For The Love of Travel

Ok, I have something to confess, I think I am a travelaholic.

I am fairly sure there is one in every family. We talk about booking holidays. Look up prices all the time and when Jetstar has a return for free sale, spend a lot of time searching (aka dreaming) about where we could go.

We donate our time freely to the pursuit of travel with countless hours and hours researching. Trying to find the best hotel and the cheapest flights. Once that is booked, we then move on to things to see, eat and do. If you are lucky enough to have this person in your life then hold onto them as they are a valuable resource.

Being this person isn’t for the faint-hearted as it comes with a lot of pressure and also expectation but also plenty of rewards, of course like going on holidays. Everyone is amazed at how cheap you got the flights. Or how AWESOME was that hotel room you spent hours trying to find. A day does not go by where I don’t think about where we are off to next, especially amongst the dreary day to day tasks of life and work.

I am our family’s travel agent and I love it. My agency, Tracey’s Travel. From time to time I may complain about having to do all these tasks and how easy my traveling partners have it. But deep down the travelaholic loves it and it is my thing and I hope to be lucky enough to keep on doing this for many years to come.

This also joins forces with my other love. Making sure I don’t pay full price for anything. I mean who wants to do that?? Nobody I hear you say. So I frequently combine my two loves and spend countless hours making sure that my need for travel and adventure also does not make us broke.

So here I am taking a giant leap to put myself out there and hopefully sharing all these travel thoughts, plans and trips with other people who love it too. My wish is to share with you all how to get a great deal to lots of amazing places you never thought you would see.

Sharing the tips and tricks that allow this middle-income couple with two kids to have visited 25 plus destinations, including 9 cruises all around the world. Hawaii, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Barbados, Mexico, Bahamas, Bali, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, China, Korea, Rome, Venice, Nice, Paris, Barcelona, Florence just to name a few.

This, my very first (YIKES!!) blog post was written, on the balcony of our hotel room at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki. My husband is sitting next to me and my two kids are relaxing in the room. I just feel incredibly happy and at peace. We were able to fly to Hawaii for $1250AUD for 4 people one way!! I know right, such amazing value. Deals like this make travel more accessible than ever before.

So I feel it appropriate to take a step back in time to explain where it all began. My taste for travel started to blossom when at the age of 26 a freshly married couple decided to take the plunge and leave the safe confines of suburban Melbourne and see the world. My soon to be husband was not that keen on the idea, but back in those days he just wanted to make me happy so he agreed.

So the planning began for a six-week honeymoon adventure. Rather than the traditional kettle and toaster registry, we asked for money to help us head overseas. I remember agonising about if it was even okay to ask for money to go on holiday, how times have changed.

So we got our very first passports, booked our round the world tickets. Booked our hostels via email, no instant booking those days and with guide books and actual printed maps in hand, off we went to see the world outside of Australia for the very first time. There was to be honest, a fair amount of anxiety but this was surpassed with pure excitement.

Our first stop was Rome, and I remember going through customs and coming out the other side and seeing guards with machine guns and thinking what have we gotten ourselves into here. But we bravely caught the train as the guide book said to do and headed to our accommodation and we were hooked. Fast forward to today and now we have 2 kids who are most definitely benefiting from our love of travel!

Now just to clarify we are not millionaires far far from it, we are like any ordinary middle-income family. We now live in beautiful Adelaide raising our two children no different from anyone else out there. But we love to travel and we sacrifice to be able to do this and it is important to me to show my kids the world. My car is nearly 20 years old, our fridge needs replacing and probably so does our TV but when it comes to spending money I would much prefer to spend it on a holiday than anything else so we squirrel away our spare cents towards our next adventure.

So my hope for this blog is to show you how I make this all possible for our family. Also, to share those amazing deals/tricks and information I use to make sure our hard-earned dollars stretch as far as possible. But I also want to keep it real for you guys. I am not some traveling Insta influencers taking bikini shots in beautiful tropical locations but your average every day working Mum and wife. No set up photos here just real-life travel and beautiful moments that are shared along the way. And we are always happier on holidays!!