@kelsmom, I wonder if this would work for you? After we retired, I really wanted to travel, but my husband was tired of it, because that’s what we did for a living, for 37 years. So I started planning something I knew he wanted to do (a cruise to Alaska, from our home port, so no hassle). I told him I found a deal and I was going to do it by myself, since I knew he was tired of traveling. His response was, “What, don’t you want me to go? I want to go”.
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Great idea! I mentioned something about a particular destination & he said he might like to visit it, so I might just try that.
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Amazing how when something is happening with or without them, they decide they really want it to be with them.
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Re: travel, we specifically planned for lots of travel in our early retirement years, while we can be very active. We do fairly active vacations - mostly biking and hiking, but snorkeling, kayaking, sightseeing, other things work too. We do some travel with (adult) kids, but more by ourselves. At this point husband prefers to travel without kids, but will do it occasionally. We do occasionally plop ourselves on a beach and drink “umbrella drinks” but my husband would tell you I’m not great at relaxing - I’m the one doing miles of beach walking. I suspect our travel will slow down once we are a little older and are less active.
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Husband has no interest in traveling anymore. We used to travel (1) to get away from winter and now we live in San Diego, (2) to visit family who are now gone, and (3) connected to husband’s work trips but he’s long retired. I like researching and would gladly throw myself into planning. But most places I’ve thought of going (Europe, Hawaii, Australia) just seem like so much more work than decades ago - horrible airline/airport experiences, way more crowded, reservations needed everywhere, etc. If I suggest something, husband is likely to say “bye.”
I’ve started tentatively looking at some of the escorted trips - I can afford it - but am not that crazy over traveling alone. Maybe I can talk son into doing something. I would like to do the circle Hawaii cruise and just book snorkeling trips at every port!
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I don’t know if you active people will ever slow down. I didn’t become active until after retirement (and I’m not that active) since I’m not exhausted at the end of a work day with 24 hours of chores to handle during my Sat & Sunday. I think you’ll only get better!
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Sounds great @threeofthree. Our honeymoon was supposed to be a bike trip in France but due to ShawWife’s visa issues (she was a Canadian marrying an American and then applying for a green card), it was important to stay in the US and we bicycled in the wine region in the Northern California. So now, I’m working on a bike trip in France. Not sure yet what to do for 70th. I was thinking of Baja Mexico Sur but I have no plan at the moment.
We love the Banff and hike in Banff/Yoho every summer. We did take our daughter to Lake O’Hara last summer and hope to take my son and his wife soon. It is not a grandchild friendly place, really, so before they have kids. At a certain point, we may decide to stop going there.
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I don’t like travel hassle, nor planning, which is why we book Rick Steves trips. All you have to do is get there and they take care of all the hotels, guides and transportation. You worry about nothing except for what kind of wine you want to drink that night (and they can help you with that). They buy the tickets, take you to places at uncrowded times, avoid the lines and choose the most interesting things. I’ve always thought this is the closest you can come to feeling like a kid again, no responsibility, only fun. Every day between meals, “Oh, I thought you might be hungry so I got you all a pastry. Enjoy!” I swear, they would hold your hand and give you a teddy bear if you wanted. No hassle, no research required.
And internationally, I only fly Delta and partners. Avoid Paris unless you have several hours to turn, no more than two legs if possible. Almost always works well. Always have backups and you’re good. Europe is easy. You should be able to enjoy your retirement while you can!
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What fantastic, wonderful family trips! Great memories and gorgeous surroundings. One of my favorite early trips was the Canadian Rockies and staying at all the CP Railroad Hotels (the Fairmonts). I’ve only been able to get everyone to Banff at Christmas for a ski trip but they fell in love with it in the cold so I know they’ll love it in the summer! My middle son lives in California and travels a lot with friends for fun, they all seem to have enough money and time to do so. He did join us in Bonair for scuba diving last Christmas but it’s getting harder and harder to get him to fly east. My youngest lives close and will join us for our week in HHI.
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I’m another one with a husband who doesn’t want to travel. I don’t need to travel often - I’m ok with long weekends or 2-4 day get-aways.
I have a daughter who is still single and we travel well together. But her vacation time is somewhat limited. We do one one week family vacation that we have twist H’s arm to come on.
I would consider an all-women’s group trip through a company.
I’m still working and pretty active with activities. If I’m lucky I’ll stay that way to the bitter end. Slowing down is so far not my thing!
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My husband and I both love traveling. In retirement, he has had more of it with trips with his brothers (two while I was still working, one since). And I’ve done some independent trips to see my Dad. Happily we’ve had the chance to do a few nice trips together… ha, after that dang Covid shutdown. But he’s not always up for my other interests - tonight I went solo to a high school musical. Mainly I wanted to see a young student from church in an “Under The Sea” role… enjoyed it more than I expected.
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I never thought of Rick Steve’s trips but love his books so will keep that in mind for the future. I am in the midst of planning my second trip to Europe in nine months, and the planning is exhausting!
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I hate the planning. I just want someone else to take care of picking the best places to go to, the best times, get the fantastic local guides and do all the work, especially if things go wrong. If I had to do the planning, most of our Europe trips wouldn’t happen. I don’t want to look up all the details of where/what/when, ugh! Retirement is about relaxing and enjoying yourself, and the rest of that sounds like work!
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For over 30 years my husband promised when he retired we could travel.
I would have been sad if he had decided that he ultimately did not want to travel.
So far so good.
We think of the river cruises we took the same as @busdriver11, no planning, book, pick out what you want to do and go.
We have our trip for this year planned and next years tentatively. Will really consider a Rick Steves for the year after that.
Planning is ok but these companies do I better job than I do. Because I’m not very good at it.
My husband wants to travel during certain months. We like to golf in the summer and Nordic ski in the winter. I’ll schedule travel in the off seasons. I like to do the same activities and don’t want to vacation in the summer when I live in Michigan. We don’t get that many months of great weather 
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Interesting to hear about the Rick Steves trips!
I followed his book on Italy to the letter on our family’s first overseas trip together (I was so worried something would go wrong I figured - just rely on Rick’s referrals- and they were excellent).
Intriguing to think of someone else planning the whole trip. Maybe that’s what made travel seem less enticing once I started to do it - the unknown, the needing to think through and plan every detail and contingency. It was fairly stressful and quite exhausting!
My sister in law was planning a Rick Steves trip to Italy about the time we went - the costs were not all that much more than what we paid (and from the posts here - maybe worth it!!)
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Interesting about the variations of travel before and in retirement.
I am learning soon if the girls’ trip (my good friend who lives in Switzerland, my sister and I) this fall will get scrubbed - it was to celebrate GF’s work retirement - her active 83 YO BF is having health issues which may postpone the September trip, which is fine with me - my sister ‘honed in’ with this girlfriend since our 2016 travel to Switzerland together (I did all the planning; she flew over with me and stayed 2 weeks and then I stayed an additional 2 weeks). This was the summer before I began my ‘sunset career’ which I ended with turning 65 and getting on Medicare and SS (DH retired 11 months earlier and started drawing SS a bit later). In addition to the girls’ trip (all planned by GF, with similar trip she did many years ago, Austria), I was going to spend some weeks in Switzerland after (where I have relatives on both sides of the family, including aunt and uncle who are getting up in years) - so total vacation time was one month again. I would fly over with sis, tying in with a road trip I had with DH which would ended at common airport where I would meet her. Once sis got back from Switzerland was going to be when we ‘set the dates’ and booked our airline travel. I feel fairly certain that GF will want to postpone, and there is no rush for the girls’ trip. I would also see our younger brother, who has lived in Switzerland some years after living in Costa Rica - I last saw him before he left the US (he didn’t arrive in Switzerland until 2019).
My sister is actually spending two weeks in Switzerland now (leaving Saturday); she needed to break her travel into two trips as her 86 YO husband cannot have her away longer than 2 weeks. She wanted to continue her ties with the relatives, which was ‘reconnected’ on the 2016 trip. As it is, she has lined up help coming in to help her husband (and all other details), and it seems both sons (neither live far by car) have each offered to come and stay with their dad 3 days (his recent hospitalization for pneumonia shook them up a bit into making more time with parent/s). The Switzerland trip was something sis wanted for her 70th birthday (she talked with her family at Thanksgiving, and her birthday is in Dec); the girls’ trip she said to me that she will go on “no matter what”. Girl friend’s significant other has a benign glioma (brain tumor) which was diagnosed 2 years ago with seizures. Seizures have been under control almost immediately, and has only limited him with driving for a period - but he has needed more testing recently and a biopsy of ‘changed area’ and now follow up. He might be undergoing some chemo and other alternative meds - seeing 2nd opinion MD in next week, and probably will begin some kind of treatment. The neurosurgeon gave life expectancy in his case to be one to five years (so essentially what they say for many in Stage IV cancer). Molecular analysis showed signs of some cancer cells. A real roller coaster situation with intense medical uncertainties.
I used to love planning our vacations. Now, I don’t enjoy long drives as much I used to, so we are really enjoying bus trips, river cruises. You get lots of history and perspective from the tour directors, by and large they are really great people. Since I’m not driving I actually get to look out the bus/ship window and see what everybody else sees.
Also, we have visited amazing places we would have never thought of visiting or known about.
Most itineraries give us enough free time to see the things we want to see. I think it’s all a fair trade-off for not being able to do what you want to do when you want to do it.
Now my BIL, OTOH, I can imagine his head exploding having to keep to someone else’s schedule. He and my sister are going on a Colorado tour next month as a “trial”. We’d love to travel with them, but wonder how he would cope.
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On the travel front, we have been doing longer trips with our travel trailer, like our recent 3 week trip to the eclipse. The revelation has been getting a Starlink terminal as it enables me to work remotely between excursions, including doing work videoconferences, and for us to watch streaming TV anywhere.
I’m sure we’ll do more of that in the future as a result and wouldn’t be surprised if we go somewhere out of the way for a longer period, rather than traveling constantly like on the last trip.
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I enjoy travel but also dislike planning. Fortunately S is a “travel enthusiast” and he is happy to do the planning. He is also fun to travel with because he is like having a private travel guide.
H ad I have traveled in retirement and have a trip to Italy planned (not by S, we will be on a tour) for the fall. H has had back problems for a year now and it’s hard for him to walk very far so unless we can get this resolved his future travel may be limited. I would like to travel together but it just may not be possible. I am fine traveling with either of my kids, my sister, a friend or solo.
Liek @deb922 I live in a place that has long winters and wonderful summers. I prefer not to travel in the summer (why leave?).
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It seems to me that travel changed significantly post-Covid. Timed admission is now required for so many of the places we visited, with tickets going on sale four or six weeks in advance and then selling out with minutes. Airfare is easier to arrange than an itinerary.
When we traveled to Italy six years ago, I pulled most of it together on two weeks’ notice, other than airfare, but even that was only purchased two months in advance. Now you need to set calendar reminders or you will be out of luck with admissions.
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