About us

Who are we?

Hello welcome to our blog. Our names are Chris and Praveena. We look forward to share our travel experience through our website, www.blessed2travel.com and various other social media platforms

Where do we live?

We live in Northern California, USA.

What do we do?

We both work full time and for our travel we are at the mercy of public and school holiday calendar as we need to plan ahead for our travel with kids.

Do you always travel with kids?

Mostly yes, except for couple of times Chris went abroad for business trips by himself

How do we plan our vacation?

We use various resources including YouTube videos, TripAdvisor, Blog post, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Rick Steves (for Europe), Dave Stotts (for Israel) etc.

Traveling with kids requires additional planning no matter at what age group they are in, right from the accommodation, food, cost, activities & tours etc. We will be sharing lots of details regarding a family friendly travel experience.

What are our hobbies?

Chris: Photography, video editing, Green screen movie editing

Praveena: Reading, hiking & nature

Why did we start this blog?

My Facebook friends wanted us to write travel ebooks or start a travel blog, 5 years back. We didn’t feel the need for starting yet another travel blog when there are so many travel bloggers outside. But the trip to Israel was a turning point, where we didn’t even find one single blog post or any YouTube video, where anyone went to Israel without a package tour. For us, it is hard to be on package tour, since Chris loves to take photos without people and also we start early and we end each day late. Also, pricing on package tours doesn’t justify for our little ones. After visiting Israel and Jordan for 10 days, we decided when we can do a trip independently as a family, we need to share our story to outside world, so that others will be benefited by our experience and we can inspire a small family or a group to do a trip to Israel. And that’s the reason we started this blog.

Why we don’t take package tours?

As mentioned earlier, Chris loves to take his own time to take pictures and most of his pictures will be without anyone in it (even in big cities).

Secondly, we don’t go to where most package tours go (tourist trap). We feel every minute of our vacation is so precious and hence, by doing all by ourselves, we pretty much know our places of interests and we choose to go there.

Thirdly, the price the package tour companies charge for bringing kids is atrocious. We don’t want to pay that big price tag, when we can do by ourselves.

Do we prefer hotel or Airbnb?

Depends. We prefer hotels for our stays since we get complimentary breakfast at most of the chains we stay in. If I have a premier status with the hotel, they also upgrade us to a nice Suite, which is super comfortable and kids can use the swimming pool.

We prefer Airbnb when hotels don’t work for us. Say if we have other friends or families accompanying us, then we prefer Airbnb over hotel.

In Barcelona, Spain, we booked a hotel (Le Meridien) in the main center of La Rambla. Just before our stay we found that they can’t accommodate 4 of us in one room. So we booked Airbnb just closer to Le Meridian for fraction of its cost and we enjoyed that experience.

Which of our trips were difficult to plan?

In our books, planning a trip to Norway, Seychelles in Indian Ocean and Israel was most difficult to plan as there were very limited resources available online. Apparently all these 3 trips were my favorite trips.

In all these 3 trips, we rented a car and that also made it as an amazing experience.

How many countries have you visited?

Aruba,

Australia,

Austria,

Bahrain,

Belgium,

Canada,

China,

France,

Germany,

Hong Kong,

India,

Israel,

Italy,

Jordan,

Malaysia,

Mexico,

Netherlands,

Norway,

Portugal,

Puerto Rico,

Seychelles,

Singapore,

Spain,

Switzerland

United Kingdom,

United States,

Thailand,

Vatican City

How many states have you visited in the US

We have visited 43 states in the US. Yet to visit Arkansas, Delaware, Maine, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota & Vermont

Our social media platforms?

You can follow us in all these social media platforms:

Youtube

Instagram

Twitter

Facebook

Pinterest

Flickr

Our best travel trips to-date?

Israel, Norway & Seychelles (not in any particular order)

How far ahead do you plan your trip?

Depends. Sometime we plan our trips well ahead (almost 11-12 months in advance) and some other times, we plan, at least 3-4 months in advance if we need visa.

If we don’t need a visa, we plan even last minute trips

We have traveled in bunch of different airlines in coach, business and first classes and we have stayed in over 500 plus accommodations including hotels, Airbnb etc. We enjoy traveling and we have been helping our friends and family plan the trips so far, but now we will continue to inspire and help our readers to have a perfect holiday destination and to create a life long memories to you and your loved ones.