On To The Next Chapter…

Well things sure do change for us and it seems rather quickly. We had talked about our next steps many times but I guess maybe somewhere deep inside I never thought we would really do it!
After almost three years of Florida life we have decided to sell everything we own and travel the world full time.
We talked about doing this prior to COVID, however once Covid happened and the world was shut down, all of those thoughts went out the window and we made the next step decision to retire in Florida. And we have loved every minute of Florida life. But that thought of full time travel never left us and one day we were talking about all the trips we’d like to take but couldn’t do them because of our responsibilities of home ownership. That conversation led us back to our dream we had five years prior, before retirement, of traveling full time. And before you know it we said let’s do it! We aren’t getting younger and we both feel like if we don’t do it now, we will never get the opportunity again.
So, we have been selling off all of our personal items and today we listed the house for sale by owner.

When we approached our children about this, we weren’t really sure what they would think, but our daughters were very supportive and I think them knowing we would still be back to see them as often as we do now, every Christmas, Easter and one other trip per year, I think they could see that they would still see us, and we would most likely get to spend more time on our visits as we wouldn’t have a house we have to get back to, to take care of. Instead of going for a week or two week visits, we could actually stay a month and get quality time with them and the grandchildren.

So here we are in the throws of selling everything we own, one item at a time, and slowly things are beginning to leave us and we are starting to see the results. The garage is getting emptier, the closets, cabinets and shelves are looking a little more bare. We are starting to pack up the items our girls wanted to keep and we are also working on getting the furniture sold. It’s a big job, and you don’t realize how much “stuff” you have until you have to go through each and every item and sort through everything to sell. I am consigning my clothes and what doesn’t sell will go to charity.

The other thing we are working on now is making our list of all the things we need to take care of before we leave. We are setting and going to doctors appointments, we have immunizations we have yet to get, we have to renew our will and meet with our financial advisor, get new prescriptions for new glasses, get dental check ups, set up our mail management and residency, and the list goes on and on, as well as planning out our first places we want to go and researching places to stay in each area. And in this, we are trying to decide are we going to be doing short term travel so a week or two in each location or will we do long term travel where we spend a month or more in each location.

I think what we want to do in the beginning is to do short term travel so if you’re in a region, say Sicily for example, and you want to see the island we would take two weeks to travel through Sicily and see all that we can see and then continue that travel by train up to the Amalfi Coast, Naples area and stay for a week or two and then keep moving up to Rome etc… spending a week or two in each area so by the time we are to Venice we would have spent 6-8 weeks in Italy but just not in one region of Italy. Our goal is to see what we can while we are this age and find places we want to come back to and spend more time so once we are finished being ‘tourists” or we just need a break, we can go back to the areas we like and spend a couple of months in those places.

Many people have asked us what our first stop is going to be, and we have decided to go to Peru. We had Machu Pichu on our list, however it was somewhere in the middle of our long list, but we have now moved it to the top as they are going to be closing Machu Pichu in 2025 due to erosion of the historical site so we would like to see it and experience it before they shut it down. So after that it really all depends on when the house sells and what time of year it is before we make those decisions.

We have decided we are fair weather people, we do not like cold weather so we will be following the seasons and a lot of our travel will be determined by temperatures. We will follow the temperatures in the 70s generally, a little warmer or cooler but not cold weather. And we would like to do a nice mix of land with an occasional cruise. We have already booked a cruise for 2026 for the solar eclipse and will be meeting up with friends for that cruise.

So it takes a lot of planning to accomplish this, we look forward to the house hopefully selling sooner than later, houses are sitting in this area and not selling as quickly as I’d like to see so we are hoping it doesn’t take months for it to sell, but it will be whatever the Lord decides.

We are excited, anxious and ready to get this journey started. We have really enjoyed our time here in Florida, we have made so many wonderful friends and are so thankful that we decided to come here. It’s been a wonderful three years and our plan is to return here when the travel bug is finally fulfilled. Here’s hoping for a quick sale on the house so we can begin our new journey.

To move, to breath, to fly, to float, to roam the roads of lands remote, to travel is to live. By: Hans Christian Anderson