TravelhackRR

2014 was definitely an amazing year for us. It was our first full year of being together in the same country so we finally had the chance to go to a lot of places we wanted to see. Let’s start off with the numbers, 38 countries, 36 flights, 70k kms of flying, over 25k kms of road trips, as well as countless train, bus, ferry, horse, camel, buggy and taxi rides! Needless to say, we were moving in 2014! The year started off right as in January, I was tasked to go to an advance school in Germany. Figured that this was the perfect opportunity to visit several places. I brought Rac with me as we drove with our buddy Justin all the way to Germany with a stop in Munich to explore the city. While we were there, we drove and visited both Amsterdam and Brussels and on the way home, we hit up Austria, Liechtenstein and Verona.

This year was also the year that we got really familiar with low cost carriers Ryan Air and easyJet. We booked cheap tickets to places like Nice, Malta, Sardinia and Paris among other places. All these trips were quick weekend escapades to explore these places. With the limited leave that we have, it was awesome to take off on a Thursday/Friday, spend a couple of days in another European city and come back to work on Monday. One of those weekends, we even managed to visit Greece with our friends to check out Athens where we also included a stop in Rome to see the Coliseum.

In April, I needed to go to the Philippines for a wedding but being the crazy traveler I am, decided to take the long way. Took me 10 flights but I visited Egypt, Dubai and Kenya while still being able to attend the wedding. From this trip, I was lucky enough to visit the Pyramids of Giza, see the Burj Khalifa and explore the Nairobi Safari.

On one four-day weekend, me and Rac flew to Switzerland and explored Zurich , flew to Malaga, Spain in the morning then drove to Tarifa and took the ferry to Tangier, Morocco. The next day, drove to Gibraltar and spent the night in Seville, Spain. The day after, we drove to Algarve, Portugal, spent the night and drove all the way back to Malaga to catch our flight back to Italy. Again, all this in four days. Crazy you say? Indeed.

Being in Europe, going on a road trip with friends is a great way to visit multiple places on a budget. We did plenty of that in 2014. We started off by doing some castle-hopping when we visited Bled & Ljubljana, Slovenia. We did the French Riviera with our friends and visited Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo and Genoa while watching a FIBA tournament in France. We also went on a road trip to Prague Czech Republic where we also explored Bratislava, Slovakia on our way back to Italy. Another road trip was to the island of Pag, Croatia! We also went to multiple trips to Venice, Milan, Pisa, Florence and Rome as we accompanied friends and family that visited. As the year was closing, we did some more road trips as we went all the way to Budapest, Hungary and Vienna Austria to explore the Christmas markets. A day after that trip, we went to Ljubljana, Slovenia!

For our big anniversary trip, we decided to explore Africa and visited the beautiful Island of Seychelles to just chillax. Next, we flew into Cape Town, South Africa which has quick become our new favorite city. We finished that trip with a stopover in Turkey for a quick your of Istanbul. All this for free as we used our miles and points for this anniversary trip!

2014 was really an amazing year of travel for us. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we can visit all these places in such a short amount of time. It helps that we got lucky to be based in Europe as it makes traveling a lot easier. It’s also great that we have a bunch of miles and points that afford us to fly and stay in hotels basically for free! Lastly, we’ve been helping people and taking them with us when we travel. By doing this, we not only pass on the travel bug but we save money on our own travels! The places we visited were awesome but the journey to get to those places were a big part of the fun! Hoping that 2015 will be as good if not better!