“Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey.” ~ Babs Hoffman

The world has frozen. Not because it’s cold. There’s no snow and no ice involved. The world has frozen in the workforce, education, socializing, traveling, and recreational. I don’t like to use the word “Quarantined.” I prefer the term “Frozen.” With that said, the world has frozen in time because of a virus. So, what does that mean for the traveling community? For the people who love to travel as vacationers, nomads, bloggers, or for work?

I’m sure there are a few people upset about it. Most likely the majority is glad to take the time to slow their pace, reflect on their lives, rekindle family time, connect with nature, and research and plan their next destination. But, most importantly, protect themselves and humanity from spreading and contracting the disease. Of course, it is the right thing to do. It is our responsibility.

As a travel lover and blogger, I chose to explore future destinations while in this hiatus. There are so many places I wish to see and visit. My husband likes driving when in a different country. Therefore, we enjoy researching and planning our destination and routes. We research hotels, its location, if there’s parking available, rates and reviews. We calculate time, distance, routes, and costs. We find it fun but time-consuming. Now I understand how much work a travel agent puts into planning a trip. I also realize they are not compensated as they should be. Believe me, it’s a lot of work especially when they include landmarks, museums and/or tours – too much coordination involved.

In the past, we’ve visited up to eleven cities in 13 days. We take advantage of any cultural, unique or important landmark in each city. I learned that if I want to enjoy a specific tour, museum or popular place, it would be in my best interest to reserve way in advance – prepay if necessary – thus avoid the long wait lines and/or the possibility of not being able to explore it because of capacity. Some places now require reservations and it’s understandable. We learned the hard way. Nothing is worst than having the expectation to visit an important or popular landmark and not being able to see/enter because it is too full. Trust me, it happens. I know because we already went through it. But not anymore. Many people ask us, what agency did we use for our trip. None, it was all us. It’s not that hard. Nothing that two heads, two laptops and a whole lot of extra time can’t do. Plus, everything is so accessible online. There is no need to wait until the last minute.

But what if I can’t make the trip, you ask? Well, that ‘s another issue. We always purchase travel insurance (also learned the hard way). The only time we decided to forego the insurance we ended up paying $1,200 extra to rebook the trip twice just to avoid losing all the money we had put into our trip. “We never use it so why buy it?” we said. Big mistake, but never done again. Travel insurance is not expensive. It is more expensive not to spend the extra $$ and then lose it all because the trip had to be canceled. Ouch! That will hurt your pocket. Plus, travel insurance can be customized to fit your specific needs.

Don’t get me wrong though. Our trips are preplanned with itineraries but it’s not so rigid as to not allow us enough time to enjoy ourselves. It’s just a schedule to know what things lie ahead for us without having to figure out our next step. I believe that once you say, “What are we doing today?” or “Where are we going today?” you already began wasting time. All we do is have breakfast and hop into our rental car and off we go. If there’s something along the way that we see and like, we stop to enjoy it. It’s that easy.

During this frozen time, what have you planned? We already planned our 6 countries trip and have an itinerary. Yes, you read correctly – six countries. So, do you have a travel destination in mind? If so, where are you planning to go? Safe travels my friend.

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