Happy New Year! We hope you’ve all had a lovely Christmas, holiday, family time or whatever else you celebrate. As it’s a new year, we’ve decided to start sharing a little more about ourselves in our blog posts, as well as continuing to guide and inspire your travels. We will be writing more about our freelance jobs and careers, and will also be sharing more with you about our lives in Barcelona and what we get up to.
Christmas is actually not over for us here in Spain. Here the festive period will continue until January 6th, the day known as the Three Kings’ Day. The night before the Día de los Reyes, each city in Spain celebrates with a huge parade where they welcome the Kings. Then, during the night, the kings will visit the home of each child, placing a gift in their shoes. We spent Christmas with just the two of us, but now my family is here to celebrate in true Spanish style and we will introduce them to kings Gaspar, Balthazar and Melchior.
Many of you probably don’t know, but I am a full time professional travel writer, writing travel articles for websites, magazines and travel companies, as well as researching and writing guidebooks. You can usually find me writing for places such as Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, The Telegraph and BBC Travel, so I don’t often have time to focus on my own blog. This year however, I want to spend more time on it, letting you see behind the scenes or back stage if it were, into the travel writing process, the freelance lifestyle and the story behind those glossy magazine pages and guide books.
This year I am particularly proud as there will be several new travel books coming out, which I have contributed to. This will include two new Lonely Planet coffee table books, which I will tell you more about when they’re published, and the new Rough Guides edition of Make the Most of Your Time on Earth.
Dan meanwhile also moved into writing more last year, and currently works with several clients across publishing, graphic design, marketing and photography. Many of the photos that accompany my articles are in fact taken by Dan, so he will also be sharing more about his creative process this year and what it takes to have your work published by some of the world’s biggest travel websites. While Dan doesn’t come with me on all my research trips, he often comes along on for those longer guidebook assignments, when I’m away for months at a time. He’s now a pro at keeping up with his work and his clients while we’re on the road and will also be giving freelancing tips and sharing posts about that digital nomad lifestyle.
We wish you a Happy New Year and hope you enjoy many enriching travels this year.
