Lots of fun and exciting things have been happening over here at Travel Loving Family. We spent the weekend staying with old cruise ship friends in Southampton and introduced our boys to cruising with lunch onboard P&O Cruises Britannia. It is fair to say they were giddy with excitement, as these photos show, and are now counting down the weeks until our first family cruise! This week I am very excited to travel to Barcelona with Brit Mums and Costa Barcelona tourist board to discover what the region has to offer for families. However, before I finish packing my suitcase, I have the absolute pleasure of welcoming you to the new Monday Escapes!
As many of you will know, Ting from My Travel Monkey and Allane from Packing My Suitcase have decided to hand over the reins. They hosted their fabulous and inspiring travel linky for over a year and had over 160 bloggers link up more than 2,300 links. That is an incredible amount of inspiring travel stories!
Monday Escapes was the first linky I ever joined in and so when I read that they were looking for fellow bloggers to take over I knew I had to offer. Fortunately, (because linkies involve a lot of work!) I was not the only one that felt this wonderful travel community was too good to let go. Along with three of my favourite family travel and lifestyle bloggers – Sarah at Extraordinary Chaos, Claire at Tin Box Traveller and Karen at Mini Travellers we hope to continue to grow the inspiring travel community that Ting and Allane created.
What is Monday Escapes?
For those of you who have never heard of Monday Escapes and are wondering what I am babbling on about! Monday Escapes is a place for bloggers to link up their travel memories. The linky is all about looking back at wonderful, happy travel memories and sharing them with others.
It doesn’t have to be about a trip abroad or even be a written post. If you want to share your favourite snapshots – whether it’s a famous sight, scene, dramatic view or even a favourite family photo, then please feel free to link those up, too. Likewise, posts don’t have to be about holidays or weekends away, they can also include day trips, walks, attractions – any travel experience that you want to share.
So how do you join in?
• Link up to one post/photo – old or new. As this is our first time hosting Monday Escapes we thought it would be fun for us to get to know each other a little better! If you could link up a travel post which best defines you and your travelling experience that would be fabulous. If not the usual travel related posts are fine.
• Please make sure to include the Monday Escapes badge at the bottom of the post, on your site, or a link back to the hosts.
• Posts are anything travel-related, and can include photos, reviews, days out, attractions and walks – at home or abroad.
• Comment on posts by the hosts and at least two others. Blog hops only work if you share the comment love. That’s why they’re so great! (This week your hosts are Claire from Tin Box Traveller linking up her recent glamping trip and myself linking up my ‘Unmissable holidays and experiences before having kids’).
• If you tweet any of us your links using #MondayEscapes and we will be sure to retweet. @travellovinfam, @minitravellers, @sarahjchristie, @tinboxtraveller
• Similarly, if you want to show off your photos on Instagram using #MondayEscapes, we will also show those photos some love.
Monday Escapes will go live every two weeks, alternating between the hosts and will be open Monday 7am to Wednesday midnight. Every fortnight we will be giving a shout out to some of our favourite posts and photos, and choosing a ‘Photo of the Fortnight’ via Instagram.
There is also a Monday Escapes Pinterest Board – so if you’d like to start pinning some of your favourite photos, do get in touch.
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Before I ask you to grab our new Monday Escapes badge below I would just like to say a MASSIVE congratulations to one of my fellow linky hosts – Karen from Mini Travellers. She was crowned, for the second year running, the Best Family Traveller Blogger in the prestigious MAD blog awards in London on Saturday night! If you haven’t seen the reaction of her three gorgeous girls when they found out the great news you should go and check out her facebook page!
Ok without further ado, happy linking! If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask. The four of us are very friendly and happy to help:)
Kindest regards,
Lisa x
Congratulations and good luck with the linky Lisa. I know you have seen my linked post before, but you will understand why I had to link it up x
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Thanks for linking up Karen. I love your Cotswold lavender photos in your linked post
Thanks for keeping the great MondayEscapes link-up and community going! It’s one of my favorite linkys and I also hope to be a more frequent participant as I get back into blogging. Look forward to reading the posts!
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Yes one of my fav linkies too Cindy! Thanks for popping by
Thank you so much to all of you for keeping this beautiful link-up going!!
I haven’t shared too many of my posts on #MondayEscapes yet but I’ve always enjoyed to read these great blogs and discover the wonderful places that have been shared.
I linked my latest ‘weekly ramble’ about my old neighborhood in Germany.
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You are very welcome Kathrin. The four of us are very excited to have the opportunity. I look forward to reading your post
Thanks for continuing the #MondayEscapes link-ups. I don’t know where to get the badge to display on my post, so if you could share that again, there may be others who don’t know either.
Looking forward to tweeting and posting!
Rusha Sams from Oh, the Places We See.
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Thanks for linking up Rusha. The code is up above the linky and below the pinterest board pics:)
Thanks so much for taking over the fab Monday Escapes and keeping it going!
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You are very welcome Corey. The four of us are excited to have the opportunity to keep the linky going!
Thanks so much for the mention about the award xx
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You are so very welcome Karen. I absolutely adore the video of your girls! So cute:)
Have inked up – thanks for hosting. I’d like to join your Pinterest board too and feel free to join my collaborative family travel board if you haven’t already!
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Thank you Jane, I definitely will do
Well done for taking it on! Great community and inspiration xx
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Thanks Elizabeth. I completely agree. I love the #MondayEscapes community it is very inspiring! I think me co hosting it may end up costing my husband a lot of money!
hi! thanks for hosting it
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You are very welcome Tanja. Thanks for stopping by and linking up
YAY well done ladies for keeping this going. I am so pleased x
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Thank you for giving us this opportunity Ting! You have built up such a lovely supportive community of like minded people. It would have been a tragedy for it to end after all the hard work you and Allane have put into it. It is one of the only linkies I know of where bloggers link up from around the world:)
Fantastic news! I’m so pleased Monday Escapes is carying on as before. Thank you! You’re right, it’s a great community. x
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The four of us are absolutely delighted to keep this community going Nell. Ting and Allane have worked so hard on it, it would have been a shame for it just to suddenly come to an end. Thanks for continuing to link up.
Thanks to the four of you for taking over!
I’ve just linked up with my latest travel post, but involves hiking and I live in Switzerland so that does pretty much sum up most of my travel ;-)
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Thanks for linking up to #MondayEscapes Bev. I look forward to reading your post:) I LOVE Switzerland. What an incredible place to live!
So glad this isn’t going anywhere. Nice to meet you :) not sure I’ve come across your blog before!!
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We are delighted to be given the opportunity to take it over:) Thanks for continuing to link up to #MondayEscapes
Great that you have all jumped in to keep this fab linky going. Happy to link up again.
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It would have been such a shame for the linky to not continue Phoebe. So happy to have you here linking up!
Thanks for the reminder!! I’m off the blog for a couple of weeks but will be back mid October.
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Look forward to having you onboard in October Lydia!
Such a great idea! thank you for hosting, I resisted and old post of a favourite holiday!
D x
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You are very welcome Donna. Great to have you linking up!
I am truly excited for the new Monday Escapes link-up. Sadly got a chance to link only once in the past, but hope to become a more frequent participant. Absolutely love the community! :) xoxo, nano | http://www.travelwithnanob.com
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Great Nano! We look forward to having you onboard with us. We are going to busy pinning, retweeting and commenting so you should find it very beneficial :)