Daddy Travels Miles & Points

A few years later, around the same time when Facebook’s popularity heightened, not many people know this or remember this, but Facebook offered “Notes” which allowed me to blog about our trips to Oahu, Kauai and our Disney Cruise vacation to Mexico. I also blogged about a visit to my high school, Channel Islands High.

 

I’m not exactly sure why I stopped blogging using Facebook notes. I’m scratching my head right now because I truly do not remember why I moved or started blogging via Blogspot. Well, other than the fact that Facebook notes were mainly shared with my Facebook friends only, I think I wanted to use a more robust blogging service. Plus, after joining and participating in TripAdvisor travel forums, I figured that documenting my travels allowed me to share my experience not only with my close friends and family, but with anyone who has access to the Internet.

After taking a hiatus using Facebook Notes, blogging resumed in the summer of 2014 when we took Ethan and Madison to New York City for the very first time. That’s when I started to blog using Blogspot.

Since then, my family has traveled many times back to NYC, a couple of summers were spent on the Hawaiian islands of Maui and Kauai. Our summers were quite predictable with our love for Hawaii. But in 2015, we kicked our taste for travels up a notch, a big notch and have since traveled to Europe three times within 18 months.

1. Our traveling party of six have had the fortune of visiting for two weeks. We went from Los Angeles, spent a couple of days in NYC and traveled on to Italy (Milan, Florence, Pisa, Venice, Lake Como), Paris – this was in the Spring of 2015.
2. Six months later, Nancy and I returned to Europe. In November and December 2015, we visited the United Kingdom (London), Hungary (Budapest), and the Czech Republic (Prague).
3. Not even a year has passed and we decided to return back to Europe yet one more time. We brought our 7 and 10 year old with us and went on vacation for nearly 3 weeks to Lisbon, Barcelona, Madrid, and back to Paris. It was an ambitious itinerary with 2 little kids, but we did it.

Call me crazy but I had DAILY blog entries during most of my trips. Some people choose to rest or sleep after a long day of exploring a vacation destination. Me? No. I enjoy winding down with my Macbook Air on my lap. I use that time to reflect on the events that happened that day and I type my heart away. There was one trip to NYC where I didn’t blog during the entire trip and chose to write about it a week after returning back home to California. It just wasn’t the same. I had a harder time recalling the events that took place. So I made a choice, to write my blog while I’m on a trip, while everything is fresh in my memory.

After being gone on vacation during most of the month of August, I started to entertain the thought of improving my blog. As someone who reads other blogs, I like it when I can easily search for articles or content within a website. I like sites that allow me to maneuver around easily. I feel that my Blogspot site needed improvement. Whenever I wanted to share an entry or different entries, I ended up copying and pasting links, instead of just informing the reader to simply visit my site. So yes, I’ve decided it was time to shop around and improve my blog.

On Thursday night, I decided to check out WordPress. When it comes to website creation, or in this case, free blogging service, Blogger and WordPress were the clear choices. Just for the heck of it, I read and followed a couple of tutorials. I was concerned that I was going to start from scratch. I thought I wouldn’t be able to move my Blogspot content to WordPress. But moving to WordPress was so much easier than I thought. What was even more surprising was the amount of FREE templates available for me to choose. After I moved my content, all I had to do was to choose a template which gave me an idea how my site would look like.

After going  over a dozen templates, I chose the Baskerville theme. I like the layout. It looks minimalistic. I don’t like it too busy or loud. The website geek reader in me was thrilled to now include Menus with dropdown options. It was like driving a nicely loaded car for the very first time with power windows, power door locks, GPS, air-conditioning ….you get the picture! So it kinda feels like I’ve been emancipated, a freedom of some sort , a chance for new beginning, a rejuvenation in the way I’ll be blogging moving forward.

 

My new website is still a work in progress. I really have no new travels to report or blog about. I do have trips brewing and coming up soon and I can’t wait to blog about it….this time from my new home address – daddytravels.wordpress.com.  Thanks again for following my journey…a different journey…moving from one blogging service to another.