Hi there!
We’re Pat & Isa, the Canadian couple behind Roadtrips and Suitcases.
We created this site as a way to share the travel guides, hiking notes, road trip routes, and practical details we wish we had before visiting a destination ourselves. What started as a way to answer questions from friends and family slowly turned into a growing collection of first-hand travel guides built around the places we have personally visited, photographed, and explored.
Who We Are
We have slightly different travel styles, which is part of what shapes the guides on this site.
Pat usually leans toward rugged landscapes, scenic drives, photography, and hiking trails with strong effort-to-reward value. Isa brings the balance: good food, comfortable stays, slower afternoons, and a better sense of when a travel day has become too packed.
Most of our trips end up blending both approaches. Our mornings and early afternoons are often spent hiking, exploring towns, visiting viewpoints, or driving scenic routes, while the second half of the day is usually reserved for slower wandering, good meals, and a comfortable place to sleep.
What You’ll Find on This Site
Roadtrips and Suitcases focuses on practical, first-hand travel guides for scenic destinations, especially places that combine landscapes, hiking, road trips, small towns, and memorable viewpoints.
You’ll find guides covering:
- scenic road trip routes
- hiking and walking trails
- destination itineraries
- national parks and natural landmarks
- historic towns and villages
- practical planning tips based on our own trips
- honest thoughts on what is worth your time, and what may not be
Our goal is not to list every possible attraction in a destination. Instead, we try to help you understand what a place is actually like to visit, how to structure your time, and which experiences offer the best balance between effort, logistics, and reward.
How We Create Our Guides
We write our guides after visiting the destinations ourselves. During our trips, we take notes on logistics, timing, parking, trail difficulty, viewpoints, road conditions, and whether a place felt worth the effort.
The photos you see throughout the site are our own. In many cases, they are also part of how we decide what to include in a guide, since we care a lot about landscapes, atmosphere, and the actual experience of being somewhere, not just whether a place appears on a standard “must-see” list.
We also try to be realistic. Some places are incredible but crowded. Some hikes are beautiful but more demanding than they look. Some popular stops are worth the hype, while others may only make sense if you have extra time. Our goal is to give you enough context to decide what fits your own trip.
Our Travel Guides
Every destination guide on this site is based on places we have personally visited and photographed. We do not use stock photos, and our guides are written from our own travel notes, planning experience, and time on the ground.
Some of the main destinations we cover include:
United States
Our U.S. guides focus heavily desert landscapes, national parks, and hiking trails across the american Southwest, one of our favorite destinations for a truly scenic and spectular road trip.
Scotland
Scotland is one of our favorite destinations for dramatic landscapes, scenic drives, and hiking. Our guides cover places such as the Isle of Skye, Glencoe, and other scenic areas in the Highlands:
Italy
Our Italy guides focus mostly on Sicily and Sardinia, with an emphasis on coastal towns, archaeological sites, scenic villages, hikes, beaches, and practical route planning. Sicily is one of favorite destinations all of all time, while Sardinia is filled with stunning beaches:
Slovenia
Slovenia quickly became one of our favorite destinations in Europe, with a mix of alpine scenery, lakes, historic towns, and compact road trip routes. Our guides currently focus on Lake Bled, Ljubljana, and the surrounding regions. We love this areas of Slovenia so much we’ve been three times!
Austria
Our Austria guides focus on the alpine scenery and lakes of the Salzkammergut region near Salzburg, and also include scenic lakeside villages such as Sankt Wolfgang and Hallstatt. In addition to stunning alpine landscapes, the area is also home to Europe’s steepest cog train, several salt mines and ice caves, a some of our favorite castles in Europe.
Greece
Our Greece guides currently focus mostly on Santorini, including village walks, viewpoints, beaches, archaeological sites, and practical planning tips for making the most of your time on the island. While some towns can get quite busy, there are so many quiet and under-the-radar places you go to avoid the crowds.
Canada
As a Canadian couple, we also write about destinations closer to home, especially scenic areas in Québec that are great for hiking, road trips, winter landscapes, and weekend escapes. We’ve also started adding some guides for the Canadian Rockies, home to some of are all time favorite hiking trails:
Asia
Our Asia guides currently focus on Bali, including temples, waterfalls, scenic viewpoints, and practical itinerary planning. We particularly fell in love with centreal and eastern Bali, where the scenery is spectuclar but without all the crowds found in southern Bali.
Our Travel Style
We are not full-time nomads, luxury travel specialists, or budget backpackers. Most of our trips are planned around a realistic balance of adventure, scenery, comfort, food, and efficient road trip itineraries.
That usually means:
- Choosing scenic drives over rushed transfers
- Prioritizing hikes and viewpoints with strong payoff
- Building itineraries that leave room for slower evenings
- Mixing popular highlights with quieter stops
- Being honest about logistics, crowds, and whether something is worth the detour
This balance is a big part of how we travel, and it shapes the recommendations throughout the site.
Work With Us / Contact
Have a question, correction, or collaboration idea? You can reach us through our contact page or follow along on Instagram, where we share more photos and updates from our travels.
Thanks for being here, and we hope our guides help you plan your own road trips, hikes, and travel days with a little more confidence.
Support Us
We created our travel blog to help others discover some of our favorite spots around the world. All our content is 100% free to access. If you found our travel blog useful, this is a great way to support us!
Thanks so much! 🙂