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Our Top Ten

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One of the most frequent questions we got after our return home was, ‘where was your favorite place?’ This question makes a lot of sense. Everyone wanted to know a bit more about our trip and they were also hunting for some travel recommendations. But truth be told, we hated this question because it was so hard for us to answer. So much had happened over the last 16 months and we had been to so many places that it seemed impossible to pick a single favorite. Our activities were also highly variable. How were we to compare a week of deathly strenuous hiking in Peru to a week spent on the beach in Thailand or to a week of exploring one of China’s massive cities? We enjoyed all these experiences, but for different reasons. So after we each stumbled through non-committal answers to this question the first few times (and probably giving the false impression that we weren’t impressed with anywhere we had been), Travis and I got together and we strategized how best to respond to this inquiry....
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World Trip Expenses – A Deeper Dive

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We tracked our spending on this trip for simple budgetary purposes so we would know how long we could afford to keep traveling, but it turns out that these records are a wealth of information that tell us all sort of interesting things about our trip. A deeper dive into over 2,600 line items of expenses tells us how often we moved around, where our cheapest accommodations were, where our highest bar bill was, how much our average meal cost, and much more. This post is all about taking a close look at these facts and figures, which shed light on what this trip was like for us.
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World Trip Expenses – The Grand Total

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At the very beginning of our trip, we set out to travel around the world for $50 a day. This was a rough figure that we came across in our research. In fact, there is even a book titled, How to Travel the World on $50 A Day , which we bought and read cover-to-cover before departing. But in our online research we had heard of others who had also managed to travel on similar budgets. So, after 500 days on the road, how did we do?
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Cruise Expense Report

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We made no excuses. We knew a cruise was way outside our typical budget. But we justified it by the facts that it included what would have otherwise been a long-haul flight across the pond and, for a cruise, it was a pretty good deal. In the past we had paid similar prices for one-week cruises, but this was for two weeks and it took us through some new locations in Spain and Portugal on the way home.
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Arriving Home

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Day 500 (November 10, 2019) – Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA On the 500 th day of our trip, the Nieuw Statendam docked at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. We were up before dawn to pack up our bags for the last time and to grab some breakfast. After eating we went up to the top deck to take a look around. It was a beautiful day. The sun was rising over the ocean and it was already pleasantly warm out. Of course, Port Everglades itself wasn't much to look at. It’s mostly parking lots and shipping docks, but it was our first view of the US in over 16 months.
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Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA
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Transatlantic Cruise, Part 5: The Atlantic Ocean

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Day 499 (November 9, 2019) – The Atlantic Ocean We had a full week of sailing on the Atlantic to get from the Azores to Florida. I wouldn’t say that we were bored during that time, but the repetition in our daily routine was very noticeable. We were content having nothing to do anyway. We spent a lot of time lounging around, reading books, and eating. Probably too much and too frequently on that last activity. We met a lot of nice people too, although it was difficult to really find any new friends to hang out with since, as I mentioned before , w e were perhaps the youngest onboard by at least a couple decades. But we were glad to have chosen the slow boat home rather than a flight. We were eased back into being home with each passing day. It was much more enjoyable than what I imagine would have been the jarring sensation of walking off an airplane and suddenly being back again.
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Location: Atlantic Ocean
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Transatlantic Cruise, Part 4: Ponta Delgada

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Day 493 (November 3, 2019) - Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel, Azores It took two days at sea to make it from Cádiz to the Azores, a group of nine small islands in the middle of the Atlantic. The Azores are officially part of Portugal and Portuguese is the native language. Our Spanish skills were one again useless, but we did enjoy the few occasions we got to use them during our prior port stops in Spain. The two days it took us to get there were fairly uneventful. The weather was cool but pleasant. The sun was warm. The Atlantic was relatively calm, but it did rock the boat enough to be a constant reminder that we were on a floating ship. The glass-like stillness of the Mediterranean was long gone. When we arrived in Ponta Delgada I was kind of glad for the opportunity to get off the water and onto land. It never seemed to matter how many motion sickness pills I took, the swaying of the boat always seemed to get to me a little bit. Not enough to feel ill, but enough to not feel like I...
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Location: Ponta Delgada, Portugal
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Transatlantic Cruise, Part 3: Cádiz

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Day 490 (October 31, 2019): Cádiz, Spain Sometime during the middle of the night on our way from Málaga to Cádiz we left the Mediterranean Sea, passing through the Strait of Gibraltar, and entered the Atlantic Ocean. It felt like one small step closer to home. Cádiz was our third day in a row of trekking around Spanish towns, but it was perhaps my favorite. The weather kind of sucked, being extremely cloudy and overcast, but Cádiz felt the most intimate. It was a small town with dozens of narrow streets to get lost in and was surrounded on almost all sides by the ocean, separated from the town by a huge city wall.
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Location: Cádiz, Spain
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Transatlantic Cruise, Part 2: Málaga

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Day 489 (October 30, 2019): M á laga, Spain Another day, another port stop. It took us a while to get up, eat some breakfast, and get properly slathered in sunscreen before hitting the streets of  M á laga  for the day. The pier for the cruise ships was far out into the water, so we had a long walk to get to shore.  M á laga  was a much larger city than Cartagena , and it seems to be a bit more tourist oriented. There was long stretch of sandy beach out to our right and an equally long row of beachfront high-rises. And despite how late in the season it was, people were still hanging out on the beach and a few of them were even swimming.
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Location: Málaga, Spain
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Transatlantic Cruise, Part 1: Embarkation and Cartagena

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Day 488 (October 29, 2019): Cartagena, Spain It was a weird feeling to get on that cruise ship. On the one hand it was sad to think that this was the last leg of our trip, but on the other hand we were thrilled to get on board and have nothing to do for a couple weeks. The thought of slowly heading towards home was appealing. As strange as it seemed, we were excited to be stuck on a boat for 14 days. It would be the longest we had ever stayed in the same place during this entire trip. After unpacking our bags in our cabin, we would only have to pack them back up again one last time when we disembarked in Florida. We also had zero travel plans left to arrange for the first time since we left home. Everything was set and we were on our way home.
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Location: Cartagena, Spain
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Europe Travel Expenses – The Schengen Area

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It’s difficult to distill our time in Europe down to a few comments, but we certainly saw our fair share of town squares and old churches and we sat outside at countless cafes. Most of our time in Europe was spent within the Schengen Area, where there are no passport checks between countries and the currency is most often the Euro, but not always. Overall, it was fairly easy traveling. Especially after having come from China not too long before, traveling through Europe was a breeze. There are always delays, complicated logistics, and moments of intense confusion to figure out, but in general we had fewer of those moments traveling through Europe than other places we had been to on this trip.
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Rome

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Day 485 (October 26, 2019) – Rome, Italy Our trip to Rome was just like the last time we were there seven years ago – a whirlwind. Rome was expensive for us, so we only booked two nights. It was just enough time to make sure we got there on time to catch our cruise home, allowing ourselves an extra day just in case anything went wrong along the way. Fortunately, we arrived from Trieste without delay, and that gave us a day and half to see as much as we could of the city.
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Location: Rome, Italy
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Trieste

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Day 483 (October 24, 2019) – Trieste, Italy We arrived in Trieste by bus. There was a train from Ljubljana , but the bus was less expensive and faster. Shortly after crossing the border into Italy we could see the ocean again, way below us and off in the distance. The bus followed a winding highway down the steep mountain slopes all the way down to sea level. As soon as we got off the bus it felt like Italy. Narrow streets, even narrower sidewalks, lots of mopeds on the road, and cars parked askew half-way onto sidewalks. We arrived before we could check into the apartment, so we grabbed a seat at a café to pass the time. Trieste was a very impressive city from our café table in the center of town. A large canal ran right through the center of town and opened to the ocean a few blocks away. Sitting along this canal and surrounded by stately buildings, it was a very picturesque spot to be.
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Location: Trieste, Italy
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