Episode 26 - Six Months Later: What Has Worked, What Has Not

Can eSIM technology transform your travel experience for good? In the 26th episode of "Travels with Jim and Rita," we celebrate a significant milestone by sharing the tech and travel hacks that have shaped our journey over the past six months. From the game-changing convenience of eSIMs and Global Entry passes to the luxury of airport lounges, we reveal the tools that have made our globe-trotting life more manageable. Also, get a sneak peek into our upcoming 70-day tour of Eastern Europe and join us in reminiscing about our near-miss adventures, from botched camper van rentals to unreliable ride-sharing apps.

Let's talk money! Financial planning can be a daunting task for traveling retirees, but we break it down by sharing our personal strategies that have kept us afloat. Discover how pet sitting through Trusted House Sitting keeps our accommodation costs near zero and how we've turned our house sale proceeds into a steady income through high-yield savings accounts. We also shed light on the challenges of managing rental properties from afar and the shifting dynamics of the housing market, underscoring the need for flexibility and careful planning in an unpredictable world.

Logistics can make or break long-term travel, and we’re not holding back on the nitty-gritty details. From the hassles of mail forwarding and credit card woes to the complexities of storing or selling household goods and vehicles, we share it all. Don't miss our reflections on navigating international ride-share services and our excitement for future travel plans. Plus, tune in for details about our appearance at the International Living Ultimate Go Overseas Boot Camp in Las Vegas this October. Come along for the ride as we celebrate our journey and look forward to what's next!

Transcript

Jim Santos: 0:19

Welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita. To Travels with Jim and Rita, I'm your host, jim Santos, and in this podcast series you can follow along as my wife Rita and I work out our crazy plan to outfox the real estate market in the US and actually increase our retirement nest egg by spending the next three years or so living abroad and exploring the world. Are we bold, forward-thinking pioneers or just plain nuts? Let's find out together, shall we? Welcome everybody to Travels with Jim and Rita.

Jim Santos: 1:02

This is a special episode for us as it's the 26th edition of Travels with Jim and Rita. That means 26 weeks, half a year, that we've been producing podcasts. It's been fun, we've met and talked to some interesting people and we're about to break the 10,000 download threshold, with listeners in 35 countries. So for our half-year anniversary of building a roaming lifestyle, we thought we'd like to take some time to go over some of the things that have worked well for us, along with some of the things that did not work out as we had planned. We're still in Carmel, indiana, cat-sitting until mid-July. From here we go to Oklahoma and then to Georgia visiting friends and family. Quick stop in Knoxville to swap out some items in our luggage, and then we're off to Eastern Europe for a new 70-day adventure, but we'll talk more about that later. Well, rita, let's start things off with some things that have worked out well for us.

Rita Santos: 1:47

That sounds good. Let's talk about all the things that seem to go pretty well.

Jim Santos: 1:52

All right, let's start off with eSIMs.

Rita Santos: 1:55

That is an absolute wonderful technology and you're the tech expert. You can talk about that. How easy it is.

Jim Santos: 2:04

For those who aren't aware of what they are. The SIM cards, of course, are those tiny little cards that have gotten tinier as years have gone on, that you slip into your cell phone that carries all the information, like your phone numbers, that used to carry your contact list and all too, but they've been getting smaller and smaller because more stuff has been stored on your phone and online. The problem with travel is that if you go to a new country, you have to pop out that eSIM and put in another one, and that's kind of a clumsy thing to do. You have to use a bent paper clip to get the little gate open, and it'd be very easy to lose your original.

Rita Santos: 2:36

SIM. You have to keep track of it.

Jim Santos: 2:40

And also your phone number changes whenever you do that. So if you're using something like WhatsApp, all of your contact information for other people changes. You could get around that before by getting a dual SIM phone. That's a phone that had two SIM slots in it, but those were rather expensive. But any cell phone made in the last five, six years now has the ability to use what's called eSIMs. The E doesn't stand for electronic, which is what I thought it stands for embedded. The SIM card is actually embedded in the phone. So that means you can get a new SIM just by downloading it from online and then activating it. And this has worked out great because it doesn't give you a phone number in the local country, but it does give you access to the internet via the phone system in those countries. So your phone number stays the same. You can still use WhatsApp, people from home can call you, you can call people at home and you can use it to get around whenever you're in a country. So it's been great having internet access wherever we go.

Rita Santos: 3:38

And some of those downloads involved many countries, not just one particular country.

Jim Santos: 3:43

Right Last fall we downloaded an eSIM that gave us access in 39 countries, and later this year, when we go back to Europe, all we need to do is get online and add a couple of months to it and it'll be up and running and we'll be ready to go.

Rita Santos: 3:58

Now, we did have a little problem with our eSIM not the eSIM, but with our provider when we were in Panama. You want to explain how that went, jim?

Jim Santos: 4:09

Yeah, that's a good thing to check. If you're going to be using an eSIM, Check with your provider to make sure that they allow cellular data switching. I thought that pretty much everybody did that, but we made the mistake of switching carriers before we went to Panama and found out once we got to Panama that they did not allow cellular data switching so we could only use one SIM at a time. So that did not work out well. But you know, as soon as we got back to the States, we switched our carrier again and have had no problem since.

Rita Santos: 4:37

Right, when we were in Mexico, it worked like a dream yeah.

Jim Santos: 4:40

One other thing you also want to make sure that your cell phone has been unlocked before you use that. It just means that you are able to use your cell phone on multiple plans, not just the plan you originally signed up with. If you're not sure, just go ahead and call your cell phone provider or check on their website. There's usually a chat field or something like that and you can ask them to unlock your phone. It usually takes a little while, so before you travel, make sure you've done that ahead of time. Some other travel things that have really worked out well for us. We got our global entry passes and we're able to use that for the first time just recently.

Rita Santos: 5:14

Yeah, I think we spent three seconds at the check-in counter.

Jim Santos: 5:18

Yeah, it was great, we didn't even have to take our passports out. You just stand in front of a machine that scans your face and says, okay, go ahead.

Rita Santos: 5:24

That was the easiest we've ever come back into the country. It was great.

Jim Santos: 5:28

Yeah, that was a beautiful thing A hundred bucks to get the global entry for I believe it's five years. Right, that it's good for. Yeah, now we got reimbursed that hundred bucks because we upgraded our credit card before we left the country last year and one of the things we got with that upgrade was access to airport lounges.

Rita Santos: 5:46

Oh, that's the greatest invention ever.

Jim Santos: 5:49

Yeah, the lounges are beautiful things. If you're someone who's going to be traveling a lot, those long layovers in different airports are really a breeze. If you can use an airport lounge, you can go in and relax, you can get food, you can get drinks and it's all covered. It's all you know. You never pay for any of this. You just go in and have usually a buffet. There'll be a bar, there'll be coffee and sodas and that kind of thing set up.

Rita Santos: 6:10

Sometimes you can shower, sometimes there are rooms to rest.

Jim Santos: 6:14

And I got to tell you the bathrooms are much cleaner in the airport lounges than now in the general airport.

Rita Santos: 6:20

And you're not waiting in line.

Jim Santos: 6:25

Now. Another technology piece that's worked well for us is an old friend of ours, and that's Waze W-A-Z-E. There are several apps for finding your way around. Google Maps will do that, or Apple Maps will do that as well, but we've really found Waze to be really useful, not just for driving in other countries, but also for just walking around.

Rita Santos: 6:40

Yeah, you know where you are at all times. It's just perfect.

Jim Santos: 6:44

And, of course, that works hand in hand with having that eSIM. So even when you're out on the streets, you have access to the internet and you can find out where you are, directions to wherever you're trying to get to. I'd also like to give a shout out to AirPods. Those have worked very well for us.

Rita Santos: 6:58

Absolutely, especially if you're lost and you can't find your Airbnb. You just track your AirPod.

Jim Santos: 7:05

If you're not familiar with these. These are just small load devices about the size of a quarter, and you can put them in your luggage, in your purse, briefcase, backpack, anywhere you like, Assign a name to them and then you can track where that item is on your cell phone or on laptop or iPad. It's been really useful sitting in an airport wondering if our bags made it that far into the plane.

Jim Santos: 7:30

When we recently returned from Mexico, we had to use a standby flight and our luggage arrived in two different shipments and we knew where our luggage was before. The airline knew where our luggage was and, like Rita said, they've also been great for finding out where you left your luggage. If you're the one lost, and not the luggage, you can find your way back to it.

Rita Santos: 7:51

Yeah, I always worry about somebody slipping my backpack off of my arm or whatever. Well, I can find that as well.

Jim Santos: 8:01

Right, and they can also be set to notify you if you've left something behind. That's right to notify you if you've left something behind. That's right, yeah, so if you've left your purse behind, you can get a notification, if you get a certain distance away from it that you've left this, so it's very useful items.

Rita Santos: 8:14

Yeah, Sometimes it can be annoying, but I can't. I can just imagine how reassuring that would be if you got that notification and you were looking for it.

Jim Santos: 8:23

One last piece of technology that I wanted to mention was Google Translate. That's been very useful for us, not just finding out how to say something, although that's certainly been useful but what's really been helpful for us is trying to figure out how to operate washing machines dryers.

Rita Santos: 8:40

Oh, my God, yes.

Jim Santos: 8:42

Google Translate has a feature where you can point the camera at what you're trying to read and it'll display it to you in English. That was really useful, especially in Greece and Turkey where you couldn't even make a guess at what the writing was on the devices.

Rita Santos: 8:56

Right, different alphabet. Yeah, totally confusing, but we're getting better at it.

Jim Santos: 9:01

Getting better at it, and it's helpful for things like menus as well or trying to read directions on something. It's been very useful. There's a couple of things that are kind of new to us that have also worked out well. One of those is pet sitting. Part of our plan to live on a budget while we're traveling without a home base has been to reduce the cost of stays in different areas by offering to do house sitting and pet sitting. So we signed up through the website Trusted House Sitting, and we have actually landed a couple of gigs. Like I said, we're doing a cat sitting gig right now and we have two set up for November.

Rita Santos: 9:38

Near London End of.

Jim Santos: 9:39

October and November in London. So I think, when I looked at the calendar, basically for one month, we're only going to need to pay for accommodation for about seven of those days.

Rita Santos: 9:47

Right, and that gives us a chance to do five days downtown London to see all the major sites and then to live in these little villages. Go to pubs to have your lunch. Of course we'll be taking our little dogs around, but it'll be fine.

Jim Santos: 10:02

But you'll hear more about those as we actually do them. But so far it's been very promising, especially that the people that we've met so far have been really nice people.

Rita Santos: 10:11

Oh, absolutely. I'm really excited to meet them and to take care of their pets.

Jim Santos: 10:18

And the other part of our plan to live on a budget and live without a home was to try to make money while we're doing that by having the proceeds from the sale of our house in what are called HYSAs high yield savings accounts. Now I know people will say you're getting what? Four or 5% on these?

Jim Santos: 10:36

You can do much better with this stock or much better with this or that, but we're old Risk is not our middle name, yeah we're risk adverse at this point and, yes, we could get higher interest rates with some other types of investments, but they aren't as guaranteed or as sure as these savings that we are getting now.

Rita Santos: 10:58

And we've done that. When we lived in Ecuador for six years, we had a home in the US that we rented out during that time, and it went marvelously well. We can't complain. The people took beautiful care of it. We even had all of our personal belongings in the house. Our furniture was in mint condition when we got it back and it was perfect. The chances of that happening again would have been probably zero, so we just didn't want to risk it. We knew we were going to be gone for a couple of years. It was just simpler, just simpler to sell it.

Jim Santos: 11:36

Simpler is the important thing During COVID. Well, let me back up. Just before COVID, we had gone back to the States with the idea of doing roaming retirement, but at that time we were going to maintain a house at home To make sure that we were also earning some money. We decided to purchase an investment house that we were going to rent out, and we did find a renter for it. Unfortunately, it was in March of 2019, or March of 2020, rather just as everything was shutting down, so we didn't get to do any travel, but as an investment that worked out really well for us, because not only did we earn money while we were renting it, but the housing market just shot up Crazy, Really appreciated and we sold it.

Rita Santos: 12:16

But that would have been next to impossible, I think, to keep two rentals you know, our present home and then the investment house.

Jim Santos: 12:26

Yeah, and keeping a rental when we were like a mile and a half away from it. Yeah, that was easy, that's one thing. When you're on a different continent, that's another thing.

Rita Santos: 12:34

We were able to do the rental for the extended period of time when we were in Ecuador because our daughters lived in that area. Plus, I was a realtor in that area for 32 years and I knew construction people and service people to take care of the property if something went wrong. We just moved to Knoxville from Ecuador and really don't have that kind of networks. We just don't have it, and there's so many people looking for handymen and they can't find them.

Jim Santos: 13:11

And the other side of that. For this period, when we decide to sell the house and use the high interest accounts, the market is completely different. The odds of us buying a property and having it increase in value are not nearly as good as they were a few years ago. You could end up actually losing money.

Rita Santos: 13:28

Yeah, for the first time in our zip code I've seen foreclosures. I don't know if that is a glimpse of what the future is going to be, but I didn't see any foreclosures in the last six years in our zip code when we lived there. Now that we've sold it, I am seeing I have seen a few.

Jim Santos: 13:48

So it's always subject to change and of course we'll keep you up to date on it as we go along, but so far our plan to sell while the market was up and then put everything into safe and decent return savings vehicles has worked out very well for us.

Rita Santos: 14:00

Yeah, we feel good about it, first of all, when we come back again or wherever we locate. We don't need such a big house, and that was part of the motivation to do it as well, and I actually think we'll really make sure the next property touches upon everything that we need to finish it out. You know, to run out the clock.

Jim Santos: 14:21

Of course the problem is we went to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and loved that area and thought about buying a house there.

Rita Santos: 14:27

Yeah, we found one we really love.

Jim Santos: 14:29

Now we're in Carmel, Indiana, and we've been to a couple of open houses here, thinking, oh, this could be a decent area as well.

Rita Santos: 14:35

Yeah, but I don't think that we would buy anything in the US until we see what is happening in the political arena. We don't want to be heavily invested here. We just need to relax and enjoy ourselves. My God, we're old.

Jim Santos: 14:52

Right, right, Need to stick to the plan do the traveling Right Now. Of course, it's not all been sunshine and lollipops. There are some things that have not worked out very well for us. The first one of those I'll start here is virtual mail and forwarding our mail those I'll start here is virtual mail and forwarding our mail.

Jim Santos: 15:11

Yeah, that's been a kind of a nightmare. Now, part of the problem is actually not with the virtual mail system, it's with the US postal system. They started out forwarding our mail just fine, but after a couple of weeks we noticed nothing was showing up in our virtual mailbox.

Jim Santos: 15:22

Yeah, perhaps I should explain for those of you who aren't aware of this. Since we are not going to be able to pick up our mail, we signed up for a virtual mail service. They basically give you an address that was in Knoxville and a post office box for us. Our mail gets forwarded to them or delivered directly to them. When we get mail, we get an email we can log into their site, see a scan of the envelope, of what the mail is. If it's something that we obviously don't need, we can tell them to shred it. We can tell them to forward it to one of our kids, or we can ask them to open it and scan the inside so we can see what's going on with that. That part has been pretty well they're pretty responsive.

Rita Santos: 15:59

Yeah, that's worked well once they actually received the mail.

Jim Santos: 16:02

Yeah, but the problem has been with the forwarding. You can go to the post office and request forwarding. They don't like to do it for more than a month. If you want it for a longer period of time, you can pay for it. So I paid something like $49 to have it forwarded for 18 months. But whether they continue to do that or not seems to be the problem. So far I have had to contact them once and after. I contacted them and told them that we had stopped receiving mail. First I got this story about oh, it can take several weeks for it to catch up. And then, miraculously, a couple of days later, after I complained about it, we got four or five pieces of mail.

Rita Santos: 16:36

Right, that were needed. Pieces of mail.

Jim Santos: 16:39

Right. One of them was a check, so we definitely wanted that one.

Rita Santos: 16:41

That's why we were so wondering what was happening, that things weren't progressing with them. Wondering what was happening that things weren't progressing with them, but the mail service had been iffy in our particular zip code for some reason for the last two years.

Jim Santos: 16:55

Yeah, now, fortunately, these days, mail is needed less and less.

Rita Santos: 17:00

Right.

Jim Santos: 17:00

Right, there's only a few things that we actually need to get by the mail, so hopefully that won't be as big a problem in the future.

Rita Santos: 17:07

Now, Right, yes, we do all of our banking and bill paying electronically, right yeah?

Jim Santos: 17:14

Now, something else that hasn't worked out terrifically was when we first moved to Knoxville with this plan of roaming in Knoxville as a base, we signed up for an American Airlines credit card because American Airlines had a hub there in Knoxville. We figured we'd be using it a lot. We could use the points to get discounted rates on flights and things like that. But it hasn't worked very well for a couple of reasons. First of all, their point system.

Jim Santos: 17:38

It takes an awful lot of points to get anything, just to get anything and they'll offer to sell you points whenever you buy an airline ticket. But you're paying four or five times the price of the airline ticket to get the points and it's just not worth it. And we've also had some problems with them having the flights arrive and depart on time.

Rita Santos: 17:58

Right or be delayed for a day. That was a little bit hard to take when we were in Mexico, trying to come back home and lost our first class status.

Jim Santos: 18:09

Sure, the weather in Dallas-Fort Worth was bad. I understand the airlines can't control the weather, but we had to lose those first class seats that we had purchased with points.

Rita Santos: 18:18

Right.

Jim Santos: 18:19

And there's no way we can get those points back, even though they got to sell that seat on first class prices.

Rita Santos: 18:24

But we did get to bump the line to be the first person on with standby. Of course they wanted to sell our seats.

Jim Santos: 18:35

For us. We found the point system on the American Express Platinum card Much better. It seems to work very well.

Rita Santos: 18:42

But Europe, there's so many places that don't take American Express. Very few do so you have to have not one visa. You should have a couple of visas, in case one of them gets corrupted or whatever.

Jim Santos: 18:55

Yeah, it's a good idea to have multiple credit cards, and if you're traveling as a couple, you need to each have multiple credit cards, right?

Rita Santos: 19:03

which has worked out to our benefit, because it has happened to Jim a couple of times.

Jim Santos: 19:10

Right. While we were in Panama, I had, within a week, two different credit cards reported fraud attempts and had to cancel the cards. So there we are without being able to use those cards, without being able to get replacement cards until we were back in the States. Now, another thing that did not work out as we had planned was our storage situation.

Jim Santos: 19:29

Now we had some trouble with storing our household goods. I won't go into it, it's on their blog site if you want the whole story. But we had a little difficulty. We had to use an overflow space for a while, but we straightened that out. We have all of our household goods stored in one big bin right now. It cost us about $3,000 for the first year, but we figured out as we were selling stuff from our house before we moved we made almost $4,000.

Jim Santos: 19:55

So our first year is really taken care of there, yeah, but that part has worked well. But we had also thought that we'd be able to get an outdoor space that we could pull our car into and park the car that we could pull our car into and park the car.

Rita Santos: 20:13

Reason being to rent a car is extremely expensive. In the US right now, If you're wanting to rent a car for a month, it's about $4,000. This car is paid for, but what are we going to do?

Jim Santos: 20:21

Yeah, the problem, though, is that we're looking now at being out of the country. We're leaving in early August. We'll be back briefly in October for an IL conference, but we'll be in Las Vegas. We won't be where our car would have been.

Rita Santos: 20:33

Right.

Jim Santos: 20:33

And then we're going back to England. Probably through and yeah, probably May or June be gone, so we're talking about being gone for 10 months maybe, and first of all the outdoor spaces we were looking at were kind of expensive. They Right, and first of all the outdoor expenses or the outdoor spaces we were looking at were kind of expensive.

Rita Santos: 20:51

They were, and they were in horrible condition.

Jim Santos: 20:53

Right and you don't. They're not climate controlled. They're not even as warm as a basic garage would be no, during the winter, and they get awfully hot during the summer. So the question was whether our car would be worth anything when we came back after 10 months.

Rita Santos: 21:07

Would it start?

Jim Santos: 21:08

Yeah, would it start, and there's some problems with renewing the registration and all that. It just became too complicated, too expensive and too difficult.

Rita Santos: 21:22

So now the last thing we'll do before we leave in August is to sell that car. Yeah, and which we've done. When we went to Ecuador, we sold all of our cars at CarMax. It was a very simple process, they were fair and we actually sold a car even back to Honda.

Jim Santos: 21:39

So that really didn't work out the way we wanted to, but hopefully it'll work out in the long run. Packing strategies is another thing that we've had some difficulty with and are really still working with. The problem is we're moving around with everything we have, basically, or what we have is what we need for nine months. Right.

Rita Santos: 21:58

And we're in different climates. That's another thing. So I know a lot of people try to always stay in warm climates and have very little that they need to take and they can do it in a carry-on. But jim and I are probably we're what we are going to be in england and scotland and wales and ireland in cold months, so we have to take winter clothes and we've also tried in the fall.

Jim Santos: 22:23

We went, we went to greece and turkey and vienna, etc. Right, we tried to save money by not having as many checked bags just carrying one checked bag and putting everything into backpacks and carry-ons.

Rita Santos: 22:35

And that worked pretty well in that regard, but the backpacks are heavy.

Jim Santos: 22:39

Yeah, the backpacks are very heavy. Walking around in large airports like Istanbul Airport is huge.

Rita Santos: 22:45

Oh, biggest airport I've ever seen.

Jim Santos: 22:47

Walking around there, carrying most of your stuff on your back. Not comfortable Was not ideal, and then sometimes you end up on a flight where your carry-on is also not going to fit.

Rita Santos: 22:57

Yeah, you have to pay your $50 fee to put it in the belly of the plane.

Jim Santos: 23:02

Yeah, so you end up having to check it anyway.

Rita Santos: 23:04

Yeah.

Jim Santos: 23:05

So now we're trying out having just one carry-on that's got things like our computers and iPads and you know things that you don't want to put in a in a checked bag. Just enough stuff so that we know it's going to fit under the seat at least in front of us and then trying to get the rest of our lives into one checked bag each.

Rita Santos: 23:25

Right and stay under 50 pounds, which we intend to do, because we're going to be on trains, planes and automobiles. So that's, and I'm sure we can do it, and a lot of people don't go into that many different climates. But there are things we want to see in cold climates and we don't want to see it when it's overrun with tourists. That's no fun either, you know. You can always bundle up and enjoy the solitude, hopefully.

Jim Santos: 23:57

Right Traveling during the shoulder seasons before and after tourist seasons. Not only is it less crowded, but generally it's a little less expensive.

Rita Santos: 24:05

Right, and I think that we'd both like to enjoy some big cities during the Christmas holidays. That should be fun.

Jim Santos: 24:13

It'll be different.

Rita Santos: 24:14

It'll be different.

Jim Santos: 24:14

It'll be different. So that's something I'd say hasn't worked out exactly as we planned, but we're still working on. Now. There are some things that have been kind of hit or miss, been really good or really bad, depending on luck, basically and one of those has been the use of Airbnb. We have had some really nice places, We've had some kind of okay places, and every once in a while you might get a real dog.

Jim Santos: 24:42

Now again on our blog we kind of chronicled the problems that we had in one of the places in Panama with the air conditioning not working.

Rita Santos: 24:49

And it being 90-some degrees.

Jim Santos: 24:51

Yeah, and just having difficulties like that, right, some of that is not under the control of the owner, but they could have taken care of the air conditioning units in that place. I mean, it is in Panama.

Rita Santos: 25:02

It's going to get hot in Panama. You know you need air conditioning All year. It's going to be hot in Panama and actually Airbnb did stand up and did reimburse us.

Jim Santos: 25:14

You know, when we were in San Miguel in Mexico and it got very hot, you can understand they usually don't have air conditioning because it usually doesn't get that hot Right, you know, you can understand that, but there's no excuse for being on the beach in Panama and not keeping your air conditioning up to date when you're doing that.

Rita Santos: 25:32

No, and then they kept sending out service texts which really it took us into about two weeks of our stay there. We stayed six weeks. Right sitting around waiting for texts to show up, Waiting on people to come in, and then almost every one of them would say, look, these units are old, they need to be replaced, and they would put a tap off the free on, and then you know, be gone a couple of days and it's the same thing over again.

Jim Santos: 25:59

Yeah, and the other thing we've noticed with Airbnb is that it seems like the prices are starting to creep up.

Rita Santos: 26:06

Absolutely.

Jim Santos: 26:07

Last fall we were able to find plenty of places in like the $50 to $60 a night range, and it seems like it's getting harder and harder to find anything decent that's less than $80 or $90.

Rita Santos: 26:18

Or $100. Or more. Yeah, it depends on where you are, it depends on the location and the season. And the season, yeah.

Jim Santos: 26:28

So we're planning a trip now We'll talk about that in a minute but we're looking at a mix, I think, of hotel stays and Airbnb Right Kind of depending on Using booking which we do have a great discount with them. Yeah, if you're going to use any kind of booking service like Expedia Booking, what's the other one? Travelocity is also popular. It's a good idea to pick one and kind of stick with it, because they generally have kind of a point system. The more you use them the better deals that you get.

Jim Santos: 26:59

We were able to just get a hotel in Germany not only at a very good rate, but then we got a discounted offer of a ride from the airport to the hotel.

Rita Santos: 27:08

Right.

Jim Santos: 27:08

Yeah, so those things can be important and we'll keep an eye on that and keep you up to date.

Rita Santos: 27:13

Yeah, we really like to have a ride from the airport to the hotel, because we do have luggage.

Jim Santos: 27:19

Yeah, and you are generally tired after that part of the trip.

Rita Santos: 27:22

We'll use the metro, the buses or whatever while we're touring the cities or the countryside or whatever. But when you've got that luggage and we usually get a ride- Right Four hours at airports and nine hours on an airplane.

Jim Santos: 27:37

It's just nice to see that guy holding a sign with your name that's spelled on it.

Rita Santos: 27:41

Oh yeah, I love those guys Speaking of rides.

Jim Santos: 27:45

ridearing apps also have been kind of hit or miss.

Rita Santos: 27:49

Right when we were in Panama, when we were at the beach, there weren't Ubers to call.

Jim Santos: 27:56

Yeah, you couldn't use Uber at all at the beach Taxi only. Yeah, Panama City, it was great.

Rita Santos: 28:01

Oh, it was great, In a minute they would show up.

Jim Santos: 28:03

Yeah, two to three minutes you could have a ride. It was great. It was inexpensive, but at the beach it wasn't available. We've used it in other places where it's worked out well, and then there are some where the cabs turn out to be cheaper or at least more available, right. Then there are some countries that have their own ride-sharing apps, like in Turkey it was called BitTaxi. Right that you had to use and that seemed to be working fine, but when it got to the end of the ride it had problems processing my payment.

Rita Santos: 28:30

Right.

Jim Santos: 28:30

And we ended up having to pay the guy in cash anyway.

Rita Santos: 28:33

Yeah, and that can get a little tense when they're wanting their money and you think you've paid Right.

Jim Santos: 28:43

So it's interesting You're sitting in the back of a cab and it's 10 o'clock at night and raining, and you're in Istanbul.

Rita Santos: 28:49

Right yeah.

Jim Santos: 28:51

It's not a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Rita Santos: 28:53

No.

Jim Santos: 28:53

It's really part of the appeal of those ride-sharing apps is that you're not negotiating over the price yes, you're not getting out your wallet, you're not having to incest on a tip or anything like that. Right, it's all already taken care of.

Rita Santos: 29:06

And thank God we had Turkish money.

Jim Santos: 29:08

Yeah, yeah. So when those things work, they work great. When they don't work, it's kind of a problem.

Rita Santos: 29:14

Yeah, it's kind of a problem. Yeah, I think he wanted to get irate, but he held his cool. He knew he was going to get paid. We were just trying to figure out how.

Jim Santos: 29:24

Right, Right and trying to do the money conversion rate to know how much to pay them.

Rita Santos: 29:28

Yeah, trying to make sure that we were being fair and he was being fair and that the app hadn't already charged us Right and that no one was running off with our luggage while we were sitting there talking about it. Oh yeah, that was true, it was out on the street.

Jim Santos: 29:42

Now one other thing that didn't work out for us. I mentioned at the start of the show we'd be heading off to Eastern Europe, and indeed we will. In less than a month we'll be arriving in Berlin, germany. Now our original scheme was to rent a camper van and spend 10 weeks driving a big loop through Germany to Denmark, norway, finland, sweden, I think, estonia, latvia, lithuania, poland.

Rita Santos: 30:06

Yeah.

Jim Santos: 30:06

All over back to Berlin and Estonia, latvia, lithuania, Poland, all over back to Berlin, and we went as far as actually putting a deposit of just over $4,000 on the camper. Then, a few weeks ago, while looking for specs on the van, I stumbled upon a bunch of posts complaining about the company that we had rented from, and I mean a lot of complaints.

Rita Santos: 30:23

Right Broken vehicles in bad repair. When they broke down they didn't have assistance. Yeah, it was a little scary for us old folks.

Jim Santos: 30:37

Hidden fees. You go to return the vehicle and they tell you that you broke something or you owe this for that. Just a lot of complaints. And it was pretty concerning to us because there were several people who said when they arrived to pick up their vehicle they were told it wasn't available.

Jim Santos: 30:47

For 15 days, said when they arrived to pick up their vehicle, they were told it wasn't available For 15 days. Yeah, one was told 15 days, some just said a day or two. But you know, arriving from an overnight flight to Berlin and then going to get our vehicle and finding out it's not there or it's missing a side door or something.

Jim Santos: 31:02

Didn't sound appealing, yeah we got a little concerned about that and also we had read that some people said that when they tried to get refunds for their trouble or for canceling it, they were told they couldn't do that. So we kind of freaked out a bit.

Rita Santos: 31:16

Yeah, yeah, I would say so yeah.

Jim Santos: 31:19

Yeah. So we decided to go ahead and ask for our deposit back, since we were still within the window of when we could get a 100% refund, of when we could get a 100% refund. We were still a little concerned because in those complaints we've been reading, people said, despite being in that 100% refund window, they had trouble getting their deposit back. And when I canceled the trip I was looking across the website and I saw on their fine print that, yes, we promised to refund 100% of the deposit.

Rita Santos: 31:45

Minus 20%, minus the 20% handling fee. Which we were okay, because we thought, you know, what we're not going to be on the side of the road with nothing.

Jim Santos: 31:55

Right. But much for our relief, we did in fact see the full amount put back on our credit card. The only difference in the amounts was from the conversion rate between dollars and euros and back. So I don't know, did you think maybe we would have been fine with the original plan?

Rita Santos: 32:09

Did we panic too soon. Oh, I think we don't gamble like that.

Jim Santos: 32:13

Yeah, I think we still want to try that camper van rental.

Rita Santos: 32:17

Not for 70 days.

Jim Santos: 32:18

But not for 70 days Maybe we'll try a week somewhere and see how it goes. Yeah, we had a podcast guest a few weeks ago who was very up on the camper van thing.

Rita Santos: 32:30

She was yeah, because she had done it. She traveled from London to.

Jim Santos: 32:36

South Africa and Canada to Argentina, I think.

Rita Santos: 32:40

It sounded exciting and we're up for an adventure, yeah but we'll still try it.

Jim Santos: 32:44

And she gave us the name of the company that they used in France, so we might try that next spring or fall or something like that. So we haven't given up on it completely, but for the current time we're chickening out.

Rita Santos: 32:57

For the current company we're definitely out.

Jim Santos: 33:01

So our new plan is to travel mostly by train, and we're going to skip the northern countries for now and concentrate on the Eastern Europe countries. Yeah, because you know, depending on how things turn out with Putin and Ukraine, some of those countries may not be accessible in the near future, so we thought we might as well see those while we can. Yeah, so any last thoughts on our first six months of podcasting. No, it's been great.

Rita Santos: 33:26

We have met some wonderful people. Listened to their adventures make us want to do some of those ourselves. Yeah, I've enjoyed it.

Jim Santos: 33:36

We had a podcaster last week. We have some people with a YouTube channel coming up in a week or so, somebody else who's using campers and RVs to do their travel. It's been a fun half year. We're looking forward to at least another half year of doing this.

Rita Santos: 33:50

Absolutely, I'm ready.

Jim Santos: 34:01

We've been listening to Travels with Jim and Rita. Thanks for your support and please continue to like and follow and promote on social media as you are able. And, of course, subscriptions are not not required, but are always appreciated. Before we go, a quick reminder that rita and I will be in the exhibit hall for the international living ultimate go overseas boot camp in las vegas, nevada, october 26th through the 28th. You get more information or sign up at intliving. com/ events. That's intliving. com/ events, but do it soon because it's filling up quickly. If you'd like to read more about where we've been and see some photos and video, be sure to check out our blog at jimsantosbooks. com. You can also access my books, audiobooks and short stories at jimsantos. net. We'd love to hear from our listeners as well, so if you have a question or a topic you'd like us to cover, or if you want to tell your own travel story, email us at jim@ jimsantosbooks. com. Until next time, remember we travel not to escape life, but so that life does not escape us.