We are currently planning our next eco-friendly trip, and we thought we would share the different eco-friendly vacation ideas we are considering with you guys! You never know, you might even become a bit inspired and choose a more eco-friendly alternative for your next vacation. This post does not include any affiliate links.
Sailing adventure on a private or rental boat!
One eco-friendly vacation idea we have had on our bucket list for years is to sail away into the sunset. Sailing is a great way to experience a lot in a different way than usual and keeping your travel emissions down. There are many different ways to do this, and we want to share a few of them with you! If you have sailing experience you could consider renting your own boat in your home country (if you have any big lakes or seashores) or drive or take public transportation to a location you have dreamed of sailing at. If you don’t want to rent your own boat, or if you don’t have any sailing experience you can book a private cruise with a captain, or become guest-crew on a private boat. We really want to try the latter, because if you work as crew on the boat you are also able to keep your budget low and really bond with the crew and learn a lot about sailing and the life on a boat. We would like to recommend a few facilitators of sailing experiences to you: At Boatflex you can book sailing experiences with or without captains. At Crewseekers you can search for amateur or professional crew jobs on private boats. However, there are so many of these sites online. Just type “rent boat” or “crew on private boat” in your preferred search engine. Btw if you use Ecosia as search engine, you can help the organization plant trees when you search the web. They donate all profits to this cause.
Bike vacation in Northern Europe
One of the best places to go on a bike vacation during summertime is in Northern Europe. Pack lightly, bring your own bike or rent one at your desired starting point and start pedaling! You don’t need more than that! Many countries in Northern Europe have excellent bike trails and are used to having bikes in general traffic, so it is very convenient and safe. It is possible to plan bike trips through beautiful nature scenery or bike from city to city. Especially cities like Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Oslo, and Stockholm have great bike lanes throughout the cities. You could also combine the bike vacation with public transportation like trains to transport you and your bike to new places in Northern Europe. The train systems here are so great and you are able to bring your bike with you(if you pay a very small extra fee)! We recommend you not to book your accommodations in advance if you want to bike from place to place. The reason for that is, that the weather can change from day to day, and biking isn’t as fun if you have to bike in rain to get to your next hotel. Then it’s better to just take another stay at your current accommodation and go exploring with an umbrella. We recommend you to find information about bike routes through the local tourist offices like VisitCopenhagen or VisitNorway, as they provide detailed information about where you can bike and which routes are the most beautiful. You can find our blog posts about certified eco-friendly accommodations in Scandinavia here.
Roadtrip to your neighbor countries
One thing we would recommend everyone to do is to take a road trip to your neighbor countries. Not only will you limit the travel emissions to your vacation destination, but you will also learn so much about nature, culture, and people in your neighbor countries. Our neighbor country Norway is without a doubt one of the most beautiful countries we have ever traveled in. Nature is simply without compare! We have done two road trips in Norway over the past year and we are currently planning our third. The season of your visit doesn’t really matter, as nature in every season is so different and so beautiful in its own way. If you are planning a road trip in Norway, we recommend you to visit all the National Scenic Routes in Norway. This is a collection of the most remarkable roads in Norway, and they are truly something very special. Furthermore, we recommend you not to have a fixed route and paid hotel bookings in advance of your trip. Weather in Norway is very unstable, and we, therefore, recommend you to follow the weather forecast and drive to the places with good weather. Because there is always a spot with sunshine! It would be such a shame to drive around Norway for two weeks and not being able to see its beauty because of clouds and fog. We recommend the Norwegian weather forecast site Yr.no.
Interrail through Europe
A vacation you will never forget is to go interrailing through Europe! The train network through Europe is getting better and better and interrailing is getting more and more popular again! How amazing would it be to wake up in Paris and go to bed in London? Or have breakfast in Copenhagen and lunch in Berlin? It is a great way to get around Europe without emitting tons of greenhouse gasses and it’s also a great way to meet other likeminded people. We recommend you to book one single train ticket through Interrail that will give you access to almost all train routes in all of Europe. This way you don’t have to buy tons of different tickets to carry around with you. This is also the cheapest way to get around. On this website, you can also see a map of the different train routes. They even have a list of current festivals and bigger events in Europe. We also recommend the site Rome2rio, which has a really good search function that will show you the easiest routes with different transportation options from one destination to another. It is a helpful tool when planning a trip with public transportation. Last of all, we recommend you to pack very lightly. It is a pain in the ass to travel around with big luggage on public transportation and also… You are traveling from fashion mecca to fashion mecca. You gotta need room for that secondhand shopping.
Staycation in your home country
Something we will recommend everyone to do is to discover your own country. Last summer we stayed in our country Denmark and did a road trip and it was such an enlightening experience. We were so surprised by how much we actually learned about our own country during our vacation. Local culture is so rich and different and nature also varies so much! Actually, we kind of see a trip around your own country as an educational and eyeopening experience, that everyone should do to get to know their own country better! We were so surprised to discover, what a narrowminded idea we had about what our country was before this vacation. Really, why are we spending so much money and travel time on getting to destinations far away when our own countries have so much to offer. We are actually considering staying in Denmark this summer again and just picking another route around the country. Unless your country is a very popular tourist destination and hotels will be fully booked, we recommend you plan flexible so you can travel after the weather forecast and also find information about sightseeing at the local tourist offices. Furthermore, you should consider taking public transportation or bike around your country to keep your emissions and costs down.
We hope this post could spark a little something in you to choose a more eco-friendly alternative on your next holiday! Let us know if you do.
