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From my readings on this site, I seem to be in the minority on a particularly popular and expensive retirement pastime: foreign travel.
Over the years, I’ve traveled a fair part of the world, from wide-ranging business travel throughout Europe and extensive global leisure travel on every continent other than, strangely enough, the Americas (except for the Caribbean). I still travel. For instance, I was in the Canary Islands just off the coast of North Africa for a 60th birthday celebration in February, and I’m meeting a friend from London in Spain for a week in late September. Suzie and I are currently organizing a trip for next August to see a total solar eclipse.
But my enthusiasm for foreign travel has waned these last few years. Part of it, I think, is a subtle shift from the thrill of novelty to a deeper appreciation for more settled pursuits. After years of navigating airports, packing suitcases, and adjusting to new time zones, the sheer hassle of foreign travel has started to feel less like an adventure and more like a task. With so many popular destinations becoming increasingly crowded, the quiet, more peaceful moments seem harder to find.
It strikes me that most would think this is a most inconvenient time to be losing interest in travel. After all, I’m only 58 and just recently retired. This is supposed to be the time! Get to it! Travel through the go-go years, the world’s your oyster! But my travel now seems to have evolved alongside myself, tied to more purposeful and personal reasons. I have no real enthusiasm for destination travel. It has to have a meaningful reason now. Another example to illustrate my point, I’m thinking of visiting my cousin in Australia who recently lost her husband.
I think it’s okay to spurn the popular myth around retirement and the expectation to see far-flung places. If that’s not your thing, then so be it. It doesn’t mean you’re doing retirement wrong. Retirement affords you more time to explore your interests. It can be a time of self-discovery. I’ve often thought about revisiting past childhood passions. I had a very intense interest in astronomy as a youth, and I’m undertaking a foundation course in Astronomy and Planetary Science this September.
Thinking honestly about what really interests or intrigues you and spending your new found time exploring these possibilities is a good starting point. Maybe you have a passion for history or the great outdoors, exploring more of my own country is high on my retirement list. Basing some of your retirement around your interests is just as valid. Do retirement your way and don’t feel pressured into following convention.
I’ve traveled widely, and that certainly colours my perspective. I’m definitely not advocating not to travel. It does expand your horizons and can really make you appreciate your own country and lifestyle. If traveling is your retirement thing, go for it. The world offers many wonderful experiences and beautiful destinations, but maybe just make sure it’s your choice and not societal expectations you’re following, just your own real travel retirement dreams. Whether it’s destination travel or my type of personal intentional travel for a reason, do your retirement your way.
If one travels extensively, it is a given that there will be problems from time to time. I’ve experienced too many for me to recount all. I won’t go into my mis-adventures with security both in the U.S. and abroad. Once, after a terrorist attack that took down an aircraft I was slammed against a wall by government thugs because as it turned out my gold filled glasses tripped security. I had the misfortune of being in Charleston SC for the entirety of Hurricane Hugo. That two week period is worthy of a memoir. I couldn’t leave so I sterilized the motel bathtub, filled it with water and covered it with cling wrap. I drank that for several days and finally made arrangements for a flight after Columbia Airport re-opened, but had to drive 120 miles. I was fortunate, my rental car was one of very few that wasn’t damaged by the storm. When I boarded the plane I looked and smelled like a bum. There were many newspeople with their large video cameras and their “I survived Hugo” T shirts. None wanted to sit beside me. Gee, I wonder why not?
I was on the last airline flight out of NOLA airport as hurricane Katrina was mere hours from landfall. I returned after both of these hurricanes had blown out to assist in certain rebuilding efforts with minimal infrastructure available. The after shocks were as memorable as the hurricanes. Of course, one might say “Why were you there in the first place” or “Why didn’t you leave earlier?” Short answer: the client did not release me.
During the winter months I took frequent hops through the Midwest in a Fairchild FH227and ran into a lot of inclement weather, spent many nights sitting in a various small airports waiting for the weather to clear. I was once on an airplane that flew into a dangerous downdraft. As it fell at a high rate of speed the coffee in my cup rose out of the cup and to this day I can recall how I chased it upwards by raising the cup to minimize spill. There were a few flights with terrorized, fearful passengers. Ground adventures were numerous. I was beset upon by a group of pick-pockets at a major train station in Italy. I was prepared and fought them off, losing nothing. During a trip into Saudi Arabia upon arrival my technical equipment was confiscated. The next day I hired a Saudi contractor to write import documents in Arabic, took them to the Minister’s office and negotiated and paid a 3,000 Riyal import duty. Once on the ground there were other excitements. I was once stopped by machine gun bearing military personnel in the desert. There are differing perspectives to all of this. My first wife once complained to me: “You are lucky you can travel!” Oh, ignorance can be so sublime.
I can see both sides of this. As I’ve written before, I retired at 53 so I could travel, and I did multi-month trips for fifteen years before being grounded by rheumatoid arthritis and then Covid. I don’t put much faith in counting countries – Vatican City counts the same as Russia – but I’ve visited over 70 countries and been round the world four times. My longest trip was ten months, featuring a meandering trip across two continents with all forward progress by train (Scotland to Saigon). It was budget level travel, but I had a wonderful time.
Now, I haven’t been anywhere since 2018, and I’m trying to work up the enthusiasm – and tackle the planning – for a trip to England next spring to visit family. I am very comfortable in my CCRC, and am staying very busy. I never cared for air travel, and I read about massive crowds in favorite places. Plus, the places at the top of my list are not the easiest or safest destinations. There are reasons I never made it to Iran….
I’ve been working my way through your travel blog. Thanks for the effort of creating it. Very enjoyable.
Thank you! Glad you’re enjoying it. Unfortunately, the site hosting my 2001-2006 trips closed down a year or so back, and I haven’t moved those trips to the blog. (Which needs renovating!)
I didn’t touch upon my complete dislike for commercial air travel. Nothing compares to ruining a pleasant trip than a flight back home. I have considered piggy backing on a small charter. Would serve me better than giving an inheritance to the children, who don’t need it. My first trip via commercial air was in 1967 and after many decades and hundreds of flights I can say I don’t miss it at all. That includes most domestic First Class.
I completely understand why you don’t enjoy traveling as much, since most of your trips have been for business.
We always avoided jobs that required travel. Instead, we’ve been taking vacations together since we got married over 40 years ago.
Before we had kids, we traveled twice for about two months at a time. After the kids were born, we still made sure to take annual trips that lasted several weeks.
Once the kids went off to university, we began exploring Europe regularly—about two times a year—focusing on one country at a time for 2-3 weeks.
In recent years, we’ve expanded our adventures to places like New Zealand and Australia, and soon we’ll be heading to India. Each of these trips lasts over 3-4 weeks.
Our travels are always packed with experiences—cities, culture, hiking, and more. We never plan for relaxation, since we can do that at home. Up until now, we’ve avoided organized tours, but our upcoming trip to India will be our first one, as it would be too difficult to manage on our own
These days I might want a tour for India for safety (I believe it’s become more dangerous for solo women), or at least a vetted driver, but I’ve traveled in India twice for several weeks at a time without difficulty. The trains go practically everywhere, and in first or second AC classes are fine. I never had difficulty making hotel reservations, although I was mostly sleeping in mid-range (and sometimes low end) places.
At 58 I was still working and any travel was a splurge. Congrats on freedom at 58. Well done.
My late wife was a FA for Delta and we had two German grandchildren. So we did get some good international trips. Now at 82 my current wife and I like to take one 30 day trip per year, abroad. We go with the flow, plan extra days in anticipation of issues like strikes, cancellations, and delays. The flame is still there. Abroad is our choice since we find thinking about a trip to Chicago, NYC, or anywhere in CA pretty uninteresting. We try to carefully choose venues that provide character, cuisine, culture, and safety (that is probably nowhere now), as well as tolerance of Americans, who can be some of the worst tourists in modern history. We try not to over plan and extend ourselves too thin so as to loose the pleasure of the travel experience.
We’ve travelled extensively, I’ve done more foreign travel than my spouse, primarily because of the nature of my business. We’ve discussed a return to Europe and even considered living in Portugal a few years ago. However, on reflection and after discussing with fellow travelers we concluded that the Europe we liked no longer exists. We decided not to burst our fond memories.
We have also taken several cruises. I want further afield, primarily because of business obligations.
Our travel served several purposes. We visit far-flung and inclined not-to-travel friends and relatives. My spouse has several chronic health conditions, and these are aggravated by climate, or at the very least, she is uncomfortable. So, we began looking for a place (or places) to retire more than 10 years prior to her retirement (she retired earlier than I did).
I also travelled extensively in the U.S. (and Canada). My spouse less so. With the children grown, their college completed and gainfully employed, commencing in 2002 we began annual “excursions” throughout the U.S. which I think is an absolutely amazing country. Fantastic for travel. In one trip we flew to Miami, rented a car and travelled the Keys, to Key West. We travelled from San Franciso to the Columbia River Gorge, visiting the National Parks on the way North, and then travelling the entire coast and many lighthouses for the return, ending at the Mark Hopkins in S.F.
Other trips included the east coast, numerous visits to the New York Area, Gettysburg, a stay at the historic Emerson hotel, the panhandle of Florida, New Orleans prior to Katrina, the Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City, touring the Great Lakes, circumnavigating Lake Michigan with stays in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, retracing the route of the Erie Canal and so on (portions of the canal still exist).
Our travel really accelerated in 2013 when we flew to Las Vagas and rented a Class B RV. We used this to tour the National Parks in Utah.
Using our RV knowledge we purchased a Class B RV in December 2013.
This allowed us to explore other areas (San Antonio old mission trail, Santa Fe and Taos NM, Savannah GA, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Schulenberg TX, the Colorado Dunes and most of Colorado, various museum stops along the way, etc.
Since 2014 we have toured about 6,000 miles each year with the exception of 2023 due to illness. We’re currently on a 6,000 mile RV trek in the U.S., spanning several months. This included Georgia, the Midwest and portions of Tennessee we’ve never visited before.
Today we live in two different U.S. states. One in the winter and another in the summer, with travel in-between. These are separated by about 2,000 miles and we’ve discussed reducing this to 1,000 miles or less.
I have done a fair amount of international travel. Some of my most enjoyable travel was in the US and Western Canada. There are many national parks and other sites to see in the US that are equal or better than anything I have seen internationally. The natural beauty of our country is fantastic and varied. People talk so much about European travel or other parts of the world. I have been to 5 continents and at least 11 countries, but I much prefer North America for travel.
One man’s opinion.
re RDQ’s “down arrows” —> My 1 cent :
why is there “voting” on peoples comments ? If you have a comment, either positive or negative, post it. Otherwise, keep it to yourself if you don’t have the intestinal fortitude to post it publicly.
Is this Facebook or Instragram ? Are we posting to get “Likes” ?
It is childish and beneath the dignity of this blog site. Are we not adults here ? The ability to vote on comments should be removed.
Despite your down votes, I agree 100%. This site seems to be headed in the wrong direction. This site is the closest I get to social media. I have always enjoyed the comments, and the fact that, whether I agree with them or not, they are directed at the topic, not an attack on the writer’s personality.
I keep away from social media because it has become the cesspool of the internet. I truly hope that this site does not become one that I feel I can no longer feel comfortable interacting with due to the tenor of the commenting, and increasing number of down votes for innocuous comments on certain writers’ posts that seem like they are negative just because of who they are.
Two ways we mitigate some of your travel complaints is we only travel in the shoulder seasons (here before our Memorial Day and after our Labor Day. Also when we travel internationally we always go for two weeks. This mitigates the jet lag and makes the airport hassles more tolerable
That’s the way to do it when you are retired.
Again, why a down vote?
My favorite travel story is my quest to see Crater Lake. Once we were in Oregon so we were hours away. I rented a car and drove to the entrance. This was late August. The ranger told us because of heavy snow the entrance was closed, but the south entrance 60 more miles away was open.
Off we went. The ranger said we could go up the 6000 feet, but he didn’t think we would see much as it was foggy.
He was right, it was so foggy we could not see trees across the parking lot let alone the lake. Then it started to snow. We drove down the mountain as fast as we could as the snow accumulated- and still haven’t see Crater Lake.
Always wanted to look at that myself.
Enjoy your writings!
Like you I have had the travel bug and have been fortunate enough to get to six continents also, but still need to get Antarctica in.
Airport travel as you said is the worst part but I mitigate that as much as possible by using Global Entry, TSA Pre-check, and Clear to minimize wait times. Using lounge access as much as possible to try and find some peace and quiet prior to our flights.
Both my wife and I work in PT so over the years we have seen too many people who have had unfortunate accidents/ illness and don’t have the ability to travel, and have the constant reminders that you never know when this could occur to ourselves. So along with our boys we have tried to get away as much as possible while we are still young and healthy enough to do it.
As for me, I have always loved history and have been to the Pyramids, Petra, Ephesus, just to name a few and have been taking history classes at our local college since retiring last year and am looking forward to classes starting next week.
I’ve been snowboarding inside the Arctic Circle (-28°F), but I’ve also never made it to Antarctica. I love ancient sites too, and Knossos in Crete was one of my favourites. Enjoy your travels!
What do we think is the likelihood of people forcing themselves to travel. This just doesn’t sound like a common choice.
Not to go off topic, but can I tell you how amused I am when Quinny gets downvoted? He could say the sky is blue, and they’ll be a half dozen red numbers within 10 minutes. Makes me chuckle every time. Love RDQ!
I always upvote RDQ. It’s just an automatic thing because I really enjoy his style.
LOL I’m with you guys. Lets support RDQ and see how many red arrows we can collect.
This is a thoughtful, articulate description of how travel doesn’t appeal to all retired people. When I was younger, I traveled extensively, spent a lot of time thinking about and preparing for travel, and enjoyed it deeply. Now that I’m retired, travel doesn’t draw me anymore. It’s not how I want to spend my precious remaining time. I find myself very much drawn to local exploration (museums, ethnic restaurants, concerts, lectures, classes), internal exploration (reading, learning, spiritual contemplation), and spending quality time with loved ones. Wendell Berry wrote a poem entitled “Traveling at Home”, which is our motto in our 8th year of retirement. My past travels have helped to open my mind and heart, for which I’m grateful. As Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
I just read that poem. It perfectly encapsulates the pleasure I feel during my morning coffee ritual when I notice the slow seasonal change of my garden through the sunroom windows. Thank you for mentioning it.
There’s no rulebook that says you have to travel. And I’d agree that enough airport travel takes the shine off any desire to willingly subject oneself to it.
But I think you’re probably not in the top half of homebodies – just from what you’ve said you’re probably doing as much as what most Americans mean when they say they intend to travel more in retirement.
And remember that intent is also relative to a baseline which for US citizens may be quite low – cruises round the Caribbean maybe technically count as international travel but they aren’t exactly pushing the envelope.
I do think social media is a blessing and a curse when it comes to travel. You can research almost anything to death with walkthough videos etc but it can take away the spontaneity. I’m a child of the book a flight, buy a copy of Lonely Planet and work it out on the ground era. Of course that’s relatively pampered compared to the hippies who wrote those first editions. Nowadays I suspect a lot of travel is curated for instagram/tik tok tick lists.
When we prepare for travel my wife looks at peoples site on line. She gets some good ideas but sees everything before we go. I get Rick Steeves books to prepare, but purposely avoid videos of our destinations
When Suzie and I were younger, we spent three months backpacking around Australia. Not a single selfie was taken, and seat-of-your-pants accommodation hunting was the order of the day.
I can see how you feel the way you do, Mark, since you have already traveled so much throughout your life. I haven’t, and am looking forward to some trips in our retirement. I was surprised to see you hadn’t been to the US. Chris
Enjoy your travels, Chris. I guess I’m just a bit jaded, but in line with my travel for a reason ethos, I will be visiting the U.S. at some stage on my way to the Pearl Harbor National Memorial. It’s not a straightforward place to get to from Ireland, but I’ve always wanted to pay my respects and now that I have the freedom, I will be visiting, possibly on Suzie’s 60th birthday next year.
Maybe not straightforward from Belfast, but according to skyscanner there are flights from Shannon to Hawaii with one stop in New York, and from Dublin with one stop in San Francisco. I might suggest a direct flight to New York followed by a train trip across the continent – stop off in Chicago and then enjoy some wonderful scenery.
We have had the travel discussion before and as usual there were very different points of view.
Not traveling and seeing the world, meeting people in other cultures is a mistake in my view, but for some people it just doesn’t hold any appeal.
We have been to 45 countries and all fifty states traveling across the US by car three times in the last seven years. Estimates are about 11% of Americans have never left the state where they were born.
We’ve cruised all the navigable rivers of Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, cruised to the Falklands and taken land tours around Europe. Road a Camel in Morocco and placed a prayer in the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
We made friends in England and France who have visited us on Cape Cod.
Our experiences and what we have seen are priceless. I just wish we weren’t slowing down, but at least we got to see and learn.
Fair point about this being a topic that’s been talked about before. Maybe we should stick to a topic that is seldom mentioned, such as when to claim social security😜
Or, how about spreadsheets and percentage of income replacement in retirement. I wonder how many 🔻it takes to crash the system?
😂
On the other side of the travel coin, not delving deeply into the seasons and phenology of one’s home surroundings seems a missed opportunity. I know people who travel widely but have yet to experience a nearby nature preserve. For me, I would rather find wonder in the woods than in airports and cars!
Have you ever seen the wonders of our country? Plenty of woods and incredible nature to explore. Virtually any national park for example.
We just got back from a week-long bus tour of Jasper, Banff, and Glacier National Parks. What you’re saying, Richard, about the wonders of our country (and Canada) is spot on! And, there are plenty of other scenic places to visit in the USA. Just think, no passport, no visa, no money exchange, no language barrier, etc.!
“Just think, no passport, no visa, no money exchange, no language barrier, etc.!”
clarification:
1) you do need a passport to enter Canada
2) you DO need to change money as Canada uses Canadian Dollars, not American Dollars
3) if you visit Montreal, speaking French would be helpful
Dick, again I am appalled at the down votes for such an innocuous post. Come on people let’s have some common decency.
I enjoy a mixture of international and domestic travel. As we get older, its true we must be mindful of whether we are on an adventure or performing a task. I do enjoy exploring the USA, and sometimes feel torn between visiting new areas and returning to old favorites. As for those who do not enjoy travel, or are unable to, you made useful suggestions such as pursuing an old forgotten passion or even a new one. Often this requires little if any cost, other than time, which now retired I do have.
I just recently crossed the 1M mile mark with American Airlines. The vast majority of my miles were accumulated through work travel, and almost none of it was “fun.” And while I’m also very close to retirement, I’ve similarly struggled with the notion that I might not want to travel that much once I stop working. Of course, in certain higher income and well educated circles, not wanting to travel extensively is tantamount to enjoying the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at Denny’s. Anyway, I like your definition of purpose driven pursuits. Plus, I think there is so much within the US I’d love to see and visit. It doesn’t help that I’m a creature of habit and when I like something, I like to stick with it (New Hampshire, Santa Fe/Taos and Lexington, VA come to mind) I oftentimes think people check off travel like they do boy scout merit badges. I’m fine not making it to eagle.
Wow, that’s a lot of time in the air. I feel your pain.