“But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger you’ll learn things you never knew, you never knew.”
– Pocahontas, Colors of the wind
“No, no, no, you can’t use a Disney quote as your introduction! It looks so unprofessional.”
– my husband
Hola and welcome! Thank you for visiting our little piece of the internet full of helpful itineraries, travel tips, exceptional accommodations, and lots of Barcelona love
Hola, and welcome to my little blog. I am overjoyed you found us. And since you’ve clicked on my about me page, it seems like you’d like to know more about this blog. Vicki viaja is Spanish for Vicki travels, and this is basically what this is all about. Not enough…?
Our Mission – To help you save money on priceless travel experiences and inspire you to travel to the most wonderful places in the world, immerse yourself in the unique cultures of our planet and venture off the beaten path.
We also want to take you to the most beautiful places in our hometown Barcelona and Catalonia and show you this breathtaking city from a different perspective.
Eduardo and Vicki – Who are you anyway?
Hi, we are Vicki and Eduardo, an international couple from Barcelona. You can imagine us like every other couple you meet while traveling, only a little bit funnier (at least that’s what we think). When we’re not traveling the world or planning our next trip, we’re probably eating somewhere or sending each other cat videos from 9GAG.
We met in Eduardo’s living room in Barcelona in 2015 during my trip to Southern Europe. Let’s face it, how many people can claim to have met their significant other without even leaving their home? Eduardo was our Couchsurfing host in Barcelona. And just 14 days later, we already hopped on a bus together for our first trip from Hannover, Germany, to Amsterdam.
Since 2016, we live together in Barcelona, and in 2019 we officially tied the knot.
Since then, we have traveled together in about 20 countries, including two long-term trips to Southeast Asia and South America.
Fun Facts about Eduardo & Vicki
- We are exactly the same size
- Eduardo is 8 years older than me
- We speak some kind of Spanglish to each other
Meet Vicki Franz
Fun Facts about Vicki
- I have a university degree as a tourism manager
- in my mid/late 20s
- I love languages and am currently learning my sixth foreign language (before you think now I was super talented, you should know that I’m only really fluent in 3 languages, and two of my learned languages are dead languages)
You’re probably expecting one of those stories where traveling has always been an important part of my life, and I was already traveling the world as a toddler. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not the case. On the contrary, our annual family trips went every year to Denmark to the beach, to the same village, even to the same vacation home.
When I was 15, I went further away than Denmark for the first time – to Italy on a student exchange. Already on the second day, I got such a sunstroke while hiking in Cinque Terre that I felt super bad for the rest of the stay. I had enough of traveling for the time being.
Almost 1 ½ years later, I gave the travel then but again a chance at a student exchange to the US. I spent almost a month on the other side of the ocean and fell in love not only with my dream city New York but also with traveling itself.
After that, however, I had only a few opportunities to travel. Instead, I completed a voluntary social year in my hometown of Goslar and worked in a senior citizen’s home. A really nice time.
During my tourism management studies in the “cosmopolitan city” of Salzgitter, also affectionately known as Salzghetto (Fun Fact: Salzgitter is the seventh-largest city in Germany and largest city in the German state of Lower Saxony, and yet no one has heard about it), I then had the chance – thanks to lots of overtime at my waitressing job – to spend several months in Asia (An internship in Beijing, summer study in Chiayi, Taiwan, another internship in the Maldives) and visit some cool cities in Europe (Prague, Helsinki, Dublin, London, Madrid, Lisbon, Porto, Paris, and Barcelona).
During a weekend in Barcelona, I met Eduardo and moved to Barcelona with him less than one year later, in 2016, after my internship in the Maldives. There, I first worked for two well-known international companies in a typical boring office job until we quit our jobs a year later to travel around Southeast Asia for seven months. And so my little blog saw the light of day on 21.05.2017.
Meet Eduardo Sans
Fun Facts about Eduardo
- Eduardo is a studied web and graphic designer
- has two native languages
- in his mid 30’s
- Eduardo loves cinema and movies and previously worked for a Spanish movie blog
- He learned German in school and spent a month in Bavaria as a teenager to learn German (for everyone not familiar with German dialects – that’s the equivalent to a little village in deep Scotland to learn English)
My kind of travel
I would rather call myself a traveler than a tourist – I know, I know, you have probably read this kind of sentence in one way or the other on every second travel blog but hear me out. I like to discover places off the typical tourist paths and get to know locals and their culture. That doesn’t mean you can’t find me as well in the typical tourist hotspots like New York, London, Bangkok, or Machu Picchu.
I’m always trying to find new ways to save money during my travels without sacrificing or missing out on anything. So this doesn’t have to mean that I’m only looking for the cheapest deal, but simply that I spend less money on the best travel experiences around the world.
Although I have also traveled alone a few times, in recent years, I usually travel together with my husband, Eduardo. Most of the time, we are on the road for a few months at a time. This allows us not only to work during our travels but also to dive deeper into the culture of the place we are visiting, get to know locals, and discover places off the beaten path. It also allows us to get from A to B by public transportation, making it a more environmentally friendly way to travel.
By the way, in real life, I am a studied tourism manager. With this practical background knowledge, I always find the cheapest flights and the best accommodations for our trips. You can find some of these useful travel insider tips here on the blog, of course.
Why traveling?
Since I discovered my great love New York City on a student exchange in 2010, the travel bug has bitten me and won’t let me go. I have now visited more than 30 countries, and my travel bucket list is growing and growing.
With this blog, I want to inspire you to travel yourself and discover the world. I want to show that you also have the possibility to travel – even with little money. And I want to help you make the most of your travel budget to experience incredible things around the world without breaking the bank. There is so much to see out there!