General retirement travel plans

Parent Cafe Travel
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Except that’s Europe. Even very nice hotels, you can end up with that. Shoot, we just stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Charlotte last weekend and it was so loud. We were hearing car noise that sounded like jet engines until 3am. Worst night of sleep ever.

I think they put in those disclaimers because that’s the worst possible situation, and they don’t want people complaining endlessly about it and ruin everyone else’s enjoyment. Never had an issue with a hotel. But I realize that European hotels are different than US ones.

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We’ve been retired for coming up on 6 years and one of our goals was more travel. The plague put a hold on that til last fall when we eased back into it with 10 days on Maui.

We just got back from 4 absolutely fantastic weeks in France. Definitely not guided tour people, we planned and did it all ourselves. I am ready to go back.
I completed PT for tendonitis in one leg in march, so I was worried about walking a lot. I did fine up til our closing days in Paris, probably brought on by the D Day beaches tour we did (6 miles!), but muscled through it.

This trip firmed up my desire to spend time in places I like, which puts us on the opposite end of guided travel. We had a couple of overnights to break up distance, but spent a min of 3 and a max of 5 in each town or city.

We have a second home and a fifth wheel, so the plan is to split summers camping and at the cove and go to further spots in the more miserable PNW months.

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I’m retired thanks to the medical stuff, and so we have been doing lots of traveling while I am still able to do so. H is still working, but gets five weeks of vacation and can take a three-week block. We try to do one big trip a year, often in shoulder season, and then we also camp a couple times, drive to GA, KY and NJ to see family, and do a weekend/day trip once a month. Travel is our thing, but we manage to do it cost-efficiently.

There is a Rick Steves European Travel group on FB, where there’s good advice on the tours and travel if you can get past the general noise.

We do trip planning and arrangements ourselves – if we do a tour, it’s a 1-2 day specialized tour to a specific area that would otherwise be inaccessible. We like the 12-15 person tours in a minibus for this. Not into cruises or big bus tours. Have never wanted the upkeep and cost of a vacation home/condo, though I’m not averse to renting something for a few weeks in the winter down the road. For better or worse, we are not much for sitting on a beach or cabin porch and vegging.

Our itineraries are ambitious, though we have started building in the occasional down day or two. I introduced H to thermal spas about ten years ago and he loved them. We now try to add them in where possible. H and I travel really well together, but I couldn’t see us traveling with others. We are not everyone’s cup of tea when it comes to vacationing!

I have no problem driving on the left, so New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, etc. are all good.

The past few years I’ve been doing one or two solo trips a year, mainly to the midwest to see friends and family (and hit quilting shops, ancestral homes and antique malls). I’ve really gotten into public wall murals on these trips. Love the colors, stories and artistry. H is not into this stuff, and it has taken me the better part of 40 years to say “I want to do this” and GO.

What got me on the solo travel path was when I’d come up with really intensive itineraries (lots of things to do, we’d book a few must-dos and then have a list of other places to go depending on our mood, energy, interest, etc.). H, not so much. We started splitting off for an afternoon or two during our trip together and doing what interested us individually. H usually hits a thermal pool or takes a long nap. I love craft and fabric art and going to places of Jewish interest. This works really well for us.

Late last summer we flew to Ireland, two trains to Baden-Baden, rented a car to Colmar, four trains from B-B via Stuttgart and Vienna to Krakow, them to Ukraine via a train to Przemyśl, going through Polish and Ukrainian customs and then getting on another train to Lviv. Later in the week it was another five hours on a minibus to the Carpathian town where S2 and DIL’s wedding took place (within walking distance of the Hungarian border). There’s no commercial aircraft service to Ukraine. This was our third trip to Ukraine, the first since the war began. We were in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro in 2019.

Went to British Columbia for our 40th anniversary in December – stayed at a thermal spa town for the first few days, then went to Victoria, then drove to Seattle and took the Pacific Coast Starlight train to San Jose, where we visited S1 and his partner.

During Covid we started checking out the various state parks and beaches that were dog-friendly and day trips for us. That’s given us a nice variety of easy excursions when mobility and energy are more limited.

S1 is in SV, so we get out there at least once a year. Good friends live an hour north of Sacramento, so over the years we’ve gotten to know that part of CA very well.

In 2022 we drove cross-country and back. 6700 miles, three weeks. Had a blast. Took lots of side roads, esp through the midwest. That’s where my roots are and it still owns part of my heart.

Since S2 moved to Ukraine we’ve been visiting a lot of eastern and northern Europe. (Baltics. Not on a cruise. Incredible!) He’s a good travel guide, focuses on food as an essential part of discovering a culture, and has the language skills to get us around.

Still on my list (it leans northern – I can do heat or travel, but not both):
Iceland
Labrador/Newfoundland
Finland
Denmark
Balkans
Wales
Czech outside of Prague
England outside of London
more New Zealand and Australia
more Scotland
more Northern Ireland
back to Nova Scotia and Quebec, go further north in BC & Alberta

Looking forward to everyone’s experiences and advice! Am happy to share what I can, too.

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Our friends used a private guide. They pre-planned with the guide to hit everything they wanted to. They said it was a nice mix of the guide personally escorting them on some days and meeting up with them to give them detailed travel instructions for other days so they could explore some things on their own.

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I thought I’d look forward to extensive travel in retirement, but I just don’t think it’s going to happen. In my dreams, I’d just pick up, travel, explore wherever we may land and enjoy the local cuisine. In reality, I have multiple food allergies and can’t travel without extensive planning. I feel like food is such a major part of travel that I’d just end up feeling like I was missing out.

We are exploring the option of a River Cruise.

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We did this for our first trip to Germany. Or actually my Mom planned everything for us. My youngest was particularly interested in castles. She found a company that mostly does castle tours, but also some other things. It’s usually a bus type format, but for a small amount more, we had a private tour. We had a guide who took us in a van everywhere. All hotels were prearranged. He got tickets for everything and set us up. But for the tours, or for large parts of the day, he’d drop us off and pick us up later. But if there were any problems, he’d take care of everything.

And since it was private, we could pick any place we wanted to go and not one of their predefined tours. And we added on going to Wolfsburg to see the VW plant and the Autostadt.

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We’ve used private guides in the past. Sometimes for the whole trip (Vietnam, African safari) and sometimes for parts of the trip (Portugal, China, Bali). It can be a good compromise of deciding between a group tour and doing it all on your own.

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It’s sleeping that is the issue for me. I’m up alot in the middle of the night. Not an issue at home. I get up. Leave the bedroom Wander, read, and then go back to sleep. Not a big deal at home. But living in one room in a hotel? I feel trapped and restless. My DH is a light sleeper. Even if I use my low light kindle he is disturbed. And lying there just makes it impossible for me to get back to sleep. It makes travel pretty much impossible for me. .

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Guides:
We did a private guide for several days the first time we went to Ukraine in 2018. We were going to Lviv, Stryi and the Carpathian Mountains and S2’s Russian was decent, but he was still learning Ukrainian (and in western Ukraine, Ukrainian is indeed the dominant language). Was good to have a native speaker with us then. We were also concerned about road conditions in a rental car, with good reason, as it turned out. Off the major continental highways, the quality of Ukrainian roads can be horrendous. Our guide did the driving. Since then, S2 handles the languages. The train system there is excellent and cheap.

We didn’t get a guide in Israel (2012 trip). We rented a car and drove to Masada and the Dead Sea. Got to go through a checkpoint. It worked out fine, but in retrospect, that was probably not the greatest decision. Had we decided to go to northern Israel, we would have found a guide.

We did small 2-3 day tours w/12-14 people in Scotland (2012) using Rabbie’s. Had a great time (the guide was terrific, a history major and a dead ringer for Taylor Swift). We had a very limited window to visit, so this made sense for us. If we go back to Scotland, I’ll drive. Also did a minibus trip the first time we went to Kangaroo Island in Australia (2005). Second time at KI (2014), we rented a car, as we knew where we wanted to go based on the last time.

DH, S2 and I did the Baltics in 2019 – we first flew from Kyiv to Vilnius. There’s a small company that drives 10-person shuttle vans several times a week from Vilnius to Riga, Latvia as well as from Riga to Tallin, Estonia. Trains weren’t feasible thanks to Russian Cold War rail development. The usual way to get to those places inland is via a 4.5 hour commuter bus for each leg. Yuk. Boring. We’ll probably never get there again, let’s instead go see some of the country!

So – the van tour starts at 7:30 am, and stops at five places along the way, plus lunch at a nice restaurant, pulling into Riga at 7:30-8 pm. We stopped in towns and castles, walked in the woods and climbed the Latvian bobsledding team’s training course. We were in Vilnius two days, took the van to Riga, stayed in Riga four days, took the shuttle van to Tallinn (again, sightseeing along the way), stayed a day and a half, and then took the overnight ferry from Tallinn to Stockholm. Clientele was college students and retirees, most spoke English. It’s a little cramped, but by the end of the day, we were all friends! H and I are pretty reserved about striking up conversations with strangers while traveling, but this was an organic way to do that and it was comfortable for us. S2 talks to anyone and everyone, and needs to write a book.

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When we were stationed in Germany in the early 70s, my dad would pile us into the station wagon after church on Sunday (or Saturday if it was a long drive) and we would drive off to some castle or another. He wouldn’t tell us where til we arrived.

There was also a castle a half mile walk from our on-post apartment building, and a 19th c military lookout tower next door to the junior high. It was open to the public and offered amazing views of the surrounding towns. Good times! I still love castles.

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Have you tried melatonin? It helps a lot, if you use it correctly.

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I have. But it made no real difference. I have no issue falling asleep. I just wake up in the middle of the night and need to get up fir 1 to 1.5 hrs to fall back asleep.

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In our experience, restaurants in Europe (well, at least Spain, Italy, Croatia, and Greece IME) from cheapest to most expensive have uniformly been meticulous in asking about food allergies. The majority of menus also have little icons by each dish relating to a list at the bottom of common allergens so you can see the specifics for each dish at a glance.

Obviously it doesn’t help for severe contact-sensitive allergies (e.g. peanuts) but it seems pretty great for normal allergies.

I’m not sure if it’s a law or just culture, but they’re much more allergy-friendly than US restaurants.

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I’ve been told that Viking does a good job with food allergies.

I know it’s not a retirement travel thing but Disney is the best for any type of food allergy. They work really hard and are really good at handling food.

One of my kids dated someone with a severe peanut allergy. They went on a cruise and it was a great option for them.

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I’m not sure where this article is appropriate, but since it discusses retirement travel, I’m going to put it here. An interesting read about managing retirement and expectations of each partner. Gift link, open to all to read.

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Wow that is a great and relatable article for many. I think it deserves its own thread! I think it will garner a lot of discussion . It’s one of my biggest fears of retiring.

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Thanks for posting the link!

This statement is true:
“Yet retirement, like any major transition, often entails destabilizing shifts that take many people by surprise.”

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Have you considered getting a suite with two different places to sleep?

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We had always planned on a lot of travel post retirement but I don’t really think it’s going to happen. I just retired a year ago so now that I can go, my H really can’t. He has developed a lot of health related issues in the last couple years that have really restricted what he is capable of doing and have greatly increased the number of doctors appointments that he has both of which make things difficult.

First, his movements are restricted to the extent that he can’t play golf or tennis, can’t get on a bike and there is no way he is getting in and out of a kayak or canoe. What he can do is walk, so we look for places there is a lot of easy safe walking.

Then there are the scheduling complications. He has lots of appointments with different specialists that are hard to schedule and they tell you when - you don’t get to pick. This means I can’t begin to plan anything months ahead of time. We have to wait and see when we can go. This limits things so much. I’ve been looking at cruises for August or September but we think he may have a surgery then so I can’t put any non refundable money down. And forget planning anything further out than that.

Sorry, I’m just feeling jealous of all of you and venting a bit.

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Bummer, @me29034. We’re here for venting, whatever the thread (as long as no one responds to Say It Here)!

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