Travel Life Balance is all about bringing you visually appealing, original travel guides and authentic travel content. We feature some of the most intriguing parts of Europe, North America and beyond based on real travel experiences.
Over the last 17 years, I’ve travelled to 23 countries and travelled over 2.5 million miles for business and pleasure and am compelled to deeply learn about the people and places that I visit, and make an emotional connection.
Hi, I am David, a perpetual ‘professional’ traveller, entrepreneur, and storyteller.
I’ve spent years travelling the globe — often trekking to a different country weekly — during my career leading international programmes as an internal consultant for a top Fortune 500 multinational company. One thing that differentiated me from others I travelled with was that I felt compelled to truly learn about the people and places that I was visiting, and make a deep connection.
One of the amazing things about my work travel has been that I have been pressed to go to places that I would never have thought of going to on my own, be it quirky rural towns in the USA, to truly off-the-beaten-path destinations in The Philippines, Thailand, South Africa, Brazil or The Netherlands to name just a few. As a North American, I consider myself privileged to have spent a substantial amount of time in Europe, most notably Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands and have grown so much personally from exposure to these cultures.
As I’ve been the go-to travel guy with all of this experience, I have always been a friendly resource for friends, family, and a multitude of co-workers eager to get the most out of their business or leisure travel plans. I’ve always dreamed of publishing all of my travel knowledge in one place to make it easy for anyone to reference. That is why I created this site.
My goal here is to share my favourite places, travel experiences, a few cautionary travel nightmares, as well as offer up some off-the-beaten-path places I think you might enjoy.
Why did I choose the name Travel Life Balance for this site?
Many people speak about managing their Work Life Balance. With my career, I’ve had to manage my work, but also to a great extent my Travel Life Balance!
Before Covid, I was travelling more than 160 days, and over 200,000 travel miles per year. This afforded me great opportunities to do very frequent, repeat visits to Europe and Asia where I could really get a feel for a place, get to know locals and immerse myself in the culture and locale.
My Travel life has had its ups and downs. I’ve spent countless hours squeezing my 6’3″ frame into the middle seat of cramped economy class seats — many times adjacent to the toilet door; flown in noisy prop driven planes, literally dodging clouds to avoid nasty turbulence; all the way to crossing the ocean on around-the-world tickets seating in the luxurious Business Class cabins of Singapore Airways’ Airbus A350s and Qatar Airways A380s and more.
I love to traverse the cities I visit on foot. I often try to take a different route or street back to the hotel than the one I took away. Seeing how people live their day to day lives. Watching the person open their door to dinner guests as I walk by, thinking about what conversations they will have, what’s for dinner? How do they know each other… and walk on, to the next point of interest.
My favourite comment from a few of my local friends in The Hague, Netherlands is that I know many of the local streets, pubs and restaurants better than they do as I’ve spent so much time walking and exploring. All of this walking helps me draw a mental map of the city. One that I cherish.
What to Expect From This Site
I have developed a wealth of experience that I want to share, having been in top-tier status for major Airlines and Hotel chains for many years, and hope to share my top tips with you, as I’ve done with my family, friends and colleagues in the past.