What was your best holiday ever?

[Mummyonline]

Looking for inspiration for planning future holidays and I'd love to hear of what worked for you?

How much do you have to spend? We liked wildlife in Zambia - you can do a walking safari. Botswana - Okavango delta. South Africa - garden route and Cape Town. Everywhere in South America - Peru, Argentina especially, Brazil and Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands are amazing and I will let you know about Chile as we are going shortly! We have also just been to Virginia and North Carolina in the USA which has, from a British point of view, 150 years of joint history and then the Revolution. Philadelphia and Washington are great too. I can also recommend Alaska. Japan too!

If beaches are your thing, some islands in the Caribbean are better than others so if you can make it to the BVIs and Bequia in the Grenadines, do go!

We also liked Russia. St Petersburg is fantastic. We have also been to many Italian cities and the architecture and art there is compelling. There will be loads of other ideas and we have been to lots of other places but these are my favourites!

Difficult one! The trips that stand out in my head most as being great experiences are probably backpacking multi country trips in my early twenties when I had about £10 a day for accommodation/food & more relaxed approach to staying over night in a hell hole/personal hygiene! So as well as budget, it's time of life and what made a great place for a weekend with girlfriends may be completely different with children. Long haul, the best holidays I've had have been a multi centred East coast of Australia trip, Cuba, Bali, Costa Rica (multi centred) and this year Sri Lanka (not a viable option now 2 months later!). Short haul, we do quite a few summer 2 week train journeys, staying 3/4 days in one place - these are great and it's usually Italy, sometimes France. I love the feeling of there being other places to move onto & explore and not being stuck!
Worse holidays is a heck of a lot easier to answer - 2 weeks in a glamp in Somerset one rain filled August, wet and very nasty!

Barcelona - it has almost everything - beach, amazing restaurants and bars, culture and museums, portaventura nearby, gorgeous architecture, good train services and metro.

Portland Oregon - beautiful state, amazing city, loved everything about it.

Travelling through California - Yosemite, San Fransisco brilliant.

Vancouver and Vancouver Island - bears, walking, kayaking - great food and places to stay.

South Africa - great food, hotels, wildlife...

Ethiopia - endlessly fascinating.

Bubbles, do you have any specific recommendations for Virginia?

And if you don't mind & have time Bubbles, I'd be really interested in hearing about Argentina. Have a loose itinerary in my head for 2021 but it's not a country i know a huge amount about.

South Africa
Maldives
New York and Caribbean combo
Australia

It's a toss up between Barbados and St Lucia, both beautiful and I'd go back t either at a drop of a hat

Rafting and camping down the Colorado River (within the Grand Canyon). 9 days.

Starting with Virginia: we travelled from Philadelphia by train to Williamsburg. Washington would be a great place to start but we had been there twice already! Philadelphia is brilliant though. If you base yourself in Williamsburg, it’s easy to visit Jamestown, Yorktown and the Charles County plantation houses as well as Williamsburg itself. We then drove to Richmond to visit the Virginia Art Museum which is excellent. We then did the Skyline Drive, Charlottesville and then down the Blue Ridge Parkway via Waynesboro, Roanoke and Valle Crucis in North Virginia. Great mix of history, countryside, museums and fabulous drives. We were too early for music festivals but if you go from June, there are more of these but everywhere will be busier. You can fly home from Raleigh Durham.

Argentina is huge, so did some of it: Lake District, Perito Moreno glacier area, Buenos Aires and Mendoza. We had already been to Iguazo Falls so didn’t do it again. We like Argentinian wine so chose Mendoza over Salta and Córdoba. We had seen a lot of Spanish architecture in Brazil so swerved Córdoba but it’s definitely worth going to, as is Salta. We found everyone helpful and it was a brilliant trip. Aerolineas do internal flights that connect the areas/cities you might wish to see so planning is relatively easy. Driving was straightforward and BA has a good restaurant scene - it’s a vibrant city. We are going there again in 2020, before travelling to the Antarctic, and we want to see different areas and perhaps the pampas. It’s a country where it’s easy to relax and we really enjoyed it.

Bali ❤️

New Zealand. Awesome in every sense of the word.

Thanks Bubbles - useful!

Maldives. Whale sharks, rays, turtles, tropical fish under our water bungalow. Perfect white beaches. The ultimate R and R.

For a more active holiday Borneo was amazing. The wildlife is stunning.

It rained for two weeks when we went to the Maldives. :-(

Costa Rica the wildlife, rainforests, people etc. Easy to navigate on your own.

Namibia again the wildlife and stunning scenery.

Bolivia the salt plains.

I miss my pre kids life😁

Santa Fe is unlike anywhere else in the US. I went when single did horse riding, white water rafting, hot tub and sauna at sunset... Georgia O’Keefe...
with kids at not yet two and three we went to Australia for a month. Perth (meh), Margaret River (👍🏼), Cairns (👍🏼👍🏼), Sydney and Berry. Loved it.

Brazil, South Africa, and various US road trips (particularly the Utah National Parks) have been our favourites.

Also the Lake District, but I’m not sure that’s the recommendation you’re looking for

Generally anywhere with incredible scenery, wildlife, hiking/ outdoorsy stuff to do.

Best - Australia for the wildlife and Great Barrier Reef, after that Costa Rica and Cape Town again for wildlife. Cape Town was pre kids.

Shorthaul Lapland in winter and summer with reindeer and wild bears. Also love a lot of Italy - Venice, Rome and Amalfi Coast. Less keen on Lake Como and Florence.

Worst camping in France - DS then 10ish pestered me to do it and I reluctantly agreed for a few days in safari tent with bathroom. DS immediately went where's the wifi, where's the electricity then said it was a near death experience having neither. Then he went into bathroom and ran out screaming saying there was an insect and he was never using the bathroom. Shower for some bizarre reason was open air and so always used it with swimming costume on.

Oh no that's gutting to get 2 weeks of run outside the rainy season in Maldives. Its soooo expensive that would be very very disappointing

My best, and DH agrees, was when we backpacked round Vietnam and Cambodia.

Macchu Piccu and Brazil was a contender too. Iguacu Falls park between Argentina and Brazil was amazing, and Ilha Grande was idyllic.