My annual review of 2018
It’s the last day of the year and it is time to look back on my travel year 2018.
This year I started with a lot of dreams. In my mind I made many plans. Old villages, blue sky and waving palm trees. But somehow this year, the renovation of our house took a lot of time and money. We still managed to do a few trips.
In total I spend 35 days abroad. I only took 4 flights and drove 2755 km on our road trip in Europe. In Japan we rented a car for 3 days and drove another 300 km. For the first time we drove in a car on the left side of the road. This went actually really well!
January
Bruges
To relax a bit after the moving, we took a short weekend off to Bruges in January. This lovely town is only 1.45 minutes from our home town. I found a nice deal with a beer tasting program and a hotel including the price. Unfortunately the weather was cold and rainy. But luckily Bruges has some nice museums to visit. Make sure you’ll visit the Chocolate museum!
End of January
With temperatures getting close to -10degees we found our house has not the isolation it needs. The bathroom is very cold, and we can’t get it comfortable warm. The first plans of renovation started. We decided to do renovations on the complete upper floor including 4 bedrooms and a bathroom. We started with 2 bedrooms. New wallpaper, painting, isolation in the ceiling and new decorations.
We made a schedule in which we should finish the complete upper floor in 6 months.
I got this schedule complete wrong! In the end it took us nearly 11 months to finish! We had a stop in the months June, July and August, in which we only did small things like tear down the wallpaper etc.
In these months we enlarged the driveway.
We got a lot of help from our family (our fathers are very handy and they are a great help!) and friends. But still it took more time as we wished for.
June
Switzerland and Italy
At the end of May we finished 2 bedrooms. The result was beautiful! To relax a little before we would start the last and biggest project; the bathroom, we decided to take 2 weeks of and take a road trip to the mountains.
Again we opted for Austria, but again the weather was unpredictable this time. Switzerland and Italy seems to be much better option so we made plans to go to both countries.
We have a friend living close to Lake Garda and we got an invitation to stay there for a few days.
And we asked our friends from Rimini to come over to do via ferrata in the Dolomites.
This holiday was all about via ferrata/klettersteig. My husband managed to do 11 routes, while I did 9 routes. Meanwhile, we did some walking in mountains and cities. We enjoyed the food a lot!
Wedding
When we got back from our trip, the same week we had a wedding from our friends, which I was asked to take the pictures all day. It was kind of stressful, but also a nice thing to do. I was honored they asked me! In the end there were no worries about the result. The pictures turned out fantastic!
November
Japan
The day Timo and I would celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary we stepped on plane to Osaka airport. I found a great deal for a flight inbound Osaka, outbound Tokyo. I couldn’t resist! Meanwhile, we used public transport like the super fast bullet trains but also buses and for 3 days we rented a car. We got used to the tight schedules of the country and the true structure of this country. We enjoyed the food. The autumn colors were amazing! I really can recommend Autumn for a holiday to Japan.
