The Liberty Leavers, Issue 002: Riana Ang-Canning Spent $77,000 to Travel in Europe and Canada With Her Newborn and Husband
Many people assume that once you become a parent, adventure gets put on hold.
But what if family life and adventure aren't competing priorities?
The Liberty Leavers is a series sharing the stories of women who are taking intentional breaks from work, reimagining success, and creating lives that look different from the script we've been handed.
✨ Next up: Riana Ang-Canning.
Many people view parental leave as time to slow down during the newborn stage.
Riana saw it as a rare opportunity to step away from the predictable new parent routines, spend uninterrupted time with her family, and embark on an adventure of a lifetime in Toronto, France, and the United Kingdom.
The trip cost nearly $77,000 CAD, took years of planning, and completely changed how they think about family, work, and time.
Despite spending more than anticipated, she says she'd do it again.
Who is Riana Ang-Canning, and what has your life looked like up until this point?
I'm a wife, mother, writer and traveller based in Vancouver, Canada. I was born in Vancouver but grew up in Toronto. I always said I had west coast roots so after graduating from high school, I returned to Vancouver for university.
While attending the University of British Columbia, I managed to find lots of opportunities for travel like interning in Eswatini, winning a free trip to Australia, working at a language school in Tokyo, and studying abroad in Amsterdam. I graduated with a degree in psychology, spent a few years working in non-profits and on staff at my university, before eventually deciding to go full time with my freelance writing.
Along the way, I met a boy who was happy to traipse around the world with me.
In the decade that Colin and I have been together we've gone on lots of trips big and small, including road tripping across New Zealand, spending a year living in Prague and our most recent adventure: slow travelling through Canada and Europe with our baby and dog.
You've been running Teaspoon of Adventure since 2012. For people who aren't familiar with your work, what does that look like and how does it fit into your identity?
Teaspoon of Adventure is my travel blog that I started from my dorm room at UBC in 2012. I started it as an online journal where I wrote about the adventures I dreamt of having.
During my first big trip - three weeks solo in Europe at 19 years old - updating Teaspoon of Adventure was my way of letting my parents know that I was still alive!
Now many years later, Teaspoon of Adventure has evolved from my online diary into a helpful travel resource for mid-budget travellers. It's filled with guides, itineraries, tips and stories from my travels around the world, written for people who want to make the most of their limited time and money. It's for travellers who want to see the highlights, but also make time for the slower, local moments abroad. And it's for people like me who don't want to quit their jobs, jump out of planes or hike up mountains, but still crave just a bit of adventure!
For a long time, Teaspoon of Adventure was just a hobby. In 2018, I started to take it a bit more seriously and write for people who weren't just my friends or family. A few years after that, I learned more about how to grow and monetize a blog, and have been able to turn Teaspoon of Adventure into my full time income.
Honestly, it still feels surreal saying that. I've been a full time freelance writer since 2017 but still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that my travel blog - the one I started in my dorm room almost 15 years ago - is my job.
Tell us about the Baby Trip: the 9-month journey through Canada and Europe. How did this idea come to be, and how long were you dreaming about it before it became real?
Around the time that my husband and I moved to Prague for a year (2019), I came across an article online about a family that used part of their parental leave to travel the world. I also read a blog post that a mom had written to her infant son, talking about all of the memories they had made together while travelling. Those two things ignited this dream in me and I shared that dream with Colin.
We both loved living in Prague so much and knew we wanted to travel long-term again, so planning a Baby Trip made perfect sense.
It would be one of the only times in our lives when Colin would have a huge chunk of time off work while receiving a government stipend. It would allow us to introduce our baby to the world and share in the joys of travelling.
So we started talking about it in 2019, saving money for it in 2021 and finally embarked on the trip in June 2025!
If you were saving up to make it happen, how long did you save, and did you have a "magic number" in mind before you felt comfortable embarking on the journey?
Colin and I sold a condo we had bought in the suburbs of Vancouver in early 2021 and put some of the money we made from that sale aside for our Baby Trip. At that point, we weren't even trying for a baby, so the trip felt very abstract. But we knew it was something we wanted to do in the near-ish future, so we put those funds into a savings account (using both GICs and High Interest Savings Accounts over the years).
At the end of every month, Colin and I have a Money Meeting where we discuss our income, expenses, any big purchases or money decisions we need to make, and put any excess money into savings or investments. While we didn't have a specific number in mind, we would usually put some money towards the Baby Trip every month. Once I was pregnant and the trip became more real, we started allocating more money towards that goal.
In the end, we saved $58,500 CAD.
You tracked every single dollar you spent. Where does that discipline come from, and what made you decide to document the finances so publicly?
As I mentioned, Colin and I have our monthly Money Meeting, so tracking our spending, savings and income is something we always do. We started having these Money Meetings in 2017 when we first moved in together and it's something I highly recommend to all couples. While we do look at our spending each month, it wasn't a situation where I was entering numbers into an app or writing them down every time we bought a coffee. It was more looking at our accounts every couple of weeks, noting any trends and tracking the totals.
I did keep track of the specific numbers for big ticket items, like flights and accommodation. For everyday spending, we used a travel credit card, so it was easy to tally up what we had spent.
I wasn't sure I was going to share our full trip budget publicly. But I had seen so many estimates for long-term travel when we were planning our trip, and our numbers seemed much higher than others I saw, so I wanted to share a different perspective.
I also wanted to explain how we got to the numbers we did, as it's impossible to say "You need $X to travel for nine months" since everyone travels so differently.
Your total came to nearly $77,000 CAD, which was more than you planned. How did you feel when you saw those numbers adding up in real time, and what kept you from pulling back?
Even seeing that number again here makes me shudder!
$77,000 is a huge sum of money and is still very hard for me to wrap my head around. I realize a lot of the embarrassment I feel around that number is my own internalized money scripts that tell me that spending a lot of money is shameful, wasteful, irresponsible, etc.
So part of the reason why I'm sharing our real numbers is to fight those negative scripts so I can improve my own relationship with money. Because the truth is that we spent that $77,000 very intentionally.
We looked for deals where we could but we also spent on things that mattered to us - centrally located apartments in cool cities, great food, can't miss activities, etc. And we were tracking our spending the entire time, so it wasn't a big surprise at the end.
Whenever the monthly totals seemed shocking, my husband and I reminded ourselves that 1) we had specifically saved up money for this once in a lifetime trip, 2) we were happy to spend on the things that mattered to us, 3) our savings and income more than covered our expenses.
💰 Interested in reading the full budget breakdown? Check it out here.
Many people assume a career break means stopping work entirely. You were running your blog the whole time and actually earned 2.5x more than you expected. How do you define this trip? Was it a break, an adventure, a career move, or something else entirely?
I always frame this trip as something we did on our parental leave, but it was really only my husband who was on a paid parental leave from work. Colin works at a hospital here in Vancouver and received parental leave payments from the government while we were away, which helped to supplement our trip savings.
But for me, because I'm self-employed and don't pay into Canada's Employment Insurance, I'm not eligible to take maternity or parental leave.
On one hand that was good, because it meant Colin could take the max amount of time and benefits, plus I could work if we needed the extra income.
But on the other hand, it meant I didn't have any paid time off.
I knew I would continue to work on my blog while we were on our Baby Trip, but I was very flexible with my expectations in terms of hours I could commit and income I would make. It was a lot of luck (and years of hard work beforehand) that made my blog as profitable as it was while I didn't have as much time to work on it. I probably spent a couple of hours each day on my laptop, which included both blog work but also planning the rest of out trip, answering emails, watching YouTube, etc.
So I guess I don't know how I would define this trip. It wasn't exactly a career break but I wasn't working the whole time either.
I think it was a transition phase where my work wasn't my top priority; spending time with my family and enjoying the trip were much more important. But the trip also provided a lot of opportunities for my blog and helped provide clarity about the work I want to focus on moving forward.
What was the moment (if there was one) where you thought "this was absolutely worth it"?
Many! We started our Baby Trip with 10 weeks in Toronto, my hometown, where we got to stay with my dad and stepmom. Having that much quality time with my parents and watching them bond with their first grandchild was unbeatable. We got to attend so many family barbecues, birthday parties and getaways being in one place for so long.
And not so much a moment, but just the general rhythm of waking up every morning, getting to have a big breakfast together as a family, playing on the floor and then deciding how we wanted to spend the afternoon before coming home for dinner and bedtime was such a privilege.
Having that much time together as a family that wasn't rushed or squeezed around a 9-5 job was incredible. And treating each day like a blank slate where we could explore whatever we wanted in whichever cool place we found ourselves was such an enjoyable way to travel.
Is there anything you would have changed about the experience or anything you would have done differently?
I talked about some of my regrets from our trip in this Substack post. Most of them are minor things, like packing items we didn't use or renting the wrong type of car, or just lessons we had to learn the hard way.
Big picture, I don't think there's too much I would have changed. Even when big things didn't work out - like having our France visa applications denied - the pivot (spending time in the UK) turned out to be a really fun adventure!
You've since come home. What does re-entry feel like after nine months of slow travel, and what has shifted in how you see your work and your life?
I won't lie, re-entry has been difficult! Coming home to a beautiful city like Vancouver, reuniting with loved ones and exploring our new home (we ended the lease on our previous place when we left and then rented our new place while living abroad) softened the blow.
But now that we've been home for a couple of months, I'm definitely feeling the difference. It's been hard with my husband back at work and me more solely responsible for childcare, though my mom and mother-in-law both help out. It's also been tough not having a big trip on the horizon and settling into some of the more monotonous aspects of everyday life.
At the same time, it's been really nice to build routines, feel settled and be comfortable in our space. I love having my own office at home and some predictable hours of childcare when I can get work done. I'd say my identity is still shifting; I'm still trying to find the balance in being a wife, mother, traveller and writer all at the same time.
What advice would you give to a family who wants to do something like this?
“Do it!"
Yes, it's going to be more logistically complicated, expensive and exhausting than your pre-kids trips, but it's also going to be so incredibly worth it”.
Don't hold yourself to the standards of how you used to travel or how you see other families travelling online. It's okay to make choices that make your life easier, even if that means you leave some travel experiences on the table.
Lean into the moments that travelling with a baby affords you - smiles from strangers on the street, a slower pace, the chance to get to know a local community, more time as a family - and remember that you can always come back and see that museum, castle, gallery, etc. on another trip.
What's next for you and for Teaspoon of Adventure?
I've got a backlog of blog posts from our trip that I'm working my way through, as well as continuing to update old posts and send out my weekly Substack newsletter.
We'll also be travelling some more this year. We have a trip to Vancouver Island booked in June, a trip to the Sunshine Coast in July and (hopefully!) a trip to Asia in September/October. Cross your fingers for us that flight prices get more reasonable!
How can people follow along with your journey?
You can check out all of my blog posts and itineraries at Teaspoon of Adventure and subscribe to my free weekly newsletter on Substack at Teaspoon of Adventure, Unfiltered. I'm also on Twitter (X), Facebook and Pinterest.
Have a sabbatical, career break, or slow travel story of your own? Pitch it to dani@libertyleave.com and you could be featured in a future edition of The Liberty Leavers.
💰 Not sure if you can afford a break? Take the free quiz to find out: Are You Financially Prepared to Take a Career Break?
🌴 Ready to plan your own purposeful pause? The Liberty Launchpad teaches burnt-out women how to plan & take a career break without going broke.
