Some tours are truly all-inclusive, with no extra costs. Others have “optional tours”–often they are things you don’t want to miss, so you have to fork over more $$$.
We look at that when choosing a tour. For example, when we did Scotland, we looked at two companies offering 12 day tours. One charged extra to: tour Skye, cruise Loch Ness, attend a sheepdog demonstration, and a 4th activity that I can’t recall at the moment. The company we chose included all these, for the same cost.
Roughly 20 years ago, we found an organization in Japan of retired folks who gave tours. It was free IIRC but you took the person to meals with you. We had very good experiences. At the time, that was essential – except in the main areas of Tokyo, no one spoke any English. We drew on ShawWife’s artistic talent sometimes when trying to communicate with folks. It may be different now.
In China, just before the Pandemic, we have been in many places where there was no English. Didi mostly works for transportation. In Shanghai, we knew people and did not need a guide (though one might have helped). But we took an extraordinary trip to Giulin and Longsheng and hired a guide to take us hiking, rent bikes, take a boat on the Li River amidst the karst mountains. The guide was really informative and he hired local folks to join us – an ex-Red Army member who took us on hikes that we could never have found and we could discuss the medicinal uses of plants, etc. When the antagonism between the US and China drops, we would like to go there again. I would be uncomfortable going there now as there is a very small probability that an American there could be snatched up as retaliation for our arresting someone. (I’m not famous but the government clearly knows who I am – a couple of years before the Pandemic, they sent someone from Beijing to a speech I was giving to ask if I could help the government on something that was high profile at the time.)
Thanks for the withlocals tip! New to me.
I did an example check in Florence. Liked that it had ability to pick tour guide, tailorable itinerary by interests, 24 hour cancellation. For big groups it’s nice because per head costs go down. 4 people $77 each vs $45 each for (or $140 each for 2).
I never hear of With Locals before. It sounds very attractive.
I fired up this old chrome book to find a tab open to CC! Its been years! And now DH and I are retired and the last kid graduated two weeks ago.
Dh and I are going on a yacht cruise in Croatia in August. Our friend organized 30 friends to fill a yacht. We are excited. We decided to add trips on the front and back ends to London and Greece.
We’ve also started redeeming our airline miles and just booked a trip to Japan for next April.
I’d like to plan 1 or 2 big trips a year with small trips in between.
Welcome back.
We’d definitely enjoy hearing about that yacht adventure once you are back.
Last fall I did the Croatian yacht tour, Dubrovik to Split for us, but there are cruises in the opposite direction. We stopped at a different island each night, had tours, some dinners on land and some on the boat. All were wonderful and I really appreciated the well informed guides with impressive linguistic skills. Highlights were swimming from the boat in the very clear Adriatic, the Capella singing skills in many places and the beauty, safety and cleanliness of coastal Croatia. Before we stayed in Cavtat, and afterwards went to Plivice Lakes, Zagreb and Rovinj as well as Slovenia. All post tour travel was on buses and easily arranged with my phone beforehand.
That was my splurge trip, though reasonable in cost for many. I have also driven across the country to spend time with old friends and family, winter in Mexico for a few weeks the last few years, and went to Thailand to help a family member for a few weeks post hospitalization.
Being home now feels like a rare treat, and am ready for more of it. Hard to find that balance point however, as many places still beckon.
Can you reach out to your adult kid(s) and those of your local friends to see if they know someone who may be suitable? Just a thought; maybe you already did so.
Back after 13 years, that’s amazing!!! Hopefully we have all aged well…. 
People who keep strictly kosher won’t even eat in vegetarian restaurants because of the possibility of issues with the Rennets. Most of my Kosher friends who will not eat in a vegetarian restaurant ( never mind a regular restaurant) will eat in a vegan restaurant. But not all of them.
People who keep strictly Kosher will only eat in kosher restaurants. Period.
But this is way off topic…although my kosher friends say travel can be a problem in terms of finding restaurants.
We had dinner at the home of a couple who are very good friends. Wonderful people a few years older than us. They were married and stable when we were a very young couple. They had kids a decade before us and we modeled ourselves after them in some ways. He retired from a very high pressure, high profile job. They invited over another couple and as well a woman whose famous husband died a few months ago. All were retired and likely five years older. Our friend had become exhausted in his very challenging job and asked me when we were in private a couple of ways whether I was slowing down in my work or stopping. I said, “I really love what I do and want to keep doing it. My idea of retirement is changing the mix to do more pro bono work.” It was interesting that he seemed invested in my slowing down as he has chosen to do. ShawWife thinks that he wants to travel with us, but I can easily mesh travel with work.
Yesterday, we had over another couple. He is a VC and I have always found him fascinating, in part because it was always interesting to figure out what new frontiers he was delving into. He is the lead tech partner in a firm that does biotech and tech but the firm raised a new fund for biotech but not for tech and so he is just overseeing the remaining portfolio investments. Slowing down on the way to retirement. Although he is making some angel investments, he wasn’t bubbling over with the same excitement as before.
Somehow the intellectually exciting vibe that we often have with these people seemed flatter. ShawWife said to me after our experiences of the week that we need to get some younger friends.
I think that consulting can continue to be a more rewarding job as you get older, especially where it leans heavily on your individual experience and knowledge. To me the stress comes from managing other people, which is often more onerous in other jobs, and harder to ramp down. Having said that, I don’t know that senior people in consulting (or other) firms would necessarily find it easy to transition to being an individual consultant.
However, some of the most interesting and engaged people I’ve encountered in their 70s and beyond have spent the last couple of decades of their career as an individual consultant in a deeply specialized area. I’d love to be like Harold Malmgren, who is still very active and engaged on Twitter in his late 80s after six decades of foreign policy engagement at the highest levels, starting with the Cuban missile crisis.
My husband retired partly because the quality of the grad students at his med school has really gone down. (The MD-Phd kids were fine, but not enough to go around!) He’s still working remotely with a lab at Cornell where he’s mostly a consultant. I knew it was time when I didn’t look forward to new architecture jobs, even ones that I would have enjoyed in the past. I’ve always wanted to be able to paint more and I love to travel and paint on site. We both love hiking and spending time abroad. We’ve already done a Hadrian’s Wall hike and a hike in southern Spain with companies that lug your luggage and arrange lodgings and hope to do lots more of that while we are still relatively spry.
@Twoin18, I have a small consulting firm and was pleased that my biggest management nightmare – a very talented long-time employee who is a high-functioning narcissist --decided to leave. So my people management is way down and I just get to work on really interesting problems. Definitely keeps me intellectually alive.
I also keep intellectually active by writing things. I had a great piece on how to debate Trump but could not get through to the high command at the campaign. I’m writing another piece on a possible political coalition. Not clear where it fits.
Share with us!
Let me see if I can do it in a way that does not identify me.
@me29034 I so relate to your post. My DH has significant mobility issues, which severely limits what he can do and, to some extent, where he can go. He too had to give up golf and bike riding, both of which were things he planned to do in retirement. We did kayak in Cape Cod last year, which was OK but it was with a guided group so he had help getting in and out. He also tends to get tired.
Have you considered doing some traveling without DH? With friends or one of you kids? I have done a mix of traveling together with accommodations for him and traveling with friends. I went to Paris in May with college friends and because we were walking everywhere, it really wouldn’t have worked for him.
We are going on a trip to Italy, including a cruise in the fall. We had to pick our excursions to some extent around his abilities. Our friends are very accommodating, but we don’t want them to feel they have to restrict their activities. Still figuring it out.
You can also get trip insurance and depending on timing can pay more so that the insurance does not exclude existing medical conditions.
Similar situation here. In the last few years H has had knee replacement, foot surgery and now a back problem so he cannot walk very far without pain. We are planning a bucket list trip to Italy this fall but we will see how it goes. I have traveled with my sister, my daughter and my son in recent years and would consider solo travel. I do feel bad that unless H gets his back issue resolved (he is working on it- please no unsolicited advice), his travel days may be over soon. But I will still go.