HEY A&S SUBSCRIBERS!

It's me, Kimmie here, a travel blogger you must have subscribed to after stumbling upon my blog online (or meeting me in person)! Although I plan to keep this newsletter monthly, it might end up being something more like quarterly. But I'm doing my best! I'll still try and send out travel deals as much as possible, as I hear about to many of them through my affiliate programs. Scroll down past my lengthy updates for this month's travel deals and I would LOVE for you to reply if you actually read this so I know there's a point in making these newsletters!

If you don't follow me on social media you probably have no idea what I've been up to since late last year (although I recommend you do)! SO let me catch you up on a long trip to New Zealand and some gallivanting around Australia before getting to this month's deals, products, and posts.

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What I've Been Up To:

Since I have been based in Melbourne for a while and I am only on a tourist visa for the moment, I need to leave the country every 3 months. When I told my parents I was considering going to New Zealand, they offered to join me as they hadn't been there either and wanted to visit me in 'my' hemisphere again (they also visited me when I lived in Sydney AND Melbourne a few years later). So the idea for the NZ trip was born!

As a quick update, in January my blog FINALLY surpassed the MASSIVE milestone of 100k page views, which has been a goal of mine for the last 8 years I've been blogging. So that was a cause for celebration this month for sure!

We met in Queenstown on the second week of January and started an eventful and adventurous 2 week trip around the South Island before I continued up to the north island on a solo road trip. In Queenstown, we did day trips to Arrowtown, a trip up to Glenorchy to look for Lord of the rings scenes like this one, a day trip to Milford Sound which was INCREDIBLE, hiking in Wanaka, the TSS Earnslaw old steam ship cruise and buffet, and more. I even got to see some old friends I used to guide with in Croatia and go wakeboarding on the Lake!

I ended up making daily vlogs of our trip on Tiktok starting with this one :) 15 in total!

We then went up to Lake Tekapo which is a stunning alpine lake in the center of the South Island. On the way, we ventured into Aoraki/Mt Cook National park to see the BEAUTIFUL Mt Cook, the pointiest most perfect mountain ever, by hiking the Hooker Valley Track. It was epic.

Then we drove up to Christchurch and spent 5 days there doing some day trips and exploring the fascinating city. We did a day trip to Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula and also checked out other areas and beaches around Christchurch. The weather was AMAZING for our whole trip on the South Island.... until I went up to the north island by myself!

After a perfect day taking the Coastal Pacific scenic train to Picton and jumping on the ferry to the north island, the weather took a turn for the worst. I had 3 days to drive up to Auckland and I don't think it stopped raining the entire time! I was still able to enjoy myself plenty, but I'm already looking forward to my next trip to NZ where I can properly see some of the views on the north island.

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Eliot sometimes gets a bit of fomo while I am traveling, so while I was gone he booked us into a trip to Tasmania. After a few weeks catching up on life in Melbourne, we went. It was my first time there and we got SUPER lucky with the weather - we did a walk, explored Hobart, and ate our bodyweight in seafood on the first day, and rented a car to road trip to the beautiful Wineglass Bay on our second day. I haven't finished much content yet (besides the photos above) but it will be here soon!

FINALLY, I got to head to Sydney for an exciting IMM conference, which meant that I spent ALL DAY networking with tourism boards and travel brands! I am hoping very much that this leads to some more exciting trips for me this year. The conference was the same weekend as Sydney world pride/Mardi Gras, so naturally I had to stay for one of the most massive street parties I have ever seen! It was SO much fun.

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Travel Deals + Promo Codes of the Moment

Fjaka Sail is MY VERY OWN Croatia Sailing company I'm running with my partner Eliot and our friend Andre. I used to work in Croatia for many years and Andre has been a tour guide for nearly a decade! We are filling up the last spots for our affordable luxury Croatia Sailing Tours for young professionals this summer, so if you are a bit older and more mature than a party tour but still want to have some fun, come join us! My code is KIMMIE10 (which is actually one of the last discount codes as of now)! Check out our website here.​

Skillshare is an online learning platform with thousands of courses in all kinds of topics, from computer programming to art to photography to to cooking to pottery, all in one place. A membership with them gives you access to thousands of classes. Skillshare is offering:

• A whole free month of Skillshare: access to thousands of classes free for the first month
• Or 30% Off Skillshare Premium with unrestricted access to even more!

Hopper is an awesome app that finds the best hotel and airline discounts on the daily. I just joined their program and haven't played around with it TOOO much yet, but I have met people who got insane travel deals on their platform!

• Use my code KIMMCONN to get $25 off your next hotel!

CheapoAir is a cheap flight booking platform that has a ton of seasonal deals available now. They are offering:

• ​St Patrick's Day Deals with code SPD35
• ​Spring Break Deals with the code BREAK25
• ​$27 off flights on any date with code FLY27

TourRadar is one of the biggest tour booking platforms in the world, and they constantly have MASSIVE deals on multi-day tours.

• ​Here is their deals page with dozens of different deals on right now
• Or their BEST deal of the moment is a whopping 56% off an 8 Day Prague to Budapest Rail adventure... from $3960 to $1745. Ooooof so good.

Worldpackers has more and more work and travel opportunities every single day, and my link gives you $10 off the already affordable annual membership! Get a Discount a Check Out their Work & Travel Opps Here​

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Destination of the Month: NEW ZEALAND!

I bet you guessed this one! ;) I've only written a couple blog posts about my NZ trip so far, mostly day trip reviews because I find those do well for me SEO and affiliate-wise (and I didn't do any collabs in NZ with my parents). I try to review popular day trips that I do and lay out all the information anyone could want to know about the trip in the post (such as in my Nile River Cruise Post), because oftentimes there's a lot of confusion for people booking them.

Here are my NZ posts:

• ​Milford Sound Day Trip from Queenstown (All You Need to Know)​
• ​TSS Earnslaw Cruise in Queenstown (Is it Worth It)​
• ​Ferry from Picton to Wellington (South Island to North Island) All You need to Know

Features Post of the Month:

I have been catching up on a lot of content! Here's some of my best work:

BOOM FESTIVAL REVIEW + GUIDE

I went to Boom Festival in Portugal last summer and finally have my review-guide up. If you're new around here, I create a hybrid review and guide for festivals I attend, serving as a review of my experience and a 17 category guide for anyone attending so they can learn, you guessed it, all they need to know.

Boom Festival Review-Guide

Favorite Product of the Moment

I couldn't think of what product to feature this month until I looked town and saw my laptop case, and realized how ACTUALLY EPIC it is. I got this laptop case on Amazon a while back and it has lasted a few years by now. It's a super cool marbled tie dye color, it has THREE different pockets for hard drives, cords, ad bits and bobs, is at least a little bit waterproof (I know because i spilled on a corner of it once... phew), and is as convenient as anything. So this is my favorite product of the month (er... quarter).

I am not allowed to send amazon links in emails. So, head to this post in the "Essential Electronics for Long Term Travel" section, or just find the term 'laptop case.' Yes, I just took this selfie in my coworking space just now while writing this newsletter.

A few interesting pieces of content from these months:

• Which video of mine from NZ got the most views? It was a video from a cookie shop. No, I am not kidding (I wish I was).
• Here are 25 things to do in Melbourne in 45 seconds - this video is getting a lot of views from Tiktok SEO!
• ​This is my first quick, mostly filterless, iphone photodump on IG in probably a few years.

Thanks a million for subscribing and for reading this. It means the world to me!

Wishing you fun adventures and beautiful sunsets (and please reply and let me know if you read this),

KIMMIE XX