Travels With Jim and Rita
Discussing the challenges, rewards, and drawbacks of living overseas. Follow our decision to sell our home and live abroad until the housing market adjusts. Information for the would-be expat, digital nomad, roving retiree, or just plain traveler. Host Jim Santos is a published travel writer with over 200 articles and seven books (jimsantos.net). He and his wife Rita lived in Ecuador for 6 years, and are currently test-driving the roving retirement lifestyle. Jim is also the host of the popular "International Living Podcast".
Travels With Jim and Rita
Episode 44 - The Traveling Duo’s New Game Plan
Our podcast episode takes you on an informative journey through the ups and downs of travel life as Jim and Rita explore resilience in the face of unexpected health challenges. Discover their adventures that led them back to the U.S. after a critical health scare in Latvia and learn how they’ve adapted their plans to embrace a balanced lifestyle that accommodates health and travel. With honesty and playfulness, they share detailed insights into establishing a home base in Tennessee, all while keeping their passion for travel alive.
Listeners will gain valuable tips on planning extended trips, utilizing travel points for significant savings, and the necessity of flexible travel arrangements. They dive deep into the realities facing travelers of all ages, discussing how health considerations alter travel plans and emphasize the importance of having safety nets like travel insurance.
With their sights set on future travels to Ireland and Spain, Jim and Rita inspire with their shared passion for exploration and the adventures that still await them. Their charming chemistry and relatable anecdotes make this episode not just informative but also heartwarming. We invite you to tune in, subscribe, and join the conversation surrounding the beauty and challenge of embracing a life on the move! Don't miss out—what's the next destination on your travel list? Let us know and start planning!
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Welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita. I'm your host, jim Santos, along with my wife Rita. And welcome to the second season of our podcast. In the first season, we set in motion our crazy plan to outfox the real estate market in the US and actually increase our retirement nest egg by selling our home and car and spending the next three years or so living abroad and exploring the world. While we did manage to increase our net worth while we traveled, a bout of pancreatitis in Latvia caused us to return to the States for surgery and recovery and to rethink our plans in light of our ages and other factors. Enter Plan B. We now have a home base set up in eastern Tennessee and are ready to hit the road once again. Our plans are now to spend anywhere from six to nine months a year abroad, returning to the US to visit friends, family and to recharge. Join us now as the adventure continues on Travels with Jim and Rita. Hello everybody and welcome to our podcast, travels with Jim and Rita. I'm Jim Santos, here with my wife Rita.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:And today's episode is going to be a little different. We thought we'd take some time to clear up some questions about our change in plans, why we returned to the US and bought a home, and how we plan to continue to travel as long as we're able. We thought we'd also take some examples from our upcoming trip to answer some questions about how we go about planning a trip. Well, Rita, let's start with why we changed our plans.
Speaker 2:I think it's safe to say that when we first sold our house and took off for Mexico. We were really enjoying our new lives. Absolutely. It was very freeing. As you pointed out, we'd been traveling for quite a while before that. Right, we started in January of 2024 and actually traveled all but three weeks out of our home. We traveled 12 months.
Speaker 1:Right, and before that, actually, we were in Europe for a couple of months as well. Well, we're always traveling, yeah, so we've been traveling for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I was talking about 2024. We were actually out of our home base for three, in our home base for only three weeks.
Speaker 1:Right, and that three weeks was spent packing up everything and sorting and getting ready to empty the house out and sell.
Speaker 2:Because we sold it yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that started with a week in Playa del Carmen on the beach, which was just for relaxation and was pretty pleasant.
Speaker 2:Right, Right. Yeah, we had spent January and February in Panama and then came back, packed up our house and went to Mexico.
Speaker 1:After a month in San Miguel de Allende, we came back to the States for some time with the kids, grandkids and friends, and then we were off to Europe. Now, everything was going great until that night in September in Riga when my pancreas acted up, causing me to spend the next nine nights in a hospital. Now, I know it wasn't a pleasant experience, but despite all that, we both really had a positive image of Riga, didn't we?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. It was a beautiful city. The people were very accommodating and helpful to me while Jim was in the hospital and we just left the historic district and the market and all the cathedrals and museums we were in. It was a fabulous trip.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Latvia was really a wonderful surprise.
Speaker 2:But we were in other countries before that.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That fall, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I admit the first few days in the hospital were pretty miserable for me. The care was great. I was just in a lot of pain. I didn't know if I might have to go to surgery or be moved to intensive care anytime. Somebody came into the room again and since Rita and I both lost our spouses to forms of cancer, I know I had that nagging thought in the back of my head that maybe it wasn't just the gallstones, Maybe my pancreas was swollen because I had pancreatic cancer. Now really, you were there when I asked the doctor flat out if it might be cancer.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he emphatically said absolutely not, no indication. You probably noticed the relief had me pretty emotional for a bit there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you always wonder are they giving you the straight scoop because he wasn't your home care physician?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it didn't help that he looked like Bill Hader from the Barry series in Saturday.
Speaker 2:Night Live he did.
Speaker 1:I told the head doctor the very first day that I was okay with surgery there, if it came to that. I mean, rita and I had both had surgery before in Ecuador and some people have asked why we came back to the US for surgery rather than just staying there. The main reason was that was the doctor's recommendation. He said he thought it was best if they got me stabilized and we returned to the US for gallbladder surgery and to recover Now. Another factor was that the condition had seriously elevated my blood sugar so I was off my regular pills and getting insulin injections several times a day. I'd need to return to the US to get my doctor to prescribe the change in the medicine.
Speaker 2:Right and you needed time to recoup and get everything adjusted before we started traveling again.
Speaker 1:So there we were, back in the US, checked into a long-term hotel room with a small kitchen. It was fairly cheap, as US hotels go, running about $2,000 a month. But we couldn't book an Airbnb to have more room and maybe a better rate because we didn't know how long we'd need it and clearly the biggest expense being back in the States was a rental car.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we both knew we needed to buy a car and just find a place to store it once we started traveling again. I'm not sure we had definitely decided to buy a home again yet. No we started looking at real estate.
Speaker 2:Right, and it was definitely an option. And the real downfall about finding a rental storage area for a car is we had tried to do that before we left, because we wanted to keep our car before we left in April, and the storage units were awful. You wouldn't even want to put a car in them and they were super expensive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just wasn't a good option. And leaving it at one of our kids' house was just not a good option either.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, one of our kids has about six cars because, she has four children who all drive. So yeah, it was just not an option.
Speaker 1:The things changed a little just about a week after our stay when I suddenly felt that old familiar tightening in my chest and thought I was getting another pancreatitis attack. So we went to the emergency room. But the symptoms gradually faded and they didn't have to admit me to. The hospital just recommended I go back to a mostly liquid diet until after my surgery. However, it was probably during that visit that we picked up COVID. Now we jumped right on it with Paxlovid and had relatively mild cases, but it managed to delay my surgery by a few weeks and also reminded us that health is always going to be an issue as we get older.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm pretty sure that is where we got COVID, since the doctor was standing in our doorway telling two people beside of us they tested positive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they kept walking back and forth, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Also, this was the second time an illness cut our travel plans short. It was the previous year. We both had COVID in Prague and ended up having to come home to recover from that. It wasn't just health reasons either that made us change our plans, and there's some definite drawbacks to homelessness. First of all, mail is a major pain in the ass. It is no matter what you want to do about it. It's hard to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even though we pay all of our bills and do all of our banking online, you're still going to have something come up that you need to address, or somebody mails you a check that needs to be put in a bank, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was a car thing too. We talked about it a little bit. Other countries we can get around without a car with no problem.
Speaker 2:Right and do.
Speaker 1:And do. Yeah, we're thinking about renting a car for a while in Ireland and England.
Speaker 2:In England too, yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's more just so that we can cruise around more often. It's not absolutely necessary.
Speaker 2:No, no, it isn't.
Speaker 1:But we're kind of doing a fast travel for a couple months so it would be easier for us. Easier all require that you have a physical address. So having that mailbox with PMB after the number, personal mailbox, that was a red flag for some credit companies and some banks. So you had to be very careful and it gets awkward, kind of pretending to have a different address.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and you know, when we lived in Ecuador we kept a post office box in the US and my daughter went to the about once a month and emptied it out. But you know, people have their lives to be worried about your mail.
Speaker 1:And if you're going for months at a time, that's a lot to ask somebody to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it is easier now, because back then, 2013, when we started that, you weren't able to pay all of your bills online like you are now. Now it's much easier, but it's still complicated.
Speaker 1:And then also, we had to take a reality check and take a look at our ages. We have four kids. We have nine grandchildren. They're spread over what two or three time zones. Something's almost guaranteed to come up. Yeah, there's going to be an illness or a wedding or a birth or something that means that we have to come back to the States. So, with all that in mind, we took the time required to find a home and set it up to meet our new needs. Now, it took a while, it wasn't a great time for the market and it was a lot of work, but we have a nice home now. That's in a neighborhood that takes care of the lawns.
Speaker 2:We're still just a short Uber ride from Knoxville Airport and we have a secure place where we can keep our car while we're gone Right and it was a difficult endeavor for us to take on because really, when we started looking for homes there were not many homes on the market in the areas that we wanted to live in. We were glad we sold our home when we left because we did downsize, but we wrote four offers on four different properties, did four different home inspections until we actually found a property that we thought was in the right location that would meet our needs for a long period of time.
Speaker 1:Still needed a fair amount of work.
Speaker 2:A ton of work. We replaced all the hardwood floors and tiled bathrooms and did electric work, and just on and on and on.
Speaker 1:So fortunately, we had earned all that interest while we were traveling.
Speaker 2:Right right, Something to pay for it with.
Speaker 1:All right. So on to planning our current roaming trip. People are always interested in how you go about planning this kind of extended, often multi-country journey that we always enjoy, and since we're in the middle of doing that just now, we thought we'd share some of the details with you. So we always start with the broader strokes. Part of what was canceled from our last outing was time we were going to spend in England and Ireland. Rita's family is from Ireland and as far as I can tell, it's kind of a long story there, but as far as I can tell, my roots in england and wales. So we began with let's go see the uk and ireland right right now.
Speaker 2:You wanted to spend a month in ireland, if possible right and we probably will spend about that, yeah but we also want yeah but we also wanted to spend a month or more in the british yeah, we've seen between britBox and Acorn TV.
Speaker 1:we've seen so many British programs and so much of the British countryside we feel like we're going to recognize every place we go.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, where we are, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we also wanted to see London, the Cotswolds, some coastal towns, Scotland, Belfast, several Irish destinations.
Speaker 2:Right, my brother lived in Bath.
Speaker 1:I want to see where he was yeah. So the problem is we wanted to get started in late March so we could spend a couple of months overseas and still get back in early June. Now there's two big reasons for that Typical tourist seasons are way too crowded, too expensive and are getting too hot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Europe is way too hot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also summer is the best time to visit our grandkids, since they're out of school. But it's still pretty dang cold in the British Isles at that time of the year. So we decided we'd stick to our March departure but spend a few weeks somewhere warmer first. Now this is where we'd normally just be looking for the best deal on airfares, but for this trip we had something special up our sleeves. One nice side effect of all the work we had done on our home getting new appliances, all the charges we accumulated on our last trip. We had a bunch of points on our American Express Platinum and Chase Sapphire cards Two cards, by the way, that we picked specifically for their travel perks. Now we quickly found that we could book a one-way ticket for two from Knoxville to Lisbon, portugal, using a chunk of our Chase points and no cash. That's right. Free tickets to Lisbon.
Speaker 2:What a deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, couldn't pass that up Now. We weren't sure if that would be far enough south. We checked, and the weather will still be probably 50s 60s in that part of Portugal at that time we decided to head immediately for the Algarve, the southern coast of Portugal. Using our trusty Flixbus app, we found we could get a bus from Lisbon to Lagos for just $23 total. That's for two. The station's only a five-minute cab ride from the airport or a short subway ride. So we'll arrive in Lisbon about 11 am, get our luggage, have lunch and catch the bus to Lagos.
Speaker 1:Now here's where flexibility becomes important. Originally we thought we'd spend time in Lagos and then maybe Faro, before heading back to Lisbon for a few days, then Porto and then on to London. But a couple of things changed our plans. First, when we were looking at maps, we noticed how close we would be to Seville in Spain. Then I found out that International Living was interested in having me speak at a conference in Albufeira, another Portuguese coastal town. So we shook things up a bit. We found we could get a bus from La Goche to Seville using our Ameo app for just $36. And, by the way, it's important why we check more than one mode for transportation. Flixbus had a bus that was slightly cheaper, but it ran late at night, getting to Seville after 10.30 pm, and we checked out an app called Rail Ninja to see if there was a train. It showed us the same bus that we later found on Omeo, but they wanted $79 for the tickets, more than twice of what we paid for it through Omeo. So it's always important to check more than one source. So now, after almost a week in Seville, we're going to catch another bus to Albufeira for the conference, and that change in schedule means we're going to skip Porto and just spend a few days in Lisbon. But it seems like a fair trade to visit the Andalusian region of Spain and get to see a flamenco show.
Speaker 2:Right, and it should be warm. By the time we reach London it should be 60s, it should be warmer. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's basically where we are in our planning now. We have ourselves all the way to Oxford. As a matter of fact, we have our stay in London and then a train directly from London to Oxford, and we have a place to stay there for a couple of days. We're probably going to rent a car to do a little sweep around the area in Oxford for a few days.
Speaker 2:And go to Cardiff and Wales.
Speaker 1:Cardiff and Wales and from there we're thinking about. It's a long bus ride from Oxford to Glasgow and Scotland.
Speaker 2:But it was shorter than taking the train. Yeah, just a little shorter.
Speaker 1:But we're thinking that we may take a bus to Manchester, which is about halfway, just spend the night there and then take a bus the rest of the way. To break it up, instead of a 12-hour trip, have two six-hour trips.
Speaker 2:We would have had to have gone back to London to have gotten any type of reasonable rate to fly to Edinburgh or Glasgow, and you know you don't want to backtrack. That's basically it. So Manchester will give us another town to look at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we get to see a lot of the countryside on our way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we really enjoyed the buses because you actually get to see the country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, One thing I do want to mention here, while we're talking about planning the trip, is that we've also purchased insurance for this trip. If you've listened to the podcast before and if you haven't, you really should We've been purchasing our insurance through the American Express website. Now they aren't the insurers. You don't need a Amex card. You can go to the Amex website and there's a travel insurance link. You go and you put in your ages, where you're traveling, what state you're in about, how much you think you're going to spend, and they'll give you a quote on insurance.
Speaker 2:And what it covers.
Speaker 1:And what it covers. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean it's interruption, it's medical, it's lost luggage Lost luggage Reimbursement. It's good insurance. We've used it for two years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you have a plane delay of more than six hours, they'll pay for hotel room and accommodations and things like that. So we've bought it three times and used it twice.
Speaker 2:Which more than.
Speaker 1:More than paid for it. Both times we got thousands of dollars back Right Because of illness and having to get.
Speaker 2:We bought first class plane tickets because you were so sick there in Riga to get you home comfortably. So, yes, it was well worth it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the travel insurance also generally includes emergency transportation.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Or you know your trip is canceled. Now you've got to come back home or you've got to come somewhere else, for whatever reason. It even covers things like if there's a death in the family and you have to go somewhere else for that.
Speaker 2:It actually covered all of our emergency expenses.
Speaker 1:So we did find, this time a deal through a company called Allianz, that's with a Z that allowed us to, rather than purchase insurance for a particular trip, to purchase one year's worth of trip coverage.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And it covers domestic and international travel.
Speaker 2:Right and a hundred miles away from your home base.
Speaker 1:Yeah For for trips shorter than 90 days. Right, it sure has to be shorter than 90 days, which we're probably going to be doing anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're thinking that might be better mode for us than uh trying to do this years long A year A year was too long on our last adventure.
Speaker 1:So it was about $1,500 to cover the two of us for up to $15,000 per trip interruption and trip cancellation, 15 for each of those 15,000.
Speaker 2:15,000. Yes.
Speaker 1:But for medical coverage it was up to 50,000 per person per trip medical coverage.
Speaker 1:it was up to 50,000 per person per trip and emergency evacuation was like 500,000. So it should be everything that we should possibly need. It was a little bit cheaper than getting a per trip quote for this. So if you're planning on roaming and traveling a lot, strongly recommend you look into that type of travel insurance. So one thing I want to mention that we did finalize we do know when and how we're getting back and I know this sounds a little weird, but we're pretty sure that at least the last two or three weeks in Ireland we're going to rent a car in Dublin, explore, make a big loop of the island and return it there.
Speaker 1:So we started looking at return flights from Dublin to Knoxville and they were pretty expensive. We were really surprised. They're pretty crappy times too. Most of them were more than 25 hours long with multiple stops, some you backtracked. You went from Dublin to London or from Dublin to France or Dublin to Amsterdam and then to Chicago and then to. You know it was just would have been a day and a half of terrible travel and about $2,400 for the two of us. And what was really odd, if I looked at leaving from London instead of Dublin, the prices dropped by about a thousand dollars, despite the fact that they all stopped in Dublin on their way out West.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how crazy is that?
Speaker 1:Yeah it didn't make sense, so we thought a little bit outside the box. We knew for a fact that Aer Lingus had direct flights from Dublin to Dulles Airport because we were on one.
Speaker 2:We've done it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so sure enough we found a flight that leaves Dublin at a reasonable time in the morning and lands eight hours later in Dulles at 3.50 local time.
Speaker 2:That's afternoon.
Speaker 1:Now, further investigation found that we could book a United flight from Dulles to Knoxville, leaving at 6.55 the same day, so we could get our bags, check back in, hang out in the lounge for a couple hours and still be home by around 10 o'clock. So tell them the best part, Rita.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had enough points left on the chase card to book the flight from DC to Knoxville for free, and we had enough points left on our Amex card to knock the cost of the flight from Dublin down to just $300.
Speaker 2:That's a win.
Speaker 1:That's a win. So, if you've been paying attention, that means the total cost of our flights from Knoxville to Lisbon and then from Dublin back to Knoxville is only $300. Right, yeah, so I have to say we're pretty pleased with that.
Speaker 2:Right, we are.
Speaker 1:I hope you've enjoyed this little peek behind the curtain of the planning process and understand better our decision to change our style of roaming. We'll be back with guests in later episodes and, of course, we'll keep you up to date on all of our travels. It's kind of in the name of the show. After all, it takes more than two bouts of COVID and the loss of an internal organ to keep us from enjoying what traveling the world has to offer. You've been listening to Travels with Jim and Rita.
Speaker 1:If you'd like to read more about where we've been, see some photos of the places you've been hearing about, check out our blog at jimsantosbookscom, as well as our YouTube channel and Instagram. Meanwhile, you can access my books, audiobooks and short stories at jimsantosnet, and there are links to all of those sites in the show notes. 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 you want to tell your own travel story, email us at jim at jimsantosbookscom. Until next time, remember, we travel not to escape life, but so that life does not escape us.
