Like most people, my life has been impacted in several ways by the ongoing pandemic. One of more significant impacts for me has been a reduction in my travel. In order to illustrate the contrast between the amount of traveling I expected to do in retirement and what I have done during the pandemic, I will provide a summary of my primary activities for two years, 2019 and 2020. This post, part 1, focuses on 2019.
2019 was the first full year of my retirement. I was in 20 different countries that year. I am not necessarily expecting to be in that many countries every year, but I may even exceed it sometime!
January – February – Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico
As 2019 started, we were midway through a four-month lease in our first rental home in Mazatlán.
February 28 – March 3 – Road trip from Mazatlán north through Mexico to the US border
We left our rental on February 28th for several planned months of travel. The first part was a long road trip from Mazatlán to see our families in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
The first few days we drove north from Mazatlán through the rest of the state of Sinaloa and then through the state of Sonora that borders the US.
March 4 – April 16 – USA
Our road trip from the US/Mexico border in Nogales, AZ took us through parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Much of our route followed the old route 66.
After visiting friends and family in Wisconsin and Minnesota, we flew to Florida to visit family in Naples.
Then we took a bus to Fort Lauderdale to board a cruise ship for Europe! Our logic is why fly when retired? We have the time, boats are our favorite way to travel (particularly when someone else Captains them), and it is a much more gradual way to shift time zones.
April 16 – May 1 – Atlantic Ocean with stops in Portugal, Belgium, and England
After seven days at sea, we spent a day in Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal. We then continued another 800 miles across the Atlantic to mainland Europe, with Lisbon being our first stop.
Next stop was Zeebrugge, Belgium. We activated our Eurail passes and took the train to Bruges. We enjoyed great beer to celebrate Kevin’s birthday.
Our final stop before docking in Southampton, England was Portland, England. This was near the seaside resort town of Weymouth.
May – England, Wales, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany
Our cruise ship docked in Southampton. After disembarking, we had a meal then took the train to London. We spent several days in London, followed by Liverpool.
We spent one night in Wales before boarding a ferry to Ireland.
In Ireland we spent time in Dublin and Galway.
We next flew to Norway to meet our sisters for a weeklong tour that included travel by train, bus, and boat.
After Norway, we were back to train travel. We next visited Gothenburg and Malmo in Sweden.
We took a train that went on a ferry to Copenhagen, Denmark for a few days.
We next spent some time in Germany. Our first stop was Hamburg.
June – Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland
We started June in Germany (Cologne and Munich).
We then went to Vienna Austria for a few days.
After Austria, we visited Budapest, Hungary.
We were headed next to the coast of Croatia but learned that the trains were less direct than we had hoped. So, we took a train from Budapest to an unplanned visit to Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia.
We took a train from Zagreb to Ljubljana, the capitol of Slovenia.
We then had a day of bus and train travel to Pula, on the coast of Croatia, where we spent several days.
We took a ferry from Pula to Venice, Italy. We spent a much-needed rest week in Venice.
After Venice, we were back to train travel, next stop Milan.
Our travels then took us to the Swiss Alps with stops in Lugano and Lucerne.
We ended June back in Germany, in Stuttgart.
July – Germany, Netherlands, England
July started with one last German stop, in Dusseldorf.
We finished our time in mainland Europe in the Netherlands, with stops in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
We took an overnight ferry from Hook of Holland to Harwich in England. After a long walk through some villages and a meal, we boarded a train to London. After a few days in London, we returned to Southampton, this time for several days.
July 14– 28– Transatlantic cruise from England to the US with stops in Iceland and Canada
Following our boating-preferred-when-possible travel philosophy, we took another transatlantic cruise to return to the US. The cruise included a day in Liverpool before heading north to Iceland.
Our ship made two stops in Canada: Corner Brook in Newfoundland and Halifax in Nova Scotia.
Our ship docked in Brooklyn, NY, USA completing our cruise.
July 28– August 21– USA
We spent our first several days in the US in New York.
We then flew to visit family in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
August 21 – back to Mazatlan
On August 21st we flew back to Mazatlán, our home in 2019.
October – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
We had some business to take care of in the US, and for many reasons Las Vegas was the easiest place for us to take care of it. So, we spent several days there in October.
October – December – Mazatlan
We returned to Mazatlán after our Las Vegas trip and remained there for the remainder of the year.
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Wow….just wow! What a wonderful year for you. Hopefully, you will be able to travel more soon.
Yes, it was a wonderful year! We do plan to start doing more traveling, but for now for various reasons mostly within Mexico. We currently live in the geographic center of Mexico so it is relatively easy to radiate out from here to travel to various places we want to go — we have a fairly long list of places we haven’t been to. We do eventually plan to also do some more extensive traveling again, just not yet.