Travel Along

We retired early to save our physical and emotional health. We chose to jump into our Go-Go years with gusto and invite you along our stone pathway. We will bring you authentic information from our lived experiences and hope you find some useful stones for your own life journey.

touching old stones around the world

New this week...

• We CELEBRATED on August 31: 1 year officially retired and 5 months on the road!!

• We have one more month in Albania before we can re-enter the Schengen Zone. We are enjoying the time we have spent in Albania and hope you look into visiting here yourself! Let us tell you about our first location, Vlorë.

• We leave Pogradec today and will spend a few nights in this neighboring town. See our new location in real time with Google Maps.

• Thanks to those who completed last week's quiz of Would You Rather Quiz . The results of are fun to see and helped to generate this week's story of Mosques and Monasteries that Survived Tragedy.

Last Week's stories if you missed them were:

• The "Secret" Relics of Albania & Italy

• The Art of Tirana, Albania

• Some European Coffee Cultures

A: sleeping dogs lay in the middle of the sidewalk?

B: horses take a stroll down the street without an owner?

C: delightful ducks beg for scraps at the coffee shop?

let...

A: a working phone booth

B: a lace-covered tree

C: a stormy marriage proposal

Last week's Results:
Would you rather be surprised in your travels by...

Follow The Waves of Retirement

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Track Our Adventure

How might we finish it?

Our Live Location

For those that receive our free weekly email, you’ve already been made aware that there is a voluntary change in our travel itinerary. A “Pivot”, to borrow a word from our home state long term travel couple, Brian and Carrie.

Since early on in our planning, Spain was a no-brainer bucket list location. The specific city was Alicante Spain, located on the Eastern Coast along the beautiful Balearic Sea. The promenade there is absolutely amazing, and for our planned month long stay in the upcoming month of October, the weather would have been perfect for beachfront strolls.
We try to be conscientious travelers and make intentional choices when it comes to where/how/when we live and visit. We attempt to stay attuned to the local sentiment towards travelers and tourists as well as many other social and safety issues. That being said, after “pivoting” once already and moving the Spain destination to the Southern Coast and the city of Malaga, we are now bypassing Spain altogether as a destination for the remainder of this year at least.

We have followed the news and one resident Spanish source for news and updates almost weekly for a few years now. Reports show and are corroborated that there has been a growing anti-tourist sentiment and actual organized movement within the country for a few years now. Over-tourism and gentrification are pricing locals out of the areas they have lived in all their lives. Over 100,000 AirBnB units have been closed down by the Spanish government as being illegally leased out under certain national laws. There has been violence in Southern Spain in other unrelated incidents, but of a type and location too severe and too near Malaga, our second Spanish choice.

Shannon re-worked the chart with our new route and destinations for the analytical minds who follow us.
After Albania, instead of Spain, we will fly to Dublin, Ireland for a week stay in October. Back to the Emerald Isle for us!! It was our first major pond jump and trip together, and still our first love.

Shuffling Portugal and France a bit will give us a week or three in December to travel near or through Nuremberg, Germany at Christmas. We are continuing to work on that regional destination.

The Marine Motto is Semper Fidelis-Always Faithful. We had a more sarcastic one as enlisted men; Semper Gumby-Always Flexible. That’s us.

BREAKING NEWS - Travel Situation Report

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Throughout history stones have been used for housing, streets, cooking, jewelry, art, and weaponry. When you leave a kind comment on our website, you leave behind a stone for all to see and learn from. Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions, or tell us how much you miss us. Once a kind stone is cast, others can roll your stone along the path by replying to your comment.

Although we are enjoying ourselves completely in this new nomadic lifestyle, we miss our friends and family significantly.

Greg