Hi everyone! Welcome to the August Edition of Blogger Spotlight On. I hope you are enjoying your summer so far!

It is my pleasure to introduce you to our guests Justin & Lauren also known as @JustinLaurenXO on Twitter.

They are a Canadian couple from Ontario, who love to travel, eat vegan food, nature and dream of going on adventures all over the world!

Let’s learn more about them 🙂

 

Could you please tell us more about yourselves?

We are a couple in our mid-twenties/early thirties from Ontario, Canada. We love nature and outdoor adventures, and we like challenging ourselves by trying new things, whether it be snorkeling, kayaking

or our upcoming trip…white-water rafting! We adore animals and passionate about helping them – we both consume a vegan diet, meaning that we don’t eat any animal products. We live at home for most of the year and work full-time jobs, and we travel as much as we possibly can. We share our apartment with our cat, Chickpea.

 

When did you two meet?

We met at work! We both work as video editors in the television industry. Justin interned at my workplace, but I didn’t meet him until he was hired. I remember the first day that we worked together; we had some great conversations and had many similar interests. Our “first date” was walking around Toronto going record shopping together, and the rest is history!

 

What are your earliest memories of travel?

My earliest memories of travel would be going “up north” to cottage country in Ontario to Wasaga Beach or Sauble Beach. My family also used to take trips to Florida when I was younger, so we’d pack up the car and drive down there – which would take about 24 hours in total! We would stop halfway and stay overnight somewhere. I have lots of fond memories of trips driving down to Florida with my family. I actually didn’t mind the long road trips, even as a little kid! I started keeping journals, collecting “souvenirs” to paste into them, like napkins or sugar packets from the restaurants we stopped at. I suppose you could say I was a little travel blogger in training! As for Justin, his earliest memories of travel are also to Florida, except his family would fly there rather than driving.

 

Which transportation mode do you prefer? Car, train or plane?

At the moment, even though flying can be a bit of a hassle, I would prefer by plane because that would mean we’re flying somewhere far away! Right now, we do a lot of traveling by car on road trips. I love train travel, too, although haven’t had the opportunity to do too much of that yet. I would also like to add that we both adore riding bicycles around places that we visit, especially on our recent visit to Quebec City!

 

What have been the destinations you have traveled together?

We have been fortunate enough to visit many islands in the Caribbean together, including Aruba, Bonaire

Grenada, Dominica, St. Thomas, St. John, and the Bahamas. We’ve also traveled to Montreal, Quebec City, parts of New York State, Ohio, and all over our own province of Ontario.

 

What are your dream destinations?

Our dream destination is Italy, and we plan on going there next spring! We are incredibly excited. Other dream destinations of ours include Iceland, Japan, Hawaii, Scotland, New Zealand and actually…all over the world! I keep reading about different amazing destinations, which causes my list of dream destinations to expand!

 

Tell us a bit more about your blog, when did you start & what are the plans for the future?

We started our blog to chronicle our own adventures and trips together, so we could look back on our fun times and remember everything that we did as a couple. We started our blog about a year into our relationship (our blog is about a year and three months old right now). We’re both really interested in photography, videography and I love writing…so the blog was born! As for the future, we plan to keep taking more photos of places that we visit, and we’d like to start incorporating more video into our blog.

Tell us a funny story that happened during a trip

One funny story that happened early on in our relationship: Justin and I were driving across the border from Canada to the USA for the first time together. We were going for a day trip to the theme park, Darien Lake. Justin had never driven across the border as the driver before. All went well, and the border guard allowed us to drive across. Except, Justin didn’t know where he was driving, and it was a little bit confusing, so he ended up driving towards another border guard who ended up waving us over. Little did we know, but this was an area where people were instructed to pull over if they needed to have their cars checked for bombs or weapons! We heard the border guard say into his walkie-talkie, “Oh, it’s a self-referral” (meaning us), and we had to drive into a big line-up of cars, get out of the car, and stand-off to the side. A big truck that must have detected if something illegal was in the cars drove past all of the vehicles while we waited. We were laughing about how silly we were – we should have just kept on driving onto the highway! Oh well, lesson learned!

 

Do you have a favorite quote?

I’m not sure who first said this, but it sure is true!

“Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer“

I would much rather be “rich” with amazing memories of seeing the world than be surrounded by possessions!  I am happiest now living as minimally as possible in our apartment together as I would be if I had a house, a fancy car, and lots of things. I would rather travel around the world with Justin as much as possible!

 

What advice would you give to a couple traveling?

Definitely discuss what you’d like to do ahead of time and compromise. Unless you want to do exactly the same things and you have exactly the same travel style, you should meet halfway. I discovered on our last trip to Quebec City that I can definitely try to pack too much into one day, and Justin definitely likes to relax more and soak in the surroundings. I also like to do that too, so I find that he helps to balance out my crazy rushing around mentality.

 

How can we follow or contact you?

You can visit our blog, Justin Plus Lauren. And you can also follow us on the following social media channels:

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/justinpluslauren

Twitter – https://twitter.com/JustinLaurenXO

Pinterest – http://www.pinterest.com/justinlaurenxo

Google+ – https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JustinPlusLauren

Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/user/justinpluslauren

Instagram – http://instagram.com/justinpluslauren

 

That was great learning so much about you two!

Thank you for taking time of your busy schedule. My readers and I appreciate the time you took to answer all questions!

We sincerely wish you all the best and most importantly, Happy Travels 🙂

Until next time,

All the best,

Kay