Our first trip as a family of 4 was to one of our favourite islands: FUERTEVENTURA, where we stayed at the Barcelo Corralejo Sands in a wonderful family suite. We have been to Fuerteventura so many times as a couple, we know the area and love the beach, the vibe, the walking and shopping street and of course the all year round great weather.

So we booked the trip pretty much last minute, canceled the trip a few weeks before, because our 2 year old had a little accident in Kindergarten and needed stitches on his chin. But this time everything looked good and worked out pretty well.

We drove about 1h to Frankfurt Airport, both kids slept in the car yeah! Little 5 month old Milo hates the car and this was a huge win to have a smooth car ride. We parked at the airport, waited in line for checkin and boarded the plane. The flight to Fuerteventura went pretty well, both kids slept for a little while and we finally made it to the sunshine. It felt so good to be back after 2 years and so many cancelations because of Covid.
Since we booked our flights and the Hotel separate, we took a taxi to Corralejo, which is in the north of the beautiful island. It was a 30 minute taxi drive and Liam loved to look out of the window and Milo was also doing pretty good.

When we arrived at the Hotel – the BARCELO CORRALEJO SANDS in the late afternoon. We walked around the hotel area to see the amenities and already knew we would love the hotel. We unpacked a little, changed out clothes and went to dinner to feed our hungry little ones.

We stayed a total of 10 days and the highlight for our 2 year old Liam was the amazing kids pool and the playground. He had so much fun in the kids club, where he went with one of us and where ALISA from the animation team took care of him. He really loved her and still talks about her. She went down the slide with him, played with him and did the mini disco at the pool area almost every night at 6 pm right before heading to dinner.

Of course Liam also loved the beach. He called it “Riesensandkasten”, which means huge sand pit. Little Baby Milo loved to sleep in the stroller to our early walks to the beach.

We can highly recommend this wonderful Hotel and will return for sure. Our next trip is already planned for February to Tenerife.

Please let me know in the comments if you have been to the Canary Islands and which your favourite is!

Ina and the boys

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The post CELES Beachfront Resort – The BEST Hotel In Koh Samui, Thailand appeared first on Open Mind Travelers.

Today we want to tell you about our Californian Highlights

10 Things to Do in California

1 Drive the highway 1

Driving down the Highway was so amazing. We stopped at a lot of calm and beautiful beaches on the road. We enjoyed that it was not crowded like the touristy places.

2 Relax on the beaches in San Diego

San Diego is one of our favorite cities in the world! We had great beach days at PB and the weather was always perfect. We can’t wait to be back there!

3 Enjoy the beauty of nature in the Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park is probably one of the best national park in the world. It is fun to go hiking and enjoy the good air in the nature.

5 Go to a Baseball Game

I went to my first Baseball Game a couple of month ago and it was really exciting. We had a lot of fun watching the LA Dodgers win!

5 Eat delicious mexican food on Taco Tuesday

You will get the best mexican food in California. On Tuesdays most of the mexican restaurants have a special called Taco Tuesday and they sell tacos really cheap. I love the free chips and salsa and the delicious food.

6 Cross the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco

San Francisco is a beautiful city and we had so much fun there. We will never forget crossing the Golden Gate Bridge after our photo stop there

7 Watch a stunning sunset

My favorite sunset was in San Clemente! We love watching sunsets and the sunsets in Cali are breathtaking…

8 Drive a bike at the beach

We drove our bikes in San Clemente at the beach as well as at a lot of other Californian beaches. It is so much fun to be right at the ocean and feel the breeze.

9 Go to a nice shopping mall

California has really nice shopping malls and good prices. Don’t miss out on this opportunity!

10 Get the best burger and fries at In’n’out

In’n’out has really delicious and fresh burgers! If you want to eat something really fast, In’n’out is the best place. I like that the potatoes are cut right in front of your eyes.

Are You On Pinterest? PIN IT

The post 10 Things To Do In California appeared first on Open Mind Travelers.

Beach Swing – Shiva Samui

Shiva Samui, Koh Samui Thailand

Our villa at Shiva Samui had 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a very large kitchen, which was directly connected to the open dining area and the living room! The highlight was definitely our own pool! We felt very comfortable in the well lit and beautifully furnished villa! It was the perfect combination of thai furniture and modern style. Let me show you our beautiful vacation home away from home!

our villa with private pool – we love it

our beautiful living room at Shiva Samui

The living room was really huge. Our villa had really nice paintings as well as beautiful statues. The living room, the dining area as well as the kitchen had access to the amazing garden and the pool.

well lit dining area with pool and garden view

We really liked the open living situation and enjoyed every day at our Villa at Shiva Samui. The main rooms had a really nice garden and pool view. The lush green and tropical garden was amazing.

beautiful master bedroom – Shiva Samui

Beautiful beach vibes at the Shiva Samui

Our villa was only a few steps away from the white sand beach and the great Shiva Samui Beach Club, where a lot of activities and sports are offered.

Shiva Samui Beach Club

Right next to the big pool at the Shiva Samui Beach Club is a restaurant, where fresh and super delicious food is served. The breakfast buffet offered a great variety of thai-cuisine and western food. We tried many different dishes and everything was very delicious.

we loved the beach swings

Shiva Samui is a great place to spend a lovely vacation. We absolutely enjoyed our stay and can highly recommend it to everybody who is planning to come to Koh Samui, Thailand. These villas are perfect for families, as well as couples or a group of friends. Shiva Samui has villas for up to 8 people and all of them look stunning!

Watch our video and let us show you the amazing Shiva Samui

The post Our Private Villa At Shiva Samui – A Very Unique Experience appeared first on Open Mind Travelers.

The hotel rooms are really big and modern furnished with a cosy queen bed, a flatscreen tv, A/C and a ceiling fan. The bathroom along with the room are exceptionally clean. We really enjoyed the sitting area and of course our beautiful balcony overlooking the pool and the restaurant area.

our amazing hotel room at the Chaantalay Hotel

We love the pool area and the relax chairs provided. After a day trip or a few hours at the beach, it felt so good to cool off in the beautiful pool and relax. Our lovely balcony was overlooking the pool area as you can see in the photo:

our balcony with pool view

The Chaantalay Hotel is in the perfect location: it is located in the middle of Haad Sai Ree city, close to the beautiful Sairee beach with a huge variety of good restaurants and bars as well as many options to book some good snorkel/diving and day trips. The Hotel rents out scooters for the day and you can book some day trips like a snorkeling day trip around the island at the reception.

Sairee Beach

We really fell in love with the hotel. The owner did a great job with the modern style, the beautiful and colorful details and the open concept. The staff is always friendly and nice.

the beautiful reception at the Chaantalay Hotel

restaurant area at our lovely Hotel in Koh Tao

We can highly recommend the Chaantalay Hotel to everybody who is planning a trip to Koh Tao. We absolutely loved this place and we hope to come back soon.

The post Chaantalay Hotel – The Best Hotel In Koh Tao appeared first on Open Mind Travelers.

Our deluxe room with pool access was one of the best hotel rooms we have ever stayed at and we were highly impressed by the whole resort and the exceptional food at their restaurants.

tropical lush garden & our deluxe room with pool access

our perfect balcony

Pool Time at INAYA PUTRI BALI

The INAYA PUTRI BALI is blessed with a huge tropical garden, which makes this resort a very special and happy place. It is directly at the beautiful white sand beach and offers everything you could wish for on a perfect vacation.

white sand beach @ INAYA PUTRI BALI

The hotel is located in a secure gated area in Nusa Dua and is only a 30 minute drive away from the airport.

Gading Restaurant at INAYA PUTRI BALI

We ate every day at the Gading Restaurant and loved every single meal. The food was super fresh and very delicious. We tried international food as well as the local cuisine. Our favorite meal was the Australian Black Angus Beef Tenderloin from the Charcoal Grill, which was the best steak we have ever had!!!

Lunch at the Gading Restaurant with pool/beach view

delicious Caesar Salad at the Gading Restaurant

Special Events at the INAYA PUTRI BALI

On Wednesday and Friday we enjoyed a Cultural Night BBQ Dinner at the INAYA PUTRI BALI, where we got to experience a traditional Balinese Dance. This was a really magical time and we enjoyed the artistic spirit.
After the performance we could take a photo with the dancers.

Cultural Night BBQ Dinner

The staff is excellent and everybody was very friendly and always willing to help. 

Plan Your Vacation at the INAYA PUTRI BALI

Treat yourself with an unforgettable vacation at the INAYA PUTRI BALI! You deserve the best and you only live once! Bali is one of our favorite islands and we hope it is on your travel bucket list as well! More information about this exceptional resort here: http://www.inayaputribali.com/

The post Great Times @ INAYA PUTRI BALI in Nusa Dua appeared first on Open Mind Travelers.

amazing view at the Aiyapura Resort Koh Chang

After a couple of weeks in Bali, we planned another 2 weeks in Thailand to explore a new island, where we have never been before. We have been to Thailand 5 times in the last couple of years, but never visited Koh Chang! So we hopped on a bus and a ferry and 10 hours later we are back to island life, where we stayed at the beautiful Aiyapura Koh Chang!

Koh Chang – A Tropical Paradise

Koh Chang is a wonderful island, which is located near the border to Cambodia, about 170 miles from Bangkok. This was our first time visiting Koh Chang and we really like the Island with its tropical rainforests and mountains as well as the white sand beaches. 

The Aiyapura Resort Koh Chang

We stayed at The Aiyapura Resort, which is a beautiful place to spend a peaceful and relaxing vacation. It is only a 10 minute drive from the pier, where we arrived with the ferry. The resort ground is huge and offers a incredible scenic view of the ocean. After arrival we received a delicious welcome drink at the reception, before we were the shown our great sea view bungalow. The staff also took us on a little ride with the golf cart around the whole resort, where he took a photo of us at the view point.

We especially enjoyed the big terrace of our sea view bungalow with the amazing ocean view, where Jeremy loved to play his guitar. 

This is a very exclusive resort with a gated entrance with access to its own private beach and pier. We always felt save and had a really good time!

In the tropical garden are so many different animals like peacocks, which create a very special and magical atmosphere. Every morning we woke up with the sound of the tropical animals singing!

The Aiyapura Koh Chang has a pool and a private beach as well as its own pier! It was a very special time we spent at the Aiyapura Resort and we loved it! 

They offer so many fun activities like biking, kayaking and the highlight is the jump mania, where you can spend a great time jumping around on the huge indoor trampolines.

The post A Tropical Vacation At The Aiyapura Resort Koh Chang appeared first on Open Mind Travelers.

Ao Kao White Sand Beach Resort – Our Happy Place

We stayed at the beautiful Ao Kao White Sand Beach Resort, which is a incredible resort and we can highly recommend it to everybody who plans to visit Koh Mak!

Let me show you around the Ao Kao White Sand Beach Resort. 

view from our bungalow rooftop

The Ao Kao resort is just perfect! The bungalows are very very nice, really big, super clean, furnished with a big bed, a sofa with a table and a TV! The bathrooms are huge as well and it is enough space to spend a great vacation there as a couple of as a family! The Ao Kao Resort has everything you need for the perfect vacation: a great pool, a private beach, tennis court, a beach bar, kayaks to rent, scooters, which you can take around the whole islands and much more.

pool at the Ao Kao White Sand Beach Resort

Warm Welcome At The Ao Kao White Sand Beach Resort

At arrival the staff served us a delicious welcome drink and handed us a map of the island and explained where all the good sights are. They showed us our bungalow which is in a beautiful lush garden! They arranged the flowers on the bed to spell out “welcome Ina“, which I think is so cute and shows how much love they put in the resort to make the guests happy! I’ve never seen that before, so I was really surprised about this lovely gesture!

best welcome arrangement ever

We immediately fell in love with the incredible rooftop, which every bungalow has! The view was amazing and we loved to relax there on the lounge chairs. Because there is a roof on top, you can relax in the shade. There are so many pink flowers and the whole resort and garden is very well maintained. 

Ao Kao Restaurant – Koh Mak

We ate many times at the Ao Kao Restaurant, which served super delicious food. The breakfast was included and very tasty. The staff prepared fresh scrambled eggs or omletts as well as my favorite pancakes with banana and chocolate sauce. We could sit right at the ocean with a view of the surrounding islands. A speciality was the homemade fruit jellys, which we loved with our toasts.

We really enjoyed every single day of our stay at the Ao Kao White Sand Beach Resort. The weather was perfect, so we had the chance to explore the island by scooter as well. We had fun times in the clear water, snorkeling and enjoying our last days at the beach for the next couple of month!

The Perfect Resort in Koh Mak

This Resort is awesome and we can highly recommend it to you! We hope we will be back there soon!

The post Our Dreams Came True At Ao Kao White Sand Beach Resort appeared first on Open Mind Travelers.

delicious welcome drink with welcome flowers

Kayumanis Sanur Private Villa and Spa, Bali

After the great welcome massage we could check into our incredible private villa called Jogogan. Arya showed us the way and opened the door for us to show us the villa and we were so impressed. We did not expect it to be so spacious and luxurious.

so in love with our private villa and the tropical garden

It is the perfect escape in an idyllic home away from home with a tropical atmosphere and local charm. 

Take a look at our beautiful home for the weekend:

our luxury private villa “Jogogan”

At the outside of our villa is a huge living room with a sofa, relax chairs and a tv as well as a kitchen and a table. In the inside is our lovely bedroom and the huge bathroom with an open shower and a bathtub.

our beautiful bedroom at our private villa

Everything was prepared so beautiful for our stay and we fell in love with the design of the whole villa.

On the upstairs is another room with a sofa and a desk as well as a balcony overlooking the nice pool.

The tropcial garden of our private villa is gorgeous: everything is so green and well maintained with beautiful flowers. We were awaken by little birds singing outside in our garden every morning.

The breakfast is served in the gong restaurant or in the private villa. They offer a huge variety of delicious local and international food. Everything we had was homemade and super delicious. We loved the homemade strawberry and pineapple jellies as well as the Bali coffee and the fresh pressed orange juice. They also make the best banana pancake in the world! I wish I could wake up every single day to a perfect breakfast like at the gangsa private villas by kayumanis!

the perfect breakfast at Kayumanis Sanur

The staff serves high tea every afternoon between 2.30 and 5 in our private villa. We just make a call whenever we are ready for it and somebody comes to set up the table in our living room with tea and coffee and super delicious snacks: sandwiches, pastries and cookies.

high tea time – served in our private villa

excellent snacks in the afternoon

The villas are not direct at the beach, but Tha Gangsa Private Villas by Kayumanis, currently known as Kayumanis Sanur Private Villa and Spa have drivers to bring us to the beach and the Sanur city area, which is perfect. We actually like that the luxury villas are a little away from everything and we are surrounded by the beauty of nature. It is very calm here and that was exactly what we were wishing for!

The Kayumanis Sanur Private Villa ans Spa is the perfect escape for couples as well as for families. It is also an incredible place for a honeymoon or anniversary vacation with the love of your life. 

We had an amazing time here in our private Villa Jogogan and will always remember this perfect weekend with the excellent service.

Book your perfect escape to Kayumanis Sanur Private Villa And Spa here: www.kayumanis.com

On the 1st of April 2017 The Gangsa by Kayumanis changed their name into Kayumanis Sanur Private Villa & Spa and the villas got a redesign as well. We were very happy to see the model villa and we can tell you it looks awesome. The new design is really incredible, the whole exterior will be in a lighter shade of color and it is very inviting.

The post Kayumanis Sanur – The Idyllic Escape For Couples appeared first on Open Mind Travelers.

Let me tell you more about this beautiful place in Bali and why we want to go back there soon!

Blue Moon Villas, Amed – Bali

Amed is a very relaxed city in east Bali, which is known for incredible snorkeling and diving areas. We fell in love with Ameds green landscapes and the kind hearted locals. So when you are planning a vacation in Bali go to Amed.

When we arrived at the Blue Moon Villas the staff welcomed us very warmly and served us a welcome drink – a fresh watermelon shake, which was refreshing and super delicious. The Blue Moon Villas are 17 rooms, all big rooms/villas with amazing views and they are super clean. On our king size bed was a towel folded as an elephant surrounded with beautiful lotus and hibiscus flower decorations. The staff and the owner of the Blue Moon Villas put so much love in this gem! You can see that they really love what they are doing.

Isn’t that a really nice way of making a bed?

We had a huge terrace direct at the incredible infinity pool and the best view of the ocean we could wish for. We enjoyed every single minute in this beautiful hotel! Honestly we wish we could live there forever

our incredible infinity pool

We had so much fun in the infinity pool with the unbelievable views. We really liked that the Blue Moon Villas have only 17 rooms, which means we had a lot of privacy and we could relax in a quieter area. The 17 villas are on 2 different levels, so you only share the pool with a few other guests. Most of the time we had the pool by ourselves, which was awesome.

another perfect pool at the Blue Moon Villas

After being in Thailand which is kind of crowded and full of tourists, this resort felt like the perfect getaway and we could relax and find our inner peace.

We celebrated Jeremy’s birthday last sunday. Just before midnight I prepared our villa with heart balloons and had a little gift for Jeremy. A bigger gift is waiting for him in Germany, because it wouldn’t fit in my tiny backpack! We enjoyed a local massage at the pool in the morning and had good times at the pool. We also had a special dinner at the Komang John Cafe, which served incredible food.

Jeremy’s Birthday in Amed, Bali

Jeremy is flying our drone – check our youtube channel

Komang John Cafe at the Blue Moon Villas

The restaurant, which belongs to the Blue Moon Villas is called Komang John Cafe (after the owner Komang John). We can tell you that this is for sure one of the best restaurants in the world as well. We ate there breakfast, lunch and dinner and did not want to try any other restaurant in Amed, because every dish was excellent and we wanted to try so many different dishes. The chef does an incredible job and our favorite meal was the very tender beef steak with redwine & mushroom sauce, local vegetables and potatoes, which we ordered a second time on our last night in Amed!

super delicious pork ribs with veggies and potatoes

perfect balinese dish – made with love

The chef is such a lovely soul from Bali and came to us during each meal and checked if we like it and we were happy with our choices. We loved every single meal and had a great time with the chef!

Great Times At The Blue Moon Villas In Amed Bali

We got to know the staff pretty well these last days and can tell you that they are such kind hearted and sweet people, who are passionate about what they do. 

Everything was excellent and we can highly recommend the Blue Moon Villas to everyone who is coming to Bali and is looking for a great time! These villas are incredible, the views are breathtaking and the staff is excellent.

Love,

Ina

The post Blue Moon Villas – a dream vacation in Bali appeared first on Open Mind Travelers.