The Truth About Life On The Road

When we originally imagined taking up travel as a full-time lifestyle, we thought it was going to be just like all the travel vlogs. We would have picture perfect moments at all the iconic sights. We would eat amazing local food every single day. Even our travel days would just be another fun part of the adventure. 

Some of that did turn out to be true. We’ve had those once in a lifetime experiences. We’ve gotten a taste of different cultures. But that accounts for a very small percent of our time as full-time travelers. The rest of the time is filled with all the planning and effort it takes to be a nomad. Yes, there are amazing experiences to be had while traveling.

But we’ve discovered that it’s not all bucket list moments. There’s a lot of real life in between. 

Of course, we were willing to put in the work. We had always wanted to be travelers. We’ve spent countless hours reading travel blogs, listening to podcasts and watching travel vlogs. And we wanted that life. Or at least we wanted the life that we saw on screen. We wanted to be carefree adventurers hopping from one destination to the next. 

If only we didn’t need to work for a living we could run away from it all and travel full time. And then one day we didn’t need to work for a living. We had saved and invested enough that we had reached financial independence. The adventure could begin. It was going to be just like what we saw from our favourite travel bloggers: nonstop fun. 

We really committed to the lifestyle. We gave up our home, sold everything that we owned and bought a one way ticket to Europe. At this point, we were really hoping that our new life was going to work out because there was no turning back. But we quickly discovered that it wasn’t going to be quite as easy as the vloggers made it look.

We started our journey in the perfect place at the perfect time. It was Krakow, Poland in the peak of Golden Autumn. The temperature was just right; there was gorgeous scenery; the leaves were changing colour. Our Instagram feed was feeling very happy.

But then we arrived at our next stop: Lviv, Ukraine. Suddenly it was November and the temperature dropped. We weren’t prepared for it at all. On our first day there, we tried doing a walking tour with our dogs. They were so cold that we had to stuff them inside our coats. Everyone got slightly warmer but it wasn’t an ideal situation. 

This was our first taste of one of the constant challenges of nomad life: Always having to chase the weather. We were in Europe and we didn’t want to fly off to a whole new part of the world just to outrun the winter. However even the warmest parts of Europe are cool and wet over the winter. Sure you can head to Spain or Portugal to warm up — but only for 90 days if you’re on a Schengen visa. What happens for the rest of the winter?

Fortunately our next destination did help warm us up. We went to Turkey and spent a month in Istanbul. Then we headed to the warmest place we could find: the Turquoise Coast. We love hiking and we had heard of an incredible 500 km trail called the Lycian Way. This path covers a huge stretch of Turkey’s coast with many towns and villages along the way. We weren’t going to do the whole hike but we could certainly tackle a few segments. 

But which segments? Where were they? How would we get there? Where would we stay? It’s not like we could just show up and start hiking. We needed transportation in and out of the area, accommodations, food and hiking maps, just for starters.

In the end, we did get our epic moment at the viewpoint that the trail is famous for. But we were blown away by how much work it took to get there. And that’s just life as a traveler; we’re constantly planning logistics. For every great travel idea we have, we need to put in days or, more likely, weeks of research. 

If we were more relaxed, spontaneous people, maybe this wouldn’t be so difficult. We’d see where the cheapest flight goes, find an Airbnb and make the best of it. But that’s not who we are. We’re always searching for special experiences and equally special Airbnbs. In fact, by our fourth country of Italy, we were still agonizing for days over making the perfect plans. Then we ran smack into a minor hitch called the global pandemic. All our plans went out the window. It was at this point that we finally, finally learned to stop planning so far ahead. 

One of the reasons our plans are so elaborate and time consuming is that we’re always trying to link up different destinations six months or more into the future. Once COVID hit, we were only able to plan a few weeks out. This was a very healthy change for us. We still traveled through the pandemic, but we could only plan one move at a time. It forced us to stopped worrying about where we would be in six months time and instead just focus on the present. 

Of course our new zen approach to travel planning doesn’t change the one thing that makes our lifestyle the most difficult: our travel days. There are so many reasons we dread travel days. We have to pack everything up, which is always a lot of work when you’ve been living someplace for a whole month. Of course, we need to tidy our Airbnb to make sure we get a good review. Then we’re on the move, making our way to the airport, often very early in the morning. We’re juggling all our luggage and two anxious dogs. No matter how much practice we have, flying with two poodles is never fun. Then we’ve landed and we have to do everything in reverse: make our way out of the airport, get set up in our new Airbnb. Our travel days always feel like the longest days in the world.  

Our recent flight from Malta to Toronto was our worst travel day yet. We flew from Malta to Frankfurt to Montreal to Toronto — all in one day. When we landed, we discovered that our luggage got lost somewhere along the way. Travel days are not our favourite part of nomad life.

Of course there’s a huge payoff for all the work. On our journey so far, we’ve traveled to 8 countries — despite the pandemic — and stayed in 17 cities. That’s a lot of travel and a lot of great experiences. In spite of the downsides of nomad living, we’ve had so many of those perfect moments we were dreaming of. We hiked the gorgeous coastline of Malta. We explored what seemed like hundreds of waterfalls in Krka National Park in Croatia. We hiked the epic Vikos Gorge in Northern Greece. 

And those are just the sights. Since it’s us, you know that it always comes back to the food. We tried a stewed intestine sandwich in Florence, Italy — not bad with red wine. We had the classic beef stew and gnocchi in a cobblestone alley in Split, Croatia. And of course lots and lots of grilled meat in Ioannina, Greece.

These were all incredible experiences and we never would have had them all in one year if we weren’t prepared to put in the work to make it happen. They were worth it; they were worth all the weeks of research and all the packing and unpacking.  

So we’ve resigned ourselves to a life of perpetual planning.

But we’re finding that the more experience we have with traveling, the easier it gets. We’re getting to know our own preferences better and making decisions faster. And we’ve stopped planning so far ahead. This really relieves a lot of the pressure we used to feel stringing together months of a perfect itinerary. We’ve also discovered that it’s worth it to spend a little more on travel days for a smoother experience. We pay a bit more for direct flights versus taking cheaper connections. We get a cab from the airport to our Airbnb instead of dragging all our luggage on public transit. We’ve found that small luxuries make the whole experience a little bit better.