budget travel

In Europe, we really are spoiled, with natural beauty just a couple of flight hours away from wherever you live. The Alps, Dolomites, Scandinavian wilderness, Asturias in northern Spain… and those are just a few of the better-known areas. The first question that naturally arises is how to get there. Of course, driving to your…

I heard many volunteer stories from other travelers on my trips. However, not until quite recently I had looked into doing it myself. I signed up for 2-weeks of volunteering on a truffle farm in Asturias, Spain. Doing volunteer work abroad opened up a whole new dimension of travel. It didn’t feel like work, but…

Wild Spirit Backpackers Lodge is a hippie hostel tucked away in the Tsitsikamma National Park in the relatively undiscovered Western Cape of South Africa.

There are many castles to visit in Romania. By far the most famous one is Bran Castle, where “Dracula” supposed to have lived. On my stay in an Airbnb in Brașov on a road trip with friends, my host told me that visiting Bran castle was overrated and that the Peleș castle in Sinaia was a…

Svalbard is a small Norwegian island located north of the Arctic circle; roughly in between Norway and the North Pole. It has a little over 2.500 permanent inhabitants, making it the most northern settlement in the world. One of the few things I heard about this archipelago is that the weather conditions can be rough…

It’s funny how distances are perceived in The Netherlands. If I speak to someone from the USA for instance, a 5-hour train ride gets you into another city. In The Netherlands however, you would be in Germany, Belgium or even France. Still, we moan when we have to take a train for 45 minutes to see…

Many people ask me what my favorite destination was of all my travels. I always tell them the same: Antarctica. “How did you get to Antarctica?!” is the obvious follow-up question. When I explain to them that it wasn’t that challenging, cold, or exclusive, they usually add Antarctica to their (usually long list of) bucket list…

Where do the locals eat in Amsterdam? It’s not the McDonald’s or Burger King unless they have had one too many of course. There is a great choice of places to eat in Amsterdam, but few of them are in the central touristy areas. So who can help you find the best places to eat in Amsterdam?…

It’s easy to lose your head with all the things to do in Dubrovnik, the famous Croatian seaside town boasting a medieval walled-in ‘old city’. Busloads, or should I say cruise-loads, of tourists make a day-or-two stop here, causing it to be flooded with people for a big portion of the year. My girlfriend Claire and I…

Aaah, North Korea. Plenty of mystery surrounds this hermetically closed-off country (also referred to as DPRK), which occasionally pops up in the international media. My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to visit North Korea on a budget tour since I was already in the area at the time. I’ll save my…

What is your favorite type of rental car on a holiday? A classic sedan, a fully-stocked RV or a cheerfully-painted hippie camper? What if I told you that you can rent any of these vehicles for $1 a day? That’s right, 1 dollar a day car rental is not an urban myth! It’s called car relocation…