About us

Hello there! We are Daniel and Ilona and we travel the world together looking for adventures.

Welcome to our blog! We are both avid travellers, and together we have visited over 50 countries. While we love exploring the most remote corners of the planet -we met in Turkmenistan after all – we also don’t want to miss the areas where everyone goes. Would you want to skip Paris, Bangkok or Lima? We don’t!

However, no matter where we go, we always try to make our trip a bit more unique. We love going off the beaten path and discovering all the hidden gems only the locals know about.

Does this sound good? We want to help you do the same by inspiring you with articles from all around the world. We’ll show you hidden spots in touristy cities like Frankfurt and we take you to lesser-known countries like Lithuania or Uzbekistan. To make it easy for you, we have written itineraries and travel guides that include both popular destinations and offbeat ones. We believe travelling off the beaten path is easy, and everyone can do it.

Another great way of making your trip unique is getting to know a different culture. On our trips, we love trying local food. There are so many amazing dishes out there that can help you connect to a place. We also love talking to locals, and we sum up our experiences in our photo stories and interviews.

Our story

The first time we met each other was in Turkmenistan, in a hotel breakfast room in Ashgabat. Daniel had started his trip in Istanbul and had just crossed over from Iran, while Ilona had just started in Ashgabat. From there, we travelled together along the Silk Road. We crossed through Central Asia, taking in the blue-mosaic buildings in Uzbekistan and hiking through mountains in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. After exploring Xinjiang and western China, crossing the country west to east, we split up in Xian. It was a sad goodbye, but we both had different plans, with Daniel going south to Laos and Ilona north to Beijing, and South Korea later.

However, travel rarely goes as planned! While exploring Beijing, Ilona realised that she’d rather continue to South East Asia with Daniel than travel through South Korea alone. Daniel got a nice surprise when she suddenly knocked on his hotel room door a few days later while he was on his way to Laos.

From there we travelled together for a few more months and explored South East Asia. We had a wonderful time there, but we had another bitter-sweet farewell when we had to part ways yet again! Ilona had to meet an old friend to travel South America, and Daniel already had plans to hike to Everest Base Camp.

We got another chance to travel together a few months later. This time the roles were reversed, and Daniel surprised Ilona by joining her in Colombia. We explored Central America for about a month before Daniel had to go back to Europe to work. It took a while more until we finally got together for real, when we both settled down (for now!) in Frankfurt, Germany. Now we use it as a base to explore the world together.

Meet Ilona

I am from Germany and for as long as I can remember, I have loved travelling. When I was a child, my parents took me on trips to the North Sea and to the Alps. Then, as I grew older I had the chance to participate in a student exchange and lived in Canada for a year. Two summers later, I was back on my first backpacking trip, crossing the country from East to West and back again.

Ever since then, I have travelled as much as possible. I still use the same backpack I got for that very first trip, but I like to think that I am now a lot wiser. For example, I learned how to calculate a budget so I don’t have to spend a month eating bagels with peanut butter because they are the only food I can afford.

When I don’t travel, I work in clinical research. I absolutely love my job! After finishing university, I worked as a doctor in a hospital for six years. In 2017, I had enough of long working hours and never seeing friends and family, so I quit my job and went on a year-long trip. And I haven’t looked back since then. I now have an amazing job and enough time off to keep seeing the world.

Meet Daniel

I was born and raised in Spain, in a small village just outside Madrid. When I was a teenager I had the chance to go on a high school exchange in Slovenia, and I fell in love with travelling. Ever since then I have tried to get out of my country and my comfort zone. I first explored my home continent, Europe, and then the rest of the World.

Throughout my life, I have always tried to balance my two biggest passions: travelling, of course, and videogame development. Recently I have also added photography into the mix. I have worked as a videogame developer for many years, for both big and small companies, and independently. However, every time I have a few days off or I’m in between jobs I take the chance to see the world. Sometimes for a short weekend trip, sometimes for a life-changing year-around-the-world adventure. And no matter the trip I always spend countless hours trying to take the perfect photo to make one of our photo stories. I can be a bit obsessive about it, but it’s part of the fun!

What I love the most about travelling is feeling that sense of wonder that comes from exploring new places, discovering fascinating cultures or trying weird dishes. I’m also a bit of a history buff, so witnessing in first person the landmarks of old people, kingdoms and events that shaped our world is another thing I love.

The story behind the blog

This blog is far from our first attempt at starting one. We started Top Travel Sights while travelling together through Vietnam, in the beautiful city of Hoi An. In the beginning, it was just Ilona. Daniel had his own blog, completely in Spanish, but he was still eager to help setting up Top Travel Sights. Someone had to take care of the technical aspects after all! The initial days were crazy. We were on a year-long trip and Ilona was writing up to one post a day!

Fast forward a few months later, while this blog was growing, Daniel migrated his own to an English version. We both took care of our own blogs for a while (although Daniel was still helping with all the technical stuff). However, at some point, we came to the conclusion that it would be better to focus our efforts on a single blog.

Our first step was to choose a new theme. Have you ever tried picking one? That took weeks alone! And we still haven’t finished moving all of Daniel’s blog posts from his previous website to this one. But we’re on it and we are pretty happy with the results we got so far. As we do most of our trips together, it is so much more fun to write about them together as well.

In this blog, we concentrate on our personal highlights from our travels. We want to leave you with travel guides that give you enough inspiration to plan your own trip. Head over to our destinations page if you want to see all the countries we’ve written about. As we’re travelling very often, that list keeps getting longer and longer. And talking about lists. Recently, we have added our bucket list, so make sure to check it out!