Paradise Point Sign, St Thomas. Photo by Chuck Kramer

Another bonus you get is that the trees and flowers are in early bloom, so make sure you choose an area that is generous with natural beauty.

Carnival in the U.S. Virgin Islands

Spring means great weather and Carnival in the Virgin Islands. Like most Caribbean Islands, carnival is a huge celebration. Expect many choices in entertainment and activities, for adults and for children. Try out Caribbean food with your favorite beverage as the kids ride amusement rides.

Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C.

Through March and the beginning of April, the nation’s capital is in bloom. Visit to see the gorgeous cherry trees in blossom. The best thing about the cherry blossoms is that they are free for everyone to enjoy. While you are there, hop on a bus or trolley for a guided tour. You can also take a river cruise on the Potomac.

If you want a little exercise, rent a bicycle or take a walking tour.

Tulip Love in Holland

Tulips come into their glory in spring. You can take Delta flights to Holland from mid April to mid May to see the country’s tulips and enjoy their tulip festival – or even the Bollenstreek Flower Parade. If you do not want to travel overseas or do not have the budget for it, no need to worry. The town of Holland, Michigan also puts on a tulip festival each year. You will find people dressed in traditional Dutch clothing and experience concerts, parades and more.

Remember the Alamo

This historic mission is located in San Antonio, Texas. Temperatures can get suffocating, hot and muggy during the summer there, so you will have a more enjoyable experience by visiting in the spring.

After you have visited the Alamo and taken the standard, smiling tourist photos and bought a few postcards, wander down to the city’s famous River Walk. – It isn’t far away. There is so much stuff to do in the festive area. You can easily spend days there without a moment’s boredom. Eat at one of the many restaurants along the walk, have a drink at one of the bars, shop for gifts at one of the boutiques or take a boat ride.

In addition to the River Walk, visit the San Antonio zoo and Seaworld San Antonio.

Visit Europe

If you plan well in advance, you can find good airfare before the airlines raise rates for summer travel. There are parts of Europe that are exceptionally beautiful in the spring – these include France and southern Germany.

Temperatures are still crisp in March and April, but flowers will be blooming and the lush green countryside is something you won’t want to miss. Tour vineyards and sample some wine and local cuisine, and visit a castle or two on the way.

All in a good, relaxed pace making you more relaxed than ever on your vacation. No press, no stress to get anywhere before the crowds. Just you and the genuine joy of exploring something new.

Lifecruiser Love Spring Travel
 

Both liquors are from slijteri & wijnhuis Zeewijck in IJMUiden, The Netherlands and have an old, seaman-related history, so what could suit this blog any better…?

IJMUidens Spicy Liquor-bitter Piertje

As you can spot a glimpse of in the photo below, this is a darker liquor, which in it’s spicyness reminded us a bit about Jagermeister actually, but with a milder taste better suiting our tastebuds and obviously even the old fishermen in IJMuiden: if you consider the fact that there were 36 bars there they could escape their harsh life for a while…

The name comes from when they discovered this safe haven once upon a time, named after the ancient heads of harbor of IJMUiden. The piers protected the North Sea Canal channel in order not to silt up.

The harbor built up in IJMuiden were invaded by many fishermen at this time, who liked to drink the Kruidenbitter, giving it it’s nickname Schipperdrank or boats men liquor. I don’t blame them: it’s really good and they lived a hard life!

IJMUidens Rom Liquor Sluisje

The other is a Rom liquor based on an old family recipe, with a strong Vanilla taste, bottled in a very nice old looking ceramic bottle even this one – as you can see in the photo. The name is Sluisje, which as a word means sluice and that is another interesting attractions they have to attract us tourists. Very interesting built sluices well worth a visit to study the construction of them.

Be aware though, as with other liquors, they’re rather strong: we did noticed that when we did drink it now at home… ehrm…

I say no more than: thank you again Cora and Ron, you’re as sweet as the liquors that you gave us and we really, really appreciate your gift!

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 The Netherlands

Earlier posts about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly at the Europe trip
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!
 

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!
 

Breakfast were excellent at our B&B, we even managed to make picnic sandwiches and off we went, in time and everything, arrived to the ferry lines. And… I had of course forgotten the whole folder with all our hotel vouchers AND the ferry tickets… Nowadays you can’t trust my brain at all!!!!

So we had to return to the B&B and get our papers and then go back to the ferry to catch the next one, luckily you can miss one ferry and your tickets are still valid… phew. And luckily our B&B were close enough to make it! Lesson learnt: always triple check that you got everything with you!!!!

This day was just a transport distance, so no real sightseeing, just driving through Germany, no particular photo opportunities either. The real holiday starts after this…

Our Hotel for the night, De Oude Smidse, was in the countryside, very quiet and exactly what we needed for this night, to just relax, have a very bice, local dinner, take a walk in the countryside and go to bed.

When you read this it’s Saturday and we’ve been driving from Westernieland to Wijk aan Zee to meet Ginnie and Astrid!!!

©Lifecruiser Love European Roadtrips

Earlier post about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Europe Road Trip Day 1-2
Europe 7500 km roadtrip start!
Europe Trip Preparations: Video Camera GoPro Hero 2
Europe Trip Preparations: Double Trip Packing
Europe Trip Preparations: Camera Gears
Europe Trip Preparations: New Notebook PC
Another meetup for the Europe road trip
Europe Trip Preparations: Champagne Coolbox Snacks
New car for the Europe trip
Europe Trip 2012 Summery
Europe Trip Accommodations
Mapped Europe Roadtrip Route 2012 by Lifecruiser
Routes and stays booked for our Europe trip 2012
Planning our Europe trip 2012
 

If you have been blogging for quite a while, you’ll recognize the blogger name Tinkerbell. A really nice blogger friend indeed, which just the other day happily agreed to do a meetup with us one day during our Europe road trip when we’re passing her area in IJmuiden, the Netherlands.

We’re delighted that she and her hubby (plus lovely dogs!) want to meet us after those years of blogging exchange and I’m sure we will have a wonderful time together at the gorgeous beaches in the area. We will enjoy it tremendously!

Read more about our long Europe roadtrip by clicking on the links below.

©Lifecruiser Love Europe Roadtrips

Earlier post about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Europe Trip Preparations: Champagne Coolbox Snacks
New car for the Europe trip
Europe Trip 2012 Summery
Europe Trip Accommodations
Mapped Europe Roadtrip Route 2012 by Lifecruiser
Routes and stays booked for our Europe trip 2012
Planning our Europe trip 2012
 

Normally we would not make this kind of trip in August at all and not have booked all the trip stays like this, but now we have to consider that we shall meet some friends, adjusting to their schedule – and it’s high season for many Europeans.

We don’t want any fuss around finding somewhere to stay. This time we wanted to allow us something more and to stay at places we did choose ourselves.

Yes, it will be a bit more expensive than necessary (especially if we had done this trip another time at the year!) for us with all those accommodations (plus 2 times ferry tickets). Accumulated cost: around 20.000 SEK (approx €2245 / $2935), but we succeeded rather well considering the class of the places and what we get for the money, most of them also with a proper breakfast included.

Hotels are almost never that cheap when booking in advance and those are not any last minute rates unfortunately, but it’s our choice. Since we’re avoiding the big cities, we didn’t have that many hostels to choose between either.

Then we have 4 nights at Claudie and Pierre’s home in Provence, 2 nights with Linda and Anders in the Gothenburg area and perhaps 1-2 nights at friends in Sweden before returning to Stockholm. Apart from the friends mentioned above, we will have a meetup with the Norwegians in Provence too, with Ginnie and Astrid in the Netherlands and perhaps also Gattina in Belgium.

So are we completely ready with the planning yet? No, we will never be. There is still some research to do about every place we pass or stop at, to be sure of what we want to see and absolutely not miss.

We’re just making preliminary detail plans, because you never know when you’re finally there, what you really feel like doing…

Stay tuned, because we have more to tell you about this trip later!

©Lifecruiser Love Europe Accommodations

Earlier post about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Mapped Europe Roadtrip Route 2012 by Lifecruiser
Routes and stays booked for our Europe trip 2012
Planning our Europe trip 2012
 

As you can see on the map picture, on the way down in Europe following countries are involved: Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France. On the way back home it will be through France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, France (yes, again!) Germany, Denmark, Sweden.

From the beginning we thought that we should drive down pretty much right down to France and then when passing the French border, go west along the whole west coast of France. It turned out to become over 1000 kilometers longer way than to take the way right down… So we skipped that idea – for this time.

The route is not that strange, except for that ‘finger’ pointing into Innsbruck, Austria and back again. We have a tour back into France again there, just because we wanted to visit some special places and forgot to add them in our first plans. From the beginning we also did consider going up through Hungary, Slovakia, Poland as mentioned before.

An important thing to be aware of when making a road trip through Europe is fuel cost, which is different in different countries, so it do matter where you fill up your tank. We’ve counted that if our car consumes gas in the way it use to do, we end up with at least 7500 SEK (€842 or $1101) in fuel cost – of course it will increase for every detour we make… and they might be many!

It’s now we’re very grateful that our new car is very petrol economical, only 0,60 liters per 10 km (and will become even more economical when the engine it’s not so raw any longer).

Also the many toll fees can be rather expensive at some roads, so we plan to avoid most of the toll-roads when possible. The tolls really can become considerably expensive altogether (hundreds of Euro!). We have not counted in the toll fees in our costs yet.

Besides that: how fun is it to drive on motorways all the time and not really see anything of the places you passes along the way? No thanks!

We will stay away from home for almost a month, not being on the roads all the time, but pretty much. We will tell you more soon in another post, so stay tuned!

Considering we will be away for a month before that too (at our summer island) with only one day at home before we leave for the Europe trip, it means 2 months away from home this summer…

©Lifecruiser Love Europe Travel

Earlier post about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Planning our Europe trip 2012
Routes and stays booked for our Europe trip 2012
 

We’re taking our own car, departure from Stockholm and continue down in Europe, passing through a lot of countries along the way.

On the way down in Europe: Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France.

On the way home in Europe: France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, France (yes, again!) Germany, Denmark, Sweden.

We did discuss the possibility to drive through Hungary, Slovakia and Poland too, but decided not to. It’s enough, we can’t take in more in this short time span, then we would have to stay away for months rather than weeks… lol…

On the way down we have some stops to make – having meetups with Ginnie and Astrid in the Netherlands and maybe Gattina in Belgium, to finally get to the planned meetup in Provence with Claudie and Pierre, and the Norwegians: Tor and Anna, Renny and Diane.

Since it’s in Europe’s high summer holiday season, we decided to actually make bookings in advance for once, to plan a bit ahead where to stay and what to do there. Some places we stay a couple of days to explore more.

It takes time to draw the perfect route on the map, to research for places to stay overnight – not too expensive, not too cheap – and in the right places along the route. Many days of fun seeing all those fantastic places and you wish you could stop at them all!

We will tell you a little bit more soon when the route is completely done – almost anyway, because a trip route never can be completely done in my point of view…

©Lifecruiser Love Travel Planning
 

The first Rotterdam set sail in 1872, beginning a Holland America tradition. This Rotterdam Ship’s Registry is in The Netherlands and were dedicated in 1997 by HRH Princess Margriet of the Netherlands.

With a ship length of 780 feet and a lot of things in the way, this was the best I could do. Almost half of the ship is missing.

Passenger capacity is 1,404 with about 600 crew members to serve them. I wish I were one of them since they now cruises the Incan Empires, Hawaii and Tahiti – gorgeous dream destinations.

©Lifecruiser Love Cruise Ships
 

The theme for the year is: USA, New Amsterdam / New York and the 400 years of relationship between US and the Netherlands – which I had totally forgotten that I’ve ever learned about.

In 1609 Henry Hudson founded New Amsterdam commissioned by the West India Company in Holland, which later became New York.

There is also another attraction that’s new for the year: An electric driven, very eco-friendly whisper boat trip you can take for about an hour in the gardens.

It’s actually old gardeners boats, which makes it even more appealing to me.

I’m tempted to go there, but don’t think we can, since we have other plans this year and not enough in the wallets.

I wouldn’t mind at all to sail around almost silent through the stunning bulb garden, getting the best views for camera shooting!

Wanna go? Have a look at: www.keukenhof.nl

Lifecruiser ♥ Keukenhof