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#EddieBauerPartner Can’t go on an outdoor advent #EddieBauerPartner Can’t go on an outdoor adventure without packing some of @eddiebauer’s warm weather apparel. It has been perfect for our spring and summer outdoor adventures from hiking to kayaking and all the other ways we’ve been sending time outside. Where will you #LiveYourAdventure? 

#EBContributor
Since IG hates on photos gotta get them in how I c Since IG hates on photos gotta get them in how I can! Honestly sunset in the lavender fields is everything, probably one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever witnessed. I don’t have much information to give today I really just wanted to share these photos 😬.

Check out my last 3 reels with @oneikatraveller for information on experiencing lavender season in Provence, France. These photos are from a lavender field in Valensole.

P.S. the skirt is from Amazon and they have multiple colors!

#valensole #valensoleprovence #lavenderfields
Things to do in Provence, France 🇫🇷 besides Things to do in Provence, France 🇫🇷 besides the lavender fields (save + share this post):

🇫🇷Go village hopping and take in the small towns. The first clip of this video was shot in the village of Roussillon and we also visited nearby Gordes.
🇫🇷Explore the ancient town of Saint Paul de Vence
🇫🇷Hike the beautiful Calanques de Cassis
🇫🇷Relax at the beaches of Grande Plage of La Ciotat and the Grande Mer beach of Cassis
🇫🇷Visit Gorges du Verdon, a gorgeous must see lake
🇫🇷Go wine tasting at one of the vineyards like Les Vignerons du Mont Saint-Victoire. Provence is known for their Rosé but you can also taste sweet and spicy wines.
🇫🇷Explore a multitude of ancient ruins, including Roman amphitheaters.
🇫🇷Take a tour of one of traditional perfume factories, Parfumerie Fragonard, Molinard or Parfumerie Galimard and do a workshop where you make your own perfume
🇫🇷Visit the Pope's Palace in Avignon
🇫🇷As you’ll most likely fly into Marseille don’t forget to leave time to explore this city as well, especially the port.

Have you been to Provence? What did you enjoy about the region?

Follow @thetravelingchild and @oneikatraveller for more tips.

#provence #blacktravelfeed
Everything you need to know about visiting the Lav Everything you need to know about visiting the Lavender fields in Provence, France (save + share this post):

Lavender season varies each year but falls between June and August.

Provence is the region but there are various cities with fields. Valensole is the most popular and where the fields we visited were located but there are also fields in Sault, Manosque and Luberon. The time frame that the lavender blooms is different in each city. Our visit was July 3-5th but the bloom and harvest time could change next year.

The best airport to fly into is Marseille. Airlines that fly to Marseille from the US are Air France, British Airways, Swiss, Royal Air Maroc, Iberia, Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways, Lufthansa and TAP Portugal. If you’re already in Europe you can also fly Pegasus, Ryanair, Tunisair, Aeroflot, Ethiopian, Easyjet, Vueling, Eurowings and Air Algerie. 

If you’re visiting from Paris you can take the train to Marseille! 

From Marsielle you will need to take the train or bus to Valensole or Manosque as your home base. As you’ll 100% need a car to get around to all the Lavender fields you can also rent a car from Marseille and drive as finding a rental car in the smaller towns is more difficult. 

What questions do you have about the lavender fields or Provence?

Follow @oneikatraveller and @thetravelingchild for more travel tips.

#provencefrance #lavenderfields #girlstrips
My top 5 favorite international destinations I’v My top 5 favorite international destinations I’ve visited!

1. Botswana- I did an exchange program here where I lived with a family in the village of Oodi right outside Gaborone one summer in high school. It completely changed the way I view travel. Besides getting to learn so much of the countries culture from my host family to learning a bit of Setswana to camping in the Okavango Delta it will always be one of my favorite trips.

2. Turkey- from the people to the food to the landscape to the sea it was everything. I visited Istanbul, Cappadocia, Antalya and Izmir and the country has so much to offer with varying landscapes. 

3. Rio de Janeiro- We loved our family trip to Brazil, the food, the people, the vibrance of Rio was everything. So many beautiful hikes, learning how to dance Samba, learning how to make Moqueca, going to a futbol match in Maracana Stadium, wow the energy!! Oh and the nightlife was 🔥. Can’t wait to return and explore more of the country.

4. Kenya- This country has so much to offer. We visited Amboseli National Park, got to do a walking safari amongst zebras and giraffes in Lake Naivasha and even ran into a hippo 😅. We visited a Maasai Tribe who gave us such a warm welcome inviting us into their homes, teaching the girls how to make fire from scratch and we even say 5 cheetah take down a topi, seeing a live kill was insane! Ended the trip relaxing on Diani Beach swimming in the stunning Indian Ocean.

5. Madeira, Portugal- the landscape on this island is insane. Exploring I often felt like I was in 20 different places, like how is all in one island? Loved the hikes here, being above the clouds, seeing all the waterfalls, spotting dolphins in the ocean, and the food was so good! I also enjoyed Lisbon but Madeira was everything!

What have been your favorite international trips? What country is highest on your bucket list (doesn’t have to be from my list)?

Should I make a list for my favorite US destinations (they’ll probably surprise you).

#madeiraportugal #travelreels
Answering the most asked question on my vacuum sea Answering the most asked question on my vacuum sealed carry-on only reel (save + share this post). This is how my clothes look once I take them out of the bag. Do you think these are really wrinkled? They were vacuum sealed for roughly 22 hours.

If you’re going to visit more than one city the best way to pack these is to pack each bag per city. Then all your clothes for that one city are all together and you only have to open one bag at a time. Then reseal that one bag with all your dirty clothes before going to the next city and don’t worry about the other ones getting dirty or smelling! You can label each bag with a sticky note or tape with a marker to know what bag has what clothes.

The link to purchase the bags and hand pump is my bio.

#packingtips #packinghacks #traveltipsandtricks
#WBPartner The girls are so excited to watch the n #WBPartner The girls are so excited to watch the new @wbpictures DC League of Super Pets. To prepare for our trip to the theater to see it we did a fun activity of making our own super hero costumes for us and our very own super pets. 

Jordyn turns villains into ice cream and eats them, James turns villains into money and spends them and Kennedy shoots lighting with her eyeballs. 

If you or your child could have super powers what would you pick? @dcleagueofsuperpets #DCSuperPets

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How to Travel Frequently With a Full Time Job

October 17, 2017      Destinations, Trip Planning Tips

This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission at no cost to you. Please see our disclosure policy for more information. All opinions are my own.

black women standing the Jackson Square in New Orleans

One of the questions I get a lot if how we are able to travel so often. Both my husband and I have full time jobs with limited vacation days but travel 6-8 times a year. Here are tips on how to travel frequently with a full time job.

Use Paid Holiday’s To Your Advantage

If you are working in a FT position you most likely get at paid the 6 legal holiday’s. If you’re lucky you get more like MLK and President’s Day. As a great way to use less of those precious vacation days, I always try to include one holiday in our trips. Wait, isn’t traveling during holiday’s more expensive?

It can be but that’s typically only if you are leaving on a Friday after work and traveling back home on the Monday of the holiday for holidays like Memorial Day or Labor Day. When we traveled to Cuba during Labor Day, we left the Friday morning before the holiday and came back on Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, our tickets only cost us $200RT and for a 5 day vacation we only used 2 vacation days.

If you travel the week of Thanksgiving to a destination outside of the United States and you are one of the lucky people who get both Thanksgiving and the day after off you can go on a 7-8 day vacation and only use 3 vacation days. Depart Friday after work or Saturday morning and return Saturday or Sunday after Thanksgiving.

We did exactly this for our trip to Morocco where we visited Marrakech and the Sahara Desert. You can get flights deals for holiday trips, our round trip airfare was just $404. The best $24 I’ve ever spent is on my yearly membership to Scott’s Cheap Flights, we’ve booked many discounted tickets including a mistake fare to Ghana for  $227 round trip! 

Remember Vacations Don’t Have to Be Long

You don’t have to go somewhere extremely far or stay a really long time, especially when traveling closer to home. If you get Martin Luther King Jr., Presidents, Memorial, and/or Labor Day off those are four 3 day weekends. There are tons of cities you can explore in 3 days. We visited Bimini, Bahamas, Barbados, Grand Cayman and Chicago on 3 day weekends and had a great time. I’ve even done 48 hours in New Orleans, taking no days off and had a phenomenal time.

If 3 days isn’t long enough for you, you can take the Friday prior to or Tuesday after the holiday to have a 4 day weekend. If you get the standard two weeks vacation and you did that for all of those holidays you would have only used 4 days and still have 6 vacation days left to go on one longer vacation for the year. That’s 5 trips in one year and you still have other potential holidays like 4th of July, Columbus Day (why is this still a holiday?) Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and NYE to take advantage of!

​Extend A Work Trip

Do you get to travel for work? If your job is already paying for you to fly somewhere during the week see if you are able to extend your return date to the weekend or fly in earlier. Most job are okay with this as long as switching the dates isn’t a significant cost difference in the plane ticket and you understand you will have to cover your own expenses during your extra days including hotel.

Volunteer for Extra Days Off

While this isn’t an option at every job I know it is at some.  My company has a global volunteer day where every office we have does a service project on the same Saturday, if you volunteer you receive 1 extra day of PTO. I used the day I earned for our trip to Aruba so I could have the day before 4th of July off and make it a 4 day weekend.

Some companies also offer employees up to 8hrs of paid time off to volunteer for a project on their own time during normal business hours. Talk to your benefits department on the parameters of this and if your volunteer hours have to be in your home town. If not you may be able to incorporate a service day on your vacation and not have that day count against your vacation days. I’ve volunteered with Habitat for Humanity on vacation before and it was a great feeling to give back to city I was exploring.

Buy Extra Vacation Days

Some companies like American Express (jealous of my friends who work here) allow you to purchase extra vacation days. You decide on the amount of days you’d like and each pay check they will deduct a fixed amount to cover your extra week of vacation. Your job is basically creating a built in savings account for you to be able to take extra week off.

Work Remotely

I am not lucky enough to have this option but I have friends who do or can work remotely. A friend of mine recently visited and flew in early Thursday morning, she was able to work all day and then explore my city after work hours. Once Friday at 5PM hit we started our weekend and she didn’t have to be just getting on an airplane and losing precious weekend time. If you are traveling somewhere with a time difference use it to your advantage. Visiting Athens from the East Coast? Because of the 7 hour time difference when the work day is starting for you back home at 8 or 9AM it’s 3 or 4PM in Athens. You can wake up early local time and can explore a lot in the city before starting your work day in the late afternoon, early evening.

Breakdown of Our Vacation Days 

My husband and I have different amounts of vacations days which means we don’t always go on every trip together. I get a total of 17 days, plus 9 paid holidays, 1 floating holiday, and if I participate in my company’s volunteer day I get an extra vacation day for a total of 28 days per year to use for travel. My husband gets 13 days, 2 floating holidays, and 8 paid holidays for a total of 23 days per year to use for travel. Here is how we spent our days in 2017:

Thailand: February 3rd-12th- 8 day vacation taking 5 vacation days off of work (departed after work on the 3rd)
Copenhagen: May 24 -29th- 5 day vacation only taking 2 vacation days and using 1 paid holiday (departed after work on the 24th)
Aruba: July 1-4th- 4 day vacation, taking 1 vacation day and using 1 paid holiday
Amsterdam: August 6-13th- 7 day vacation taking 5 vacation days
Cuba: September 1-4th- 4 day vacation, taking 1 vacation day and using 1 paid holiday
Western Europe: November 4th-12th- 8 day vacation using 3 vacation days and 1 floating holiday and 1 extra day earned for volunteering.

In 2017 we were blessed to go on 6 vacations; we used 17 vacation days, 3 paid holidays, 1 floating holiday, and 1 extra day earned for volunteering.

Liked these tips? Share now! We work too hard not to enjoy ourselves, how are you managing to travel while also working full time?

The Traveling Child is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Tarah-Lynn says

    November 2, 2017 at 6:02 pm

    Ah, goals! Great tips — definitely encouraging to see how doable it is to travel so often.

  2. Tamara says

    December 28, 2017 at 4:31 pm

    I would love to be able to do vacations with the family as often as you, but I can’t see how we could save for it. I get anxiety with any thought of paying for trips on credit card and only save and pay upfront for any trips. Do you have any suggestions thT would help increase our frequency of travel, budget wise?

    • Monet Hambrick says

      December 29, 2017 at 11:56 pm

      Hi Tamara,
      I definitely understand not wanting to pay for trips with your CC if you don’t have the cash to pay off your balance immediately. It took us a few years to learn how to budget so I won’t put on a front that it’s an overnight thing. The most important thing is to determine things you are willing to cut back on in your daily life. We cut the cord on cable and only have internet with Hulu and Netflix and that alone saves us $100/month. We used to eat out a lot and we started cooking 6 nights a week and bringing our lunch to work 90% of the time. If you buy coffee everyday maybe make it at home instead. Only you know what you can do without. Also we never pay “full price” for airfare- check out these posts on how we make our trips more affordable http://www.thetravelingchild.co/category/affording-travel/.
      Monet

  3. Patrice says

    December 30, 2017 at 6:08 pm

    Great examples on maximizing vacation days. My job is way more flexible than my husband job.

    • Monet says

      January 12, 2018 at 7:47 am

      Thank you Patrice! I get more days than my husband as well so I do go on some trips with the girls without him, I use it as mommy/daughter bonding especially since they are both daddy’s girls lol.

  4. Tyshia says

    January 12, 2018 at 7:39 am

    Thanks so much for sharing your family travels! We are a family of 5 and I finally decided this year I would stop using the excuse that’s it’s too expensive and figure out to do this. Your blog is so helpful! I do have one question, are either of your children school age? If so, how does that work? I understand taking vacation days but what about school days? If not, do you have an idea or plan of how your family travel will change or what you will do when they get older?

    • Monet says

      January 12, 2018 at 7:52 am

      Hi Tyshia,
      You are so welcome! So the girls are 1 and 3 so we don’t have to worry about school days but once we do I am going to be praying for more flight deals over the summer and during their breaks lol.
      I am in a parent travel group on FB and that topic is brought up a lot. Some of the parents are ok woth their child missing a few days due to family vacations and have their child write a report after the trip as a project for being able to go. Some do it during holiday weeks like Thanksgiving because they say their kids already have off Thursday and Friday and Wednesday is a half day and they always see a decrease in the work required for that week anyway. Others are completely against missing school for trips and are willing to pay more to travel only when there kids are off school. About 30% home school so they make up the missed days on weekends.
      Sorry I don’t have much experience in this as yet and not 100% sure what we will decide once we get there but I hope this helps a little bit.

  5. Brittany L Cerminara says

    March 8, 2018 at 8:18 am

    Love these tips! We met your beautiful family on the waterfall/paddleboarding excursion in Manuel Antonio. I’m so glad I saw your website posted on Visit Costa Rica instagram. Your children are blessed to experience so many amazing locations at such a young age. Looking forward to reading more of your blog!
    Brittany

    • Monet says

      March 8, 2018 at 9:52 am

      Hi Brittany, I’m so happy you found my blog, such a small world! Thank you so much, we are very blessed and love exploring with them. Glad you enjoyed these tips.
      Monet

  6. Nakeya says

    March 8, 2018 at 9:12 am

    I often get asked the same question as well. I utilize most of the suggestions you outlined. I love taking advantage of long weekends. Those just scream “VACAY”

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Hey, I’m Monet!

Hey, I’m Monet!

A full time working woman, wife and mama of two. I use every last one of my vacation days traveling with my kids, hubby, friends or solo. Join me as I share my travel experiences and tips to make travel affordable and easier with the little ones. You can read more about me here.

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