Getting to know a travel blogger series – Two Scots Abroad

Getting to know a travel blogger series – Two Scots Abroad

Gemma and Craig, full time workers with a life-long travel habit. Flirting with 30 and let loose on the world! Check in at Two Scots Abroad for travel tips, quips, and pics that please. Go on, MAKE TRAVEL HAPPEN.

You can follow Two Scot Abroad on and  or check out their brilliant travel blog.

I caught up with Gemma who answered some questions for me.

1. What got you into blogging and how long ago was this?

In my past life, I dabbled a bit in travel blogging while travelling around Australia with a friend for five weeks back in 2009 and then again in 2013 in South East Asia with Craig but it was merely a way a modern way to share photos and tell my family and friends where I was. When Craig and I decided to take a career break to travel the Americas and Europe for 18 months, my friend Andrew urged me to buy my own domain.

Initially, I was like – hell no, I have no idea how to do any of that technical jazz but I slowly came around to the idea in October 2014 and here we are, Two Scots Abroad is nearly two years old!

2. Fav destination and why?

Regardless of visiting 16 countries in the past 17 months, this questions is relatively easy to answer. Firstly, my favourite destination to backpack around is Colombia. Why? It’s pretty untouched! There’s definitely a gringo backpacking trail but the masses of tourists haven’t quite realised how beautiful Colombia is yet. While they were disturbed by Escobar on Netflix, we were swimming in crystal blue water, hiking around Tayrona National Park, eating empanadas, and drinking fresh coffee.

Secondly, my ultimate favourite country to move to has to be Canada – British Columbia to be exact. We lived on the Sunshine Coast, BC for two months last summer and then Vancouver for the next four. I’ve seen BC in rain, wind, snow, and shine – and I love all of the seasons it has to offer (yes, I enjoyed the rain!) I don’t believe there is any city quite like Vancouver. Beaches, Stanley Park, food, craft beer, vintage shops, mountains, friendly people. We hope to return on a more permanent basis in the next five years.

3. Blogging tip

Make friends. Seriously, networking has solved so many issues for me. I have techy blogger friends I can contact when on a plugin meltdown, social blogger pals that will give a post a comment, like, share etc, others who check up on SEO keywords for me (while I wait on my next pay to invest in software myself). Blogging can be a very lonely job, you need like minded colleagues to celebrate with, and vent to. The gradual success of Two Scots Abroad is partly down to the kick-ass bloggers that I’ve met over the past two years. It’s a tough job!

4. Where’s your dream trip

I get sucked into everywhere (Instagram and Pinterest are such killers for new ideas!) but my current dream trip is Iceland. We’re actually going on our ‘honeymoon’ in April. It’s not really our honeymoon as we got hitched in Austin last March after the music festival, South By Southwest, but we’re having a party in Scotland this Easter since we never bothered inviting anyone to the elopement in Texas. After the party, we fly to Austria for the festival, Snowbombing, then hiking and chilling out in Iceland.

5. Pet peeve about travelling

The people that like the sound of their own voice on walking tours. I attend tours to find out what the locals have to say, not what YouTube has taught you! This really got on my nerves in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. That, and smoking in public places – it’s not the 90s anymore! Although I do encourage everyone to visit Bosnia and Herzegovina, the scenery is breath taking and the history is still very raw.

6. Favourite travel blogger

I never knew that travel blogging was a real job until I stumbled across Alex in Wanderland while planning for South East Asia back in 2013. That girl tells a good story and takes a pretty picture. I also love the cheeky tones and ridiculously good photography on the travel blog – Along Dusty Roads (Emily and Andrew).

Thank you Gemma for answering these questions and letting me share on my blog. If you would like to feature in my Getting to know a travel blogger series please get in contact.

If you are a travel blogger and would like to be featured in this series please read my guest post guidelines and get in contact as I would love to hear from you