ABOUT THE WORLD TRAVEL DIARY

Hi, I am so glad you made it here to The World Travel Diary.

I never really planned to become a travel person.

For quite a long time, I didn’t think of myself as someone who travelled a lot. Then something changed. I started coming home from one holiday already thinking about where we could go next.

Having another trip on the calendar became a little ritual. It gave me something to look forward to when everyday life felt particularly repetitive, and I loved that feeling of knowing there was another part of the world waiting for us.

Eventually I realised that travel had become much more than taking a break.

I genuinely wanted to know what was out there.

A different street. A completely unfamiliar meal. A place I had only ever seen in photographs. A conversation with someone whose life looked nothing like mine. A landscape that made me stop for a moment and think, How is this actually real?

Those experiences have a way of staying with you.

So do the things that go wrong.

A missed connection, an unexpectedly exhausting day, a plan that looked brilliant on paper and turned out to be completely impractical, or the tiny discovery you would never have found in a standard itinerary can become part of the story you remember years later.

That is one of the things I love most about travelling. You leave home expecting one experience and often come back with something quite different.

And usually, that is where the good stories begin.

Then travelling changed

Having children changed the way we travel.

Before kids, planning a trip was mostly about what my partner and I wanted to see and do. We could change plans on a whim, spend an entire day walking around somewhere, eat when we felt like eating and keep going until we were tired.

Then two little people arrived.

Suddenly, a day that looks perfectly reasonable on an itinerary can look very different when you add tired children, hunger, toilets, naps, luggage, walking distances and everyone’s ability to cope with one more change of plan.

I don’t say that as a warning against family travel.

Quite the opposite.

Travelling with children has given us a completely different way of experiencing places. Watching them encounter something for the first time can make a familiar attraction feel new again. A simple market, train journey, animal encounter or plate of unfamiliar food can become the part of a trip they talk about months later.

It has also taught me that good family travel rarely comes down to squeezing as much as possible into a holiday.

Good planning matters.

Knowing when to slow down matters.

Understanding the practical details before you arrive matters enormously.

That became one of the reasons TWTD started evolving into something much bigger than my original travel diary.

Why I started The World Travel Diary

People have asked me about places I had visited for years.

Usually the conversation went something like this:

• Have you been there?
• Then came the questions that actually mattered.
• What did you do?
• Was it worth it?
• What should we know before we go?
• Would you do anything differently?

I was asking exactly the same questions whenever I planned my own trips.

I research a lot before travelling. Probably more than I need to.

Flights, routes, transport, places to visit, practical details, cultural information, things worth booking ahead, things that can wait, things that look easy until you actually arrive. By the time a trip begins, I have usually spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand how all the pieces fit together.

Starting TWTD was a way of putting some of that work to good use.

Instead of letting all that research disappear into old browser tabs and forgotten notes, I could turn it into something another traveller might actually find useful.

That was the original idea.

It still matters.

But TWTD has grown into a much bigger idea since then.

Travel information is easy to find. Useful travel information is harder.

There is no shortage of websites telling you what to see.

The harder question is figuring out how a trip will actually work for your particular family.

• Can the children handle that much walking?
• Is the itinerary too ambitious?
• How long will that transfer really feel after a long flight?
• Is an attraction genuinely enjoyable with children, or merely described as “family friendly”?
• How much time should you leave between activities?
• What happens when the weather ruins the plan?
• Which things are worth organising before leaving Australia, and which decisions are better made once you arrive?

Those questions can have a much bigger effect on a family holiday than another list of ten attractions.

That is where I want TWTD to be useful.

I want to take the information, research and experience that sit behind a trip and turn them into something that helps a family make a better decision.

Not somebody else’s perfect holiday.

Yours.

Family travel is not one-size-fits-all

A family with a baby has very different travel problems from a family with teenagers.

A three-year-old can turn a straightforward museum visit into an entirely different proposition. A school-aged child might happily walk for hours if there is something interesting waiting at the other end. Older children may care less about the attraction itself and much more about having some independence during the trip.

Even within the same family, everyone can have a different idea of what makes a great day.

That is why I am interested in the parts of travel that often get left out of the glossy itinerary.

• Pacing.
• Energy.
• Food.
• Sleep.
• Transport.
• Toilets.
• Weather.
• Transitions.
• Downtime.

The little decisions that prevent a difficult day from becoming a disastrous one.

Those details are not glamorous, but they can make the difference between a family coming home saying, That was incredible, and coming home needing another holiday to recover.

What you will find here

TWTD is built around family travel, first-hand experiences, destination guides and practical information that helps parents travel with more confidence and less unnecessary stress.

Some of the stories come from trips with my partner and our children. Others come from travelling with my partner, my parents, siblings or other family members. There are also older journeys that I still want to bring to life properly because they contain experiences and lessons worth sharing.

I don’t want to pretend every trip goes perfectly.

It doesn’t.

Nor should travel.

A useful travel guide should tell you more than the attractive parts. It should help you understand the practical realities, the compromises, the things that surprised us and the decisions that deserve a little more thought before you book.

That is the kind of information I look for when planning our own trips, and it is the standard I want TWTD to provide.

We are still travelling

There are plenty of places I have already visited that I still want to write about properly.

There are also destinations I have never seen and problems I have never had to solve yet.

That is part of why this was named The World Travel Diary.

It isn’t supposed to feel finished.

A diary grows.

One trip leads to another. An old experience becomes useful when a family asks a new question. A mistake made years ago suddenly becomes the exact piece of advice someone else needed before their own holiday.

Our travels will keep changing as our children grow, too.

A destination that works brilliantly for one stage of family life may require a completely different approach a few years later. I find that fascinating, because it means there is always something new to learn even when you return to places you already know.

Come and have a look around

You might have arrived here because you are planning a particular trip.

Perhaps you are travelling with children for the first time and have no idea how much preparation you actually need. Maybe you are researching somewhere completely unfamiliar, trying to work out whether a destination is realistic for your family, or simply looking for inspiration for the next adventure.

Start wherever your curiosity takes you.

Browse the destinations and see where we’ve been.

Explore the family travel guides for practical ideas and planning help.

Follow the stories from our own journeys and see what we discovered along the way.

You may come here looking for one answer and end up finding somewhere you had never considered visiting.

That has happened to me plenty of times.

There is an enormous world outside our front door, and I still find that thought incredibly exciting.

I hope TWTD gives you a little of that feeling too.

Welcome to The World Travel Diary.