Europe is a continent well-connected by train, making it easy to hop from city to city or country to country. Between IC trains, locals, high-speed rail or Eurostar trains, you'll find yourself fairly spoiled for choice when it comes to riding the rails. It's also a great way to catch the scenery if you aren't in a massive hurry. 

That being said, if you've never travelled by rail in Europe before and embark on this adventure, there's one quick tip I wanted to share that seems so simple on paper but can be totally overlooked.

Manufactured spend. Churning cards. Sign up for X card for Y bonus miles. The game of leveraging mileage earn and using miles is known as "The Hobby" to travel hackers worldwide. Countless travel blogs will cite card deals or best cards to sign up for (that they usually get an affiliate cut from) or ways to fake spend to meet card spend minimums for miles, promote mileage buying deals, etc. etc. For the past two years I've drank the Kool-Aid the Hobby is often serving and while it did get me a reduced cost trip to England and a few other places, it also helped put me into $20k of credit debt.

I had asked on Instagram what followers would like to see as travel topics for future IG Stories, and my friend Marni of the excellent baking blog Happy Go Marni commented she would love to see the topic of how to pack light and feel like you have all the things you need. So naturally, as this topic is near and dear to me, I jumped on it and thought not only would it be great for a quick IG Story, but also a great blog post.

There are a few basic things I see as "must-haves" for me flights: in-flight entertainment, comfortable seats, and reasonably available food options. It also doesn't hurt if the flight crew are sympathetic humans and not just phoning it in (hey there, United!)

So here are, to me, the airlines that haven't totally sucked for me and that I would recommend flying.

With round two of London accomplished, I thought I'd share my Top London Travel Tips for those who might be first or second-time goers to this amazing town. It might be some familiar bits for the veteran world wanderers, but hopefully there's a few nuggets of wisdom you might not have heard yet or will inspire your future travels to what is, basically, my current favorite city in the world.

Before you think about dropping a lot of quid on a black cab, or think you absolutely must fly into London Heathrow, take a pause and read on, because you might not necessarily require either things for a great trip, but you should probably still bring an umbrella.

There are some amazing bloggers out there who seem to be traveling 27/4, and more power to them because that's pretty adventurous! And then there are the bloggers like me, the part-time travelers, who have one foot on the ground and the other inching towards some new destination. Here's what I've learned so far in my journey as a part-time traveler and blogger. 

I'm pretty sure by now it's no secret I love MUJI, especially for travel accessories. They have some of the best travel-sized bottles and containers, toiletries essentials, packing cubes and more. One of my favorite things they also carry are their Nylon Hanging Travel Case.

It goes without saying you're working with limited real estate when traveling with a backpack, but that doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your makeup entirely to make room for your shoes. With a few tips, you'll have what you need without taking up too much space.

When I was piecing together a flight itinerary for Italy back in February, which was several power hours of Googling over a weekend, I ended up doing a combo of different airlines and cities to get where I needed to go on a budget.

What I ended up going with was this...

In a statement penned by Sir Richard Branson himself, Virgin America is poised to be bought out by and merged with Alaska Air.

And to be honest? I'm feeling pretty gutted about this. 

In the digital age with an app dropping every five minutes, there's a lot to choose from in the travel market. Everyone has a few favorites, be in the app that'll pull up a city map, or order a cab and rate it, and the ever important and occasionally handy translation tool.

For a long time I resisted apps, being a bit semi-Luddite about it. I think one can get along perfectly fine in their travels without relying on them, but I have to admit...they are so handy, when you have the data and Wi-Fi to support using them, of course! It's always a good idea to check the Wi-Fi situation of your destination. 

Having now embraced apps more, here are my current favorite ones for travel.

Doctor Bronner's can be used as shower gel, bath soak, washing hair and face in a pinch, as laundry soap, etc. etc. It claims to have 18 uses, but as travel goes I care about it as shower gel, face wash, and laundry soap. I have tried it on my hair, without Doctor Bronner's follow up Hair Rinse, and found I didn't like it. But then again, apparently you're supposed to use the slightly acidic hair rinse to counteract the alkali in the soap. Without it, it makes the hair feel a bit dry and off. 

On our vacation to London, we chose to fly Virgin Atlantic Upper Class for the 10.5 hours there and 12 back because we had amassed the required 50,000 Elevate points each to redeem the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class award, through just flying a lot on Virgin America, both having Virgin Visa Credit Cards (we get 8 points per $1 base airfare using our cards to book Virgin America flights), some Amex Memberships Reward point transferring, and a good points buying sale around last winter time. Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic, despite being both Virgin, are separate brands and airlines, but they do partner together. This means if you are a Virgin Elevate member and have enough points, you can redeem them for award seats on Virgin Atlantic, also Virgin Australia, Hawaiian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, and more. 

Because I'm from the East Coast and currently live on the West Coast, there's a few times a year I go back and forth. And sometimes I also make jaunts down to Texas. Because of this, I've found Virgin America to be the best middle ground (for me) in terms of economical and comfort. I will fly Southwest when I have to and it makes sense, I've flown other airlines across country, but Virgin tends to me #1 choice.

MUJI has become quite the popular cult brand in the beauty community, notably for its organization products, travel-sized containers, and more recently it's simple and effective skincare lines.

I'm fortunate to have a small brick and mortar MUJI storefront in my town, and with Gen Con looming, it was the perfect time to pick up some travel supplies for my toiletry kit, which is also MUJI.

Tired of my wheeled carry on that's on it's last legs and looking for something more portable to use for weekend trips or hauls where I get away with less clothing items, I decided to get the Tortuga Air.

The regular Tortuga website's recommendations suggested I might be too short for their regular Tortuga backpack, which holds about 20% more stuff and comes with a few more bells and whistles.

So what does the Tortuga Air feature?