Traveller of the Month: Nele from The Navigatio

Welcome to Traveller of the Month! Each month I’m featuring a fellow world traveller to share the travel love and wisdom, and shine the spotlight on an awesome travel blogger. Even if we can’t travel now, it never hurts to hear more travel stories and start dreaming up future trips!

Without further ado, meet June’s Traveller of the Month: Nele from The Navigatio!

And if you missed last month’s, check it out here!

Who are you, where are you from and where are you now?

I’m Nele (pronounced as Nay-la), I’m a 24 year old Dutch travel blogger who lives in Manchester, UK. I moved here when I was 18 to study English and Creative Writing and completely fell in love with the city and its people, so I stuck around! I love Manchester because the people are incredibly friendly, have a great sense of humour and the creative scene in the city is to die for. It felt like home since day one.

What’s your travel story? How did you get into travel and what kind of travel are you doing now?

I am very fortunate that I grew up with parents that love travelling. Before they had me and my sisters, they had already ticked quite a few amazing destinations off their bucket list. Growing up, we would travel abroad at least twice a year. Seeing new places, getting to know new cultures and seeing the differences compared to our home in the Netherlands is something that has shaped me massively. I think that’s what got me hooked – the knowledge that there is so much different, interesting and crazy stuff out there! I now take my boyfriend along with me on my trips, who caught the travel bug ever since our first holiday together. Very handy to have someone with you to snap some pictures as well 😉

When did you start your blog and what sort of stories do you share there?

Ever since I was 13, I have had different blogs sprouting all across the interwebs. It started with articles about what colour nail polish I liked, written in broken English, with literally no readers. I only just started learning English in high school and I needed a space to be creative. Creating a website was the perfect place for that. Looking back, I think that’s where my love for the English language and writing started too.

I started The Navigatio when I was in my second year of university. I studied English and Creative Writing and I wanted to expand my portfolio. Rather than graduating with the same degree as all my classmates, I wanted to set myself apart from the crowd. So I took the leap and FINALLY purchased a real domain (no .wordpress.com or .blogger.com blogs anymore) and started diving into the world of website coding, SEO, digital marketing and finding a balance between what I liked to write and what people liked to read.

Even though The Navigatio started as a lifestyle blog, it quickly turned into stories of my trips and my experience living abroad. It didn’t take very long to turn into a 100% travel blog. I didn’t realise how much the blog taught me about websites, SEO, photography, writing, etc. But after graduating, I secured a copywriting and digital marketing job because of my blogging experience! I only worked there for about six months before quitting to fully focus on my travel blog and my online SEO services.

What do you do when you’re not travelling or writing about travel?

I love reading (both fiction and non-fiction) and I love playing video games. When playing games, I mainly play titles such as Pokemon, Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. They really relax me and take my mind off my work.

What’s your most recent travel memory?

At the start of March, I went on my very first sponsored trip (and very first solo trip!) to Lisbon. It was such an amazing experience because 1) the fact that a company saw my content and agreed to work together on this was an awesome feeling, especially since I’ve been really pushing myself to get out there and work with companies, 2) even though I moved abroad at 18 on my own, I never “travelled” on my own and it was such a liberating experience and 3) LISBON!!! I feel like it was exactly what I needed. Spend some time with myself, explore a stunning city and get that confidence boost that my content is pretty great!

What’s one thing people don’t understand about travel blogging?

I think that there are so many negative views on “influencers” or bloggers. That people just do it for the money, the free trips, the gifted items. They don’t see how much work goes into creating a blog and gaining readers. I started my blog 3 years ago and I’ve put countless hours into it in order to make it look the way it does, create valuable content that people want to read and increase my readership to an amount that brands start to find interesting. Most of this work was completely unpaid! This is something that I do as a job, so it’s only fair that I get paid to do it. Plus, sponsored trips and gifted items aren’t “free”, they are payment for the work you put in and the exposure you give the brand. There’s such a weird vibe around creating a job you love – I don’t understand why there’s such a stigma!

Earning money and getting sponsored trips from my blog definitely isn’t the reason I started this or am still doing this. But it does allow me to keep putting a lot of time into my blog. I want to give people easy to follow travel advice to make their travel planning easier. I want to give them something fun to read and look at. If that means that I can also turn this into a job, why not?

What destination would you go back to over and over again?

Japan! Ever since I was 13, I had been dreaming about visiting Japan. I managed to save up enough money while studying at university to make the dream come true in October 2018. Richard and I spent 2.5 weeks travelling through Japan and it was even more amazing than I ever could’ve imagined. We visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nara during our time there, but I’d absolutely love to go back and see more of the country. Even spending more time in Tokyo would be fantastic, as it’s such a huge city! We barely scraped the surface!

What is an item you’ve bought that makes travelling so much better?

As a blogger and photographer, I have quite a few things to charge every night when I’m travelling. But ever since I got the iblockcube plug adaptor, that’s not been an issue at all. It’s got a UK, European and US plug which slides out, 4 USB ports and a place to plug in another charger. It gives me everything I need to charge my phone, portable charger, apple watch and my camera. It barely takes up any space in my bag too, so I take it everywhere I go.

How do you keep your wanderlust up when you’re stuck at home?

When I’m not travelling myself, I love to read other blogs. I follow quite a few fellow travel bloggers on social media, which always helps to inspire me when I’m stuck at home. I also work on my travel blog almost every day, so that helps me stay in the wanderlust vibes. Whether it’s writing new articles, updating old ones or writing guest posts, it’s usually travel related. I also like exploring places closer to home. Whether that’s a nearby city or a little town, it’s always fun to go out and explore.

What is your favourite blog post that you’ve written and why?

That’s a tough one! I loved writing my Eindhoven Travel Guide because I grew up close to Eindhoven. It was such a fun way to share my city with the internet, because I don’t think Eindhoven’s a very popular destination (yet!). I’m also really proud of my 2 day Lisbon itinerary. I’m really proud of it because I can see such a big improvement in my photos and the way I wrote the post compared to my older blog posts. Looking at it gives me the confidence boost I need!

If you could live abroad, where would you live?

I already live abroad, but England feels very much like home after 6 years. So if I were to move abroad for a second time, I’d LOVE to live in Tokyo for a while. Definitely not forever, but having the chance to spend a few months there would be a dream come true. I would love to learn more about the everyday culture and life of Japan, especially in a city as lively as Tokyo. Plus if that means that I get to stuff my face with sushi and katsu curry daily – I guess that’s an easy choice.

Travelling has made me…

Travelling has made me way more self aware. I know that I’ve been travelling from a very young age, but it’s helped me massively to put things in perspective. It’s shown me that I’m incredibly privileged being a white woman, growing up in a middle-class family in the Netherlands, having had the chance to move to the UK and do the things I do today. Travelling has taught me to be more appreciative of what I have, but it has also made me incredibly curious. I want to see what’s out there, I want to learn about other cultures, I want to soak it all in!

Top 5 favourite travel moments

1. Walking across Shibuya Crossing. Because Japan had been on my bucket list for over 10 years before I finally made the trip, standing on Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo on our first full day in Japan was one of those “oh my god look at me I AM DOING IT! IM LIVING THE DREAM!” kinda moments. It was when I fully realised I’m in Tokyo, I made this teenage dream come true!
2. Watching the sunrise over Dead Horse Point State Park. When I roadtripped from Colorado to California with my mom, dad and my sisters, we also drove through Utah. One of the most amazing moments ever (not just in travel) was watching the sunrise over Dead Horse Point State Park. No offence, but for starters I think this view is more impressive than the Grand Canyon. But because we were there at 5:30 AM, we were the only people there. There was no one else. I have never experienced such silence before. There were no sounds, just us five sitting there and enjoying the silence, the view and the slowly rising sun coming up from the horizon. It was truly magical and it made me feel so incredibly small, but also very much at peace with that.
3. Snorkelling in Thailand. When I was 15, my family travelled to Thailand for our very first trip to Asia. One of my favourite things we did when in Thailand was snorkelling near Koh Samui. The water was so clear, the fish were so colourful and I remember thinking, “How is this real life?”
4. Winning 77,000 yen in Tokyo. When Richard and I were in Japan, he was dying to try this Japanese gambling game called Pachinko. It’s not technically gambling, cause that’s illegal in Japan, but it’s the closest thing to it (they found some loopholes). Even though he had never played the game before, does not speak or read Japanese, he somehow managed to play this game for over 3 hours. He had to stop when the parlour closed and some Japanese guys were WATCHING HIM PLAY. We were then escorted to the price counter, where we got some cookies and…. 14 grams of gold! The guy then led us to the back alley (“So this is how my life ends?” I thought), where we found a gold exchange. We got 77,000 yen (which sits around $700) after exchanging our golden pieces. I still can’t believe how on Earth he managed to get any points playing that game!
5. Visiting New York with my mom. When I was 18, my mom and I went on a 5-day trip to New York. It was my first time in the US and the entire 5 days felt like being inside a movie. Having grown up watching tons of movies set in NYC, reading books about the city and, of course, having binged Sex and the City, Friends and How I Met Your Mother, it was so surreal walking those streets. I’d love to go back sometime!

What’s your earliest travel memory?

I vividly remember throwing up during the landing of my very first flight at the age of 5. My parents took me and my sisters to Mallorca for a lovely holiday on the beach, but the turbulence was AWFUL. It was my first flight so I was already nervous, but the rocking of the plane made me sick. I remember feeling so awful and wanting to go home and NEVER. TRAVEL. AGAIN. Well… guess that wish didn’t quite work out!

Lastly, where can we find you online?

You can find my travel blog over at www.thenavigatio.com. I’m pretty active on Twitter and Instagram!

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Thank you for joining my Traveller of the Month series, Nele! Head on over to Nele’s blog to check out her travels near and far, and stay tuned for July’s Traveller of the Month!