Japan - May 2019

If you are like me, you prefer to land at your destination not completely over travelling before your holiday starts. Travelling with a 12 and a 10 year old, this was particularly important to me, cranky kids does not happy travels make... (I am sure Confucius or maybe Yoda would agree with me on that one!) So deciding where we were going in Japan was almost as important as how we arrived there to begin with. We decided (for a host of reasons that suited us) that for the little bit extra per airfare, it was going to be the best idea to fly to Singapore, stay the night, then fly out the next morning to Tokyo. Primary reason: Landing in Tokyo via the airline we chose had the option of two landing times. One at 8am and another at 5:30pm. Hotels (in many cases) do not allow you to book in until after lunch. The ones we stayed in had check in times that were closer to 3pm. The idea of landing, getting to the hotel and not being able to check in, take a nap, have a shower etc, wa

18 months of meticulous planning, and we took our first ever family holiday. Ever. When I say we are homebodies I am not kidding. My husband jokingly refers to outside as 'the big blue room'. Apart from a weekend getaway for our 10th wedding anniversary, we have rarely spent a night away from home. I wasn't always a homebody, prior to children and a husband I had travelled enough as a child and young adult that I thought I might have been happy not straying far from home again. I already had most of Australia, East (as high up as Cairns and as down low as the snow fields of Threadbo), West, (to Perth) and Central, (Alice Springs and Uluru) under my belt. Further abroad I could list Japan, Singapore, The East coast of America and a good chunk of Europe (Holland, UK, Italy and France) in my travels, all before 26. My husband had managed Sydney as the sum total of his travel experience. He never had any desire to go anywhere in particular but when I suggested Japan as