a few words (even if they are totally mispronounced) go a long way.

Mums are the same everywhere whether on holiday or local, every mum is helping their kids, up stairs or escalators or crossing the road, and trying to stop siblings squabbling or tantys. They smile at me and I’ve started to smile at them, that knowing smile, ‘I feel yah Mummy, keep slogging!’

Traveling with a cute little 6 year old makes for interesting people watching….everybody loves her, she brings a smile to SO many faces as she skips along, they wave at her, they want to touch her, at first our shy girl was like 😧 but is better with it now and is more 🙄. C has settled in too and is not at all sad about not starting school this week.

The heat is actually reasonably bearable, Chiang Mai in particular was great and I felt cold twice in that week!

BK is finding plenty of opportunities to work, he’s had good experiences with co working spaces. The WiFi at these has been lightening fast, while the WiFi at our various Airbnbs have worked but frequently drop out. It has been very helpful to have a friend watching over our business at home when BK is MIA.

My fave thing so far was definitely the elephants, though I did enjoy the island trip out from Krabi. Singapore as a whole was quite a highlight for me too.

The kids will be a toss up between Kidzania and the elephants. BK’s was the elephants too. l’m glad we spent several days worth of budget on that excursion! Must remember that for the future, sometimes it’s worth splurging!

The budget has been quite easy to manage. I once read a blog where a family went on a trip like this and started off well but then got sick of talking about money so then didn’t, so they over spent and went into debt!!?? I can’t quite understand that. Yes I’m adding up money at the end of each day but it’s not a chore….

Which brings me to what IS a chore….

School work! God bless my kids school.

I’ve worked out very quickly I did not miss my calling to be a teacher!

We’ve been trying to do an hour about 3 times a week. The maths books are easy, getting them to write is a task and reading, well, wish I’d researched that a bit more. I’ve signed up to Getepic.com but choosing a book for them to read is 😩. We must try harder. BK has done some sketching with them, and soon I’ll add in some spelling.

 

So that’s Thailand done for us, country number 4 ✔️

 

Budget update :

Bangkok – $3 under

Total budget – $263 under

All families pack so differently, some blogs I follow carry ample suitcases, some travel with just carry on luggage.

 

We are going to be in the middle!

BK and I will take our full size packs (which we took last time we did this kind of trip pre kids!) plus our carry on suitcases. Our kids will be carry on backpacks only.

 

I’ve been writing big lists of everything I want to take with us and I hope it’ll all fit. Along with a ton of technology and a few school books, there will be minimal room for clothes.

 

Some things I’d like to take, if they’ll fit in the allocated 68kgs are:

* Travel size games of, uno, spot it, magnetic chess, magnetic snakes & ladders, magnetic ludo, monopoly, battle ships, guess who, and a normal pack of cards

* Sunlight soap

* Head torch

* Ziplock bags

* Kiwiana canvas bag for shopping at markets

* Possibly a smoke detector

* Four times pillow cases (so I know they are MY version/standard of clean!)

* A headphone splitter for when two people want to listen to the same thing, which hopefully would save a few $ on the audio self directed tour guide things you can hire at attractions

 

I attempted to do a practice pack last month but it all got too overwhelming so I put everything back away.

 

I’ve got life stuff organised to almost the point where things just need executing on particular days.

 

I’ve also got the first 10 weeks of flights and most of the accommodation booked and paid for!

 

We are counting down the days but there is still so much to be done!

 

Till next time!

 

Claire

Well the tickets out of New Zealand are finally booked. We are going via Brendan’s sister’s place in Melbourne for a night before heading to Singapore and starting the South East (SE) Asia leg of the adventure.

I have now booked and paid for the first 6 weeks of the total 7 weeks in SE Asia. I had wanted to let it all be a bit more fluid, stay longer where we were enjoying and move on quicker where we didn’t like much but I soon worked out we were traveling at a peak time so have pre booked it all, hopefully I don’t regret it! Oh well. It’s done now! It does relieve the stress a bit, getting everything done before we leave the country is going to be quite the task so it will be good to just have to get from place to place without too much thought.

This term we are going to start packing our house, you know, those platters that never get used, the spare this and that. The grandparents have kindly said they’ll have our kids for a weekend once a month so we can get house jobs done with out two kids round our ankles “I’m hungry” “he looked at me and I don’t like it” “this is boring”

So now a new topic…..BK working on the road.

How exactly is BK working going to fit into all this. Quite an important part of the whole adventure! We had a lot of conversation about power and keeping everything charged, we finally settled on a plug/usb thing from Belkin.  Where will he work? I think it will be a matter of who has the most solid internet connection! So a mix of co working spaces, cafes, our accommodation. What will he work on? He is already working on his Surface pro, we have added a travel (read: light in weight!) screen to his set up so he has more ‘real estate’ (in his words) to work with. When will he work? I’ve calculated he needs to work about 16 hours a week. I expect that the mornings will get taken up by exploring while everyone is fresh and the weather is cooler so I’m taking an educated guess it’ll be the afternoons/evenings/rainy days/when the kids and I are at something he doesn’t feel passionate about joining us/at any time there’s an influx on the server……so pretty much, he’ll wing it!!

So that’s me for now, the next post I’ll share what I’m planning on packing for the family….how much luggage does a family of 4 actually need?

 

Til next time,

 

Claire

Hello again, for this blog I thought it would be interesting to ask each of my family members a few questions about what they’re thinking about our trip…

Looking forward to:

BK – the first flight

Me – living local, last time Brendan and I did the very (expensive) touristy things, we also trained Europe so only really got to see the inner cities, this time I want us to get in the ‘burbs and have had this at the forefront of my brain as I’ve planned…oh and adding more countries to my count 😛

Master 7 – learning different languages – no one told him he would be or would have to. I find his answer fascinating and am now putting my feelers out on how to get this rolling for him

Miss 4 – looking at everything around the world and going on a plane

 

Not looking forward to:

BK – family meltdowns

Me – Being with my family, all day. every day. As much as I love them with all my heart. This Mummy needs her space and I think it’s going to be my biggest challenge.

Master 7 – not seeing my friends

Miss 4 – I’ll miss my toys and my friends

 

Miss from home:

BK – my home brewing beer kit

Me – familiarity

Master 7 – Lego

Miss 4 – toys

 

Destinations:

BK – USA & Ireland

Me – USA & SE Asia

Master 7 – Africa

Miss 4 – a place with unicorns! (Uh? Disneyland?)

 

Experience:

BK – Sampling the worlds beers

Me – Watoto orphanage,

Master 7 – Safari

Miss 4 – Pepper Pig world

 

So we’ll see how those answers change.

The kids know they’re going and happily tell anyone but really, at 4 and 7 years old and only having been to Australia (but are very well traveled in NZ, having extensively traveled every corner of the north island in the past 3 years), really have noooooo idea what they’re in for!

 

Till next time!

 

Claire

Hello again!

Let’s get into it!

Researching:

One down point of being me is my desperate neeeeeeeeed to either know ‘the plan’ or to meticulously plan however the other side of me (the well travelled side), knows this is the most ridiculous thing ever because travel never goes to plan!

But still, I’ve spent hours and hours and hours researching for our upcoming trip.

Between my iPhone, iPad and BK’s new surface pro computer tablet (which I have recently fallen in love with much to his frustration, a high spec’d machine used for Internet surfing isn’t his idea of money well spent! Haha!) I’ve clocked up solid days if not weeks of research!

I have researched flight paths and costings, accommodation, transportation, road tolls in Europe, visas, places to do a safari that will actually take kids under 10 (none as of yet!!!), cruises, places to volunteer, vaccinations, other people’s daily budgets, how to educate the children – including what the NZ Ministry of Education’s thoughts are on taking our kids out of school and overseas for a year which is apparently not a lot – and of course, stuff to do for families in all of the cities I plan for us to visit!

I’ve also read a LOT of blogs on how other families have done this thing. From families with only carry-on luggage to families driving motorhomes (RVs) across whole continents. From families of 2 adults to families of 2 adults and 9 kids (yes 9 kids and a bunch of those kids have special needs, wow). And everything in between.

All my researching has given me ideas for daily budgets, sometimes I think they are quite generous and sometimes I think we’ll be eating only toast! We’ll see how that goes. Let’s just say I’ll be watching the foreign exchange market closely. I saw the £ took a dive recently and I’m still on the fence whether to buy any or not. If I did I would probably need to buy cash as currency cards start charging you after a year of not using them and so there goes any benefit from the good currency conversion!

My research is stored on a note on my phone, yes I know, not the smartest place to store it but I do regularly email it to myself and since my emails “live in the cloud so are always backed up” according to my onsite IT geek, I mean husband, I will forever have them. It’ll be interesting to look at very early editions of the notes to see how my planning/researching has evolved! At some stage I think I’ll have to move to an excel spreadsheet but for now, my phone is fine.

So after all that, a top tip from me: know which currency you’re looking at and if you’re a Kiwi like me, chances are if it has a $ at the front it’s not NZD! I learnt this the hard way as I may or may not have planned out almost my entire budget before Captain Obvious (aka the husband), announced “Ahh that’s American dollars you’re viewing!” Oops, oh well it is all part of the researching process.

And last but not least, here are some sites I’ve found useful so far!

Accomodation – airbnb.com

Flights – skyscanner.com

Transport – peugeoteurolease.co.nz

(Any suggestions on how to get a car in the states for 3 months are welcome. We hope to start in New York, NY and end in Portland, OR.)

Tolls – viamichelin.com

(Wow European tolls are expensive! I can see how they think it’s better to get the tourist to pay rather than the taxpayer though.)
Until next time,

Claire

Well here we are. My first blog. I’m not a writer and never thought I’d have a blog, so bear with me… and sorry for the grammatical mistakes in advance!

A lot of you will know / heard through the grapevine that we (ok, it’s mostly me), are in the planning stages of a year of backpacking the world with our children.

Yes…you read that right, we are pulling our kids out of school for a whole calendar year and road schooling them (that’s, for those that don’t know, a mix of home schooling and letting them learn about the world around them as we go)

We hope to depart late 2017 and be away most of 2018.

I’ve personally told quite a few people our plans and the reactions have been priceless! From “that’s awesome! Go you guys” to “wow really? Why? Your kids won’t remember it!” to (my absolute fave) “you are crazy!! But if anyone could pull it off it’s you two!” 

Then the gazillion questions come, so I thought I’d answer a few of the common ones here….

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

The plan is….SE Asia – United Arabs – Africa  – Eastern Europe – Western Europe – UK – America.          It should be 32 countries including a few mini countries.

WHAT’S WITH THE BLOG?!

To keep the fam and friends updated on how we’re going but mostly as a record of our time away, as the plan when we get home would be to copy and paste it into a photo book and get it printed for a keepsake.

What you will see on ‘the blog’ – blogs on daily life on the road/great places we’ve visited and tips on how to visit them best if you choose to visit them one day/pictures of stuff we’ve seen/how educating the kiddies is going.

What you won’t see on ‘the blog’ – pictures of our children! I’m not into their photos being online so you’ll just have to imagine them in the photos. 

HOW CAN YOU AFFORD TO TRAVEL FOR A YEAR? THAT MUST BE COSTING YOU A BUCKET LOAD!!!

It sure will cost us a lot but I’d like to hope not more than we’d spend to live our life at home.

We are in savings mode at the moment and hope to get half our trips budget in the bank before we depart. The other half will be funded by BK working as we go. Obviously as a software developer and business owner all he really needs is the Internet (and his noise cancelling earphone buds in his ears!) The plan is for him to work 4 hours a day, apart from transit days and first day in new places (plus other times like if we do a safari or a cruise). This may be in a 4 hour stint or split up over the day depending on what we want to see/how tired we are/weather etc, some days maybe 8 hours then the next day off. He’ll work it out to suit us as a family. 

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO TAKE A TRIP LIKE THIS?

After following a family of 6 on facebook do it successfully in 2015 I felt it was something I’d really like to do with our children, BK and I did a similar trip in 2007 as our honeymoon so the thought of taking our kids isn’t overly daunting….so after following this family via Facebook for a few months I went about informing the husband of my thoughts to which he exclaimed he’d suggested it a couple of years ago!!???…well it must have landed on deaf ears because I don’t  remember him saying anything like that!!

WHY NOW, WHEN THE CHILDREN ARE STILL YOUNG? THEY WONT REMEMBER IT!! 

This is the most asked question…and my answer is pretty simple. 

Why do you read a book to a child? 

For them to remember the story? No, you read it so they start to get a love of reading, to learn words etc. Same with traveling…..we travel to get a love of travel (Here, have an expensive hobby kiddo! Haha).  We travel to learn that NZ is such a small part of the world community.  We travel to see how others live – and work out we are very fortunate to live the New Zealand lifestyle…. Yes we’ll fork out tens of thousands of dollars and yes they’ll remember some of it and forget a pile of it. I don’t remember all the places I’ve been, with pictures jogging my memory I do a bit better but there are certainly things I’ve well forgotten! 

 

So there you go, first blog post done.

Hoping to do these monthly till we depart then more frequently.