• Yurts – In this modern day and age, camping has begun to become more glamorous as opposed to sleeping rough for a few days. Yurts are the way forward when it comes to camping as it provides some of the comforts that are found in your own home including, separate bedrooms, hobs and even plumbing! Yurts are perfect for the whole family and the experience is bound to be one that you will never forget.
• Holiday Cottages – This type of accommodation is perfect for both couples and families, more so for families as these cottages usually have plenty of bedrooms. Luxury cottages can be usually found in the beautiful countryside away from the hustle and bustle that the city usually brings.
• Holiday Villa – Villas are great for families as you can let your kids run wild by the pool whilst also having a relaxing time out to relax and rejuvenate. If you are wise about it, you can usually find plenty of deals on villas online on several sites. As well as families, villas are also ideal for friends as they are usually away from nearby housing, so you can make as much noise as you want.
• Hotels – Hotels are usually cheap and easy to book at short notice. Make sure you are careful though as not all hotels are the same. Once again, make use of any review sites that you can look at that will indicate whether the hotel is up to your standards. Another thing to bear in mind is the location of the hotel. Make sure that it is nearby to local transport links and close to entertainment.

Guest post by James Taylor from Travel Maestro

Author bio: James Taylor is a fellow travel blogger who just like us love to travel and discover new places as well as sharing his experiences with us. At Travel Maestro you will find travel guides for travelling around the world, encouraging readers to share their travel stories with us and give us more travel tips.

Lifecruiser Love Travel Tips
 

I’ll try to translate the postcard correctly for you below, since it’s so hilarious in some parts, especially if you recognize some of your own travel experiences too!

Saluti da Firenze 21th of April

Buongiorno at you!

We’re now in the west worlds cultural center! Here are so much culture that we now are giving our feet some air at the hotel room. Even the hotel room is smelling culture, as an example: the heat is not working, light bulbs are missing and the fridge – the minibar – provides warm beer. To see some light in the room, we have to climb up at a shelf in the wall where we with a certain experience can manage to open two windows shutters and then we can see the sky! Otherwise everything is peace and joy.
Greetings A and G…

I can’t help laughing, even though it shouldn’t be like that. When will it ever change, the cheating charter agencies or hotel owners, with the announced standard when buying the trip…?

And even if you buy it to a discounted rate, it still should not be like that. Period.

©Lifecruiser Love Postcards
 

Sorting and uploading all the photos from all those countries will take too long time and I know some of you are very curious of how our very long road trip went, so better to start with this summery with conclusion in the end.

10 Countries were visited by us during this Europe road trip: Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria. We have now been to at least 30 countries together since 2004.

I’ll start with the good things, so if you don’t want to know the bad and the ugly, you can skip the middle part and jump directly to the end of this post and click on the link to see our photos so far.

The Good with the European road trip

Except from the useful travel experience, which always are great to have, and lots of great times here and there, I’ll list the absolute highlights of our European road trip below, not in any particular order.

1. Meeting a lot of friends were one of the main reasons for us to go on this trip from the beginning, a meetup once again in the French Riviera at Claudie and Pierre’s house with the Norwegian blog friends, but also to meetup with several other online friends along the way. Many of them which we never had met before, but that was no problem – very pleasant meetings all of them!

2. To visit the Champagne district and especially Moet Chandon wine cellars & gorgeous vineyards is of course a must when going to France for us Dom Perignon Champagne lovers and it did not let us down as a terrific travel experience.

3. The Netherlands lovely countryside at first and then the west coast with long, gorgeous beaches and actually 2 different blogger friends meetups turning out really good despite quite windy weather conditions.

4. The French Grand Canyon recreation area with it’s marvelous Emerald green lake which we definitely will go back to some day to stay for several days or a week. Also the fantastic French Alp views is really worth exploring more even in the summertime I tell you!

5. The Austrian Alps, gorgeous even in the summertime, but maybe we will even go back there some time in the wintertime even though I normally don’t like the winter. It’s very special with the Alp tops and the people. I did miss any yodeling though… ha ha…

6. The International Sandsculpture festival with incredible sculptures, quite big ones, but actually not as many as we thought there would be, but still worth visiting. Fantastic artists involved from many countries.

7. Certain hotel’s or B&B’s we had booked were surprising us with being even better than we had thought they would be. You never know until you see them in real life!

8. Trying different beer or wines that are not even available in our home country. Every day was a party!

I’ll come back in later travel blog posts, to write more about the different highlights in separate posts and divide the different places into separate photo folders too, making it easier for you to have a look at the special travel experiences.

The Bad with the European road trip

There was too little time and a too small wallet. We spent too much time on the roads, some of the hotels did not match their description or our expectations, some places were not really worth spending time within (like the Rhine Valley in my opinion).

The promised WiFi at too many of the hotels were not working well – if at all, making us unable to keep in contact with people as well as unable to upload photos even from the iPhone many times. That was something we did not like at all and worth thinking of if going on a trip.

The food creation around Europe is in bad shape, it’s really too much french fries to every dish with very little variation, too little vegetables served in the meals, not creative enough if you go to normal restaurants and not the real gourmet or classy ones. I can’t call them budget restaurants since they’ve not really budget prices nowadays.

We had packed two big suitcases which really didn’t fit for the too many steep stairs in the hotels we had booked (or our disk problems), so we had to rearrange a bit, taking out clothes in advance and put in smaller bags to be able to cope during the driving around. It was quite a puzzle sometimes, ha ha!

We had not really great summer weather on this trip, making it very difficult to take photos. It was either unusually cold and gray or way too hot to be outdoors, nothing in between until we did reach Denmark in the end. (We were unusually white this summer actually…)

Both lucky and unlucky: in the end of our trip, when reaching the south of Sweden again, hubby suddenly got ill with dizziness which forced me to do some heavy things I shouldn’t which made my back crack again, which created severe problems when continuing up in Sweden.

We stopped to sleep half ways home in hubby’s childhoods summer home and went home from there the day after that, despite that we had plans to continue our journey within Sweden. It was not meant to be obviously – it has been unsteady weather since.

The Ugly at the European road trip

The highways in Switzerland were the most boring part of our road trip and I think from all our earlier road trips too. I have never seen such a boring motorway ever. I don’t know if it were the fact that we had been on the roads for so long, but the highway never seemed to end…

Our look after being exhausted made me not wanna be on the photos… ha ha… We were looking so darn worn out both of us, like 10 years older suddenly. Our photos and videos, ugly ones I tell you!

Surprisingly enough, we had hard time finding interesting things or beautiful views to capture. We do have lots of interesting photos, but also uninteresting ones and too many deleted ones to be honest. Normally we always find so many things to photograph, but not at all as many as usual on this trip, strange enough.

Conclusion of European roadtrip

If going on such a long road trip, you need at least to double the time (and your wallet!) to get a more satisfying experience. We did know this before we went, but we had no choice, this was what we could manage at this time, so we had to take it or leave it.

We’re satisfied with our experiences as we thought about it as a tour to look around and get a quick view over a lot of countries, to know where we want to go back again in the nearest future. We now know that we want to go back to The Netherlands, The French and the Austrian Alps for sure.

I would not recommend going to the French Riviera in August when it use to be too hot and crowdy and we would never have gone there at this time, if it were not for the fact that our hosts had vacation then and the meetup there with our friends from Norway.

Since all Europe’s holiday period occurs in August, there use to be lots and lots of holiday people out on the roads normally, but we were lucky this year: no severe traffic jams in the directions where we went – only in the opposite directions all the time. Maybe also the economic crises has left some traces, making people staying home more.

Continue to keep an eye on Lifecruiser Europe roadtrip 2012 Flickr Photos, there will be new photos uploaded there now and then until I’m done with them all.

©Lifecruiser Love European Roadtrips

Earlier posts about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Ending a long Europe road-trip
Europe roadtrip: in the Alps
Europe trip: leaving the Champagne district to go to Provence
Europe Road short update
Europe Road: leaving Bruges
Europe trip: blogger meet in Wijk aan Zee and IJMuiden, The Netherlands
Europe Road Trip Day 2-3 Goodbye Germany Hello The Netherlands
Europe Road Trip Day 1-2
Europe 7500 km roadtrip start!
 

Bicycles are popular not only for the exercise reason or as an environment friendly holiday option – Gotland is known as a biking holiday island, but I suspect the main reason is to avoid driving a car when having some refreshing evening drinks…

©Lifecruiser Love Old Bicycles
 

At a first look at the hook I thought it was a real small spigg (stickleback in English) fish, but it was not as you can see. A pretty well done hook though!

©Lifecruiser Love Fishing

Some other fishing harbor related posts by Lifecruiser:

Travel Photo: Inviting Fishing Nets Door
Travel Photo: Fishing Boat VY29 Kristina
Photo: Island Fishing Cottage
Travel Photo: Limestone Wall of Gotland Fishing Cottage
Travel Photo: Renovated Fishing Cottage at Gotland
Travel Photo: Old Boat Engines
Travel Photo: Old Cottage Entrance
Boat check in sunset
 

There is nothing more refreshing (other than a swim in the Sea maybe) than a cold beer after a long day in the summer… (Yes, it could have been a Visby Pils instead of a Corona, but it is one of my favorite beer brands and hard to resist!)

Cheers my dears :-p

©Lifecruiser Love Beer
 

Even my iPhone photo uploads has not been without trouble – that’s how life is on an island I suppose… This one is from yesterday afternoon, as you can see we have really nice Swedish summer weather, even though it’s a bit chilly in the air yet. The real summer weather will arrive in July.

©Lifecruiser Love Farm Holidays
 

Emergency Stop on the Kepler Trek in NZ by RobB7

This one above is another one, which we have seen some similar ones at different places and always up in the mountains. This one though is "secured" with wires if you look closer, that is supposed to keep it from falling over the edge…

Just think about the feeling when sitting in there and suddenly falling backwards with your pants down… The ultimate nightmare! Ha ha!

©Lifecruiser Love Toilets Travel Photos

Travel Toilet-related posts by Lifecruiser:

World Wide Weird Travel Toilets
Travel Photo: Mexican Toilet Sign in Spain
Travel Photo: Ingmar Bergmans Septic Tank
 

Why did we go on this cruise between Stockholm – Tallinn – St Petersburg – Helsinki – Stockholm? It was not only because we got a budget deal with St Peter Line, no we also had other reasons as follow.

First of all I just have to mention that on this cruise we were really following in the vikings footsteps, because they did sail from Stockholm and up to St Petersburg through the same bay as we did cruise. That was perhaps reason number one to go.

Secondly, because we had heard so much about it. Honestly, perhaps not one of our most wanted travel destinations, but since we got this one chance to see both Tallinn and St Petersburg in the same cruise, we did jump on it since we might never go there otherwise.

The third reason was because I have personal relations to this part of the world. I have relatives living in Estonia and have heard so much about both Estonia and Russia from them, already many years ago when it was more closed countries. History always is so fascinating even if it’s kind of a bad history if you know what I mean, isn’t it?

You have already read about all our experiences during the cruise as well as the fact that we did escape from the cruise because of our bad experiences aboard and stayed in Helsinki before boarding another cruise ship instead. (If not: check the links in the end of the post to update yourself)

Pros: For the first time in history a Visa Free Cruise from Sweden to Russia started in April 2011. The new ferry line might be the most easy way of traveling to Saint Petersburg and be there within 72 hours without a visa. We also got to see authentic Russian shows of Music Hall cabaret aboard the ship, which was very good.

Cons: M/S Princess Anastasia is a very old ship and even though she is renovated, standard is very low and especially if you’re used to other bigger cruise lines. Our cabin was not very nice with dirty covers, flaking bathroom floor and moldy shower, despite the fact that we had upgraded to A-cabin. It’s also very noisy in the cabins.

Another couple got a water leakage from their cabin and had to change cabin because of it. A-Cabins at other budget cruise ships as Silja Symphony, is way over this standard! Even our B-cabin at Silja were so much better!

Would I recommend going with this cruise ship or even this cruise line? No. Even if you get a bargain price, I would recommend to wait and save your money, to go with any of the other better cruises instead. This ship is too worn out and when it comes to the cruise line, we also did think that they are bad at inform you right about things.

There is information you get, that is quite contradictive to each other, so IF you go: be sure to double check everything!

Didn’t we check up this cruise before we booked? Yes, we did, but it was not easy to find anything bad written about them when we did that check up.

What we have learned from this is that don’t jump on bargain deals too fast before thinking after if it’s for the right reasons you do it – and if you’re prepared to take the risk that it might not at all be what you thought it would be.

If you find any undone food objects in the cooked breakfast – do not eat them, they may come out later in unexpected and unwanted ways, keeping you locked up in the toilet all night without any sleep…

Also count on the fact that the food bill will become much, much more expensive than you thought, since you might not want to only eat the cheapest food at the budget places all the time for 4 days – and also: it’s way too easy to order Champagne… *giggles*

©Lifecruiser Love Cruises

Related Baltic cruise posts by Lifecruiser:

How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 1
How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 2
Our night in Katajanokka Jail
Baltic Cruise Stop Tallinn – UNESCO Cultural Heritage
Saint Petersburg Souvenirs
The Idiots Sightseeing of Saint Petersburg
Photo: Illusionary Window
Baltic Cruise Stop Helsinki
Last Cruise Leg Silja Symphony
 

We checked out from the Katajanokka jail hotel, took a cab to the railway station once again, put our bags in a locker temporarily and went to book a ticket at the cruise ship Silja Symphony at the internet terminals in the station. Choosing to read the booking site in Swedish, didn’t get us the right pages to book FROM Helsinki to Stockholm, it assumed that we were in Stockholm all the time, so we gave up and took the easy way: we went to the Helsinki expert stand in the station to get help.

There we could establish that it was more expensive to take the cruise home the same day, so we did book the next day instead, giving me time to recover from my… ehrm… toilet experienced night… So anyway, we needed to get another hotel for this night to finally (hopefully!) get some proper sleep. We did choose Scandic hotel for €132 per night and just uphills from the railway station.

We did check in and went to the elevators – and my, how suitable this hotel was for us! Just have a look at those elevator doors…

The room was satisfying, with free wifi to get in touch with peeps and the beds divine after the cruise ship beds and not having any sleep… but we went out anyway to see something more than just the hotel room, even though we had been sightseeing the day before and we have seen Helsinki before that too.

At the back of the hotel is a square, which has some pubs, among them Henry’s pub and we went for some beers even though it was too cold to sit outside. This day it was really freezing ice cold winds!!!

We also went for something to eat in the mall nearby there, some wraps we did eat watching people walking, no, stressing by. Have you ever watched people a Friday evening nearby any railway station or bus station? Oh my! People really are stressed… I got tired seeing them and we decided to head back to the hotel room and just have a relaxed evening there.

After being at our hotel room for a while, of course, the hungry monster in me did wake up. This time I might have had a proper excuse though, I mean: after emptying myself totally the night before, my body really screamed after nourishment to fill up the gaps with! So I asked if hubby maybe could go down to see if there was a hot dog stand or something nearby, I was craving for mashed potatoes or something potato-related to fill up with, but said that it could go with sandwiches from the hotel lobby.

I should have known, that as sweet as he always is, of course he did run around all the neighborhood for some mashed potatoes for me… without finding any and returning to the hotel – and of course: at the side of the hotel were he hadn’t been, there was the hot dog stand! Ha ha! How typical isn’t that?

After that we were both very full and sleepy so it was time to finally get a full night sleep – and not on top of any disco loudspeakers with a crappy bed with dirty bed covers, no, this time in proper, clean and very nice beds – feeling like the sleeping Beauty…. ahhh… life was good!

Next day we did relax as long as possible at the hotel room and then our bags went back to the lockers at the railway once again and then we went to the nearest Tapas bar to enjoy the sun with some beers, garlic olives, cornichons and salami to wait until we could take the tram to the cruise ship. Yum!

You can see all Lifecruiser photos of Helsinki at Flickr.

Stay tuned to hear how our last cruise leg was, if we arrived safe at home without any sea sickness – and later on what we did learn from all this and what we really thought about our experience plus all the pros and cons…

©Lifecruiser Love Cruises

Related Baltic cruise posts by Lifecruiser:

How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 1
How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 2
Our night in Katajanokka Jail
Baltic Cruise Stop Tallinn – UNESCO Cultural Heritage
Saint Petersburg Souvenirs
The Idiots Sightseeing of Saint Petersburg
Photo: Illusionary Window