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The Best Travel Apps and Websites for 2024
Do you love traveling but hate travel planning? Me too. You need to find transportation and lodging, figure out how to use your cell phone in foreign countries, plan for emergencies, decide what to pack, make plans for pet care, and more. Fortunately, there are many apps and websites that make travel easier. Many of them also help you get…
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How to Find the Best Airbnb Rentals 2024
If you’re new to Airbnb, you may find you’ve picked a less-than-desirable place. Perhaps you were seduced by the pretty pictures, enticed by a low price, or naively thought any reasonable pick would be great. We’ve been guilty of all three, and after some bad choices, we have learned (and continue to learn) how to find the best Airbnb rentals.…
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What You Need to Know About Traveling in the Schengen Area
Hi there, fellow traveler. Are you thinking of visiting Europe for an extended period of time? If so, do you understand the Schengen Area rules? Don’t be like Steve and me when we first started traveling (more about that below). We weren’t familiar with the Schengen Area and came very close to having a giant monkey wrench thrown smack dab…
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Wind and Whim’s 2023 Full-Time Travel Costs
It’s time to review what Steve and I spent on travel in 2023. We had a busy year that included two trips back to the U.S., a two-week trip to Athens with Stephanie and Laura, and a 15-day transatlantic cruise. We visited 32 cities and towns and spent time on three continents. All our moving around came at a cost,…
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The Truth About Staying in Airbnbs
A sure sign of success is when your competitors gear their ads toward disparaging you. In the summer of 2022, the vacation rental company VRBO released a series of ads stressing that with VRBO, you and your family get the whole house to yourself. The campaign was called “Only Your People.” Here is one of the ads: I find it…
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Wind and Whim’s 2022 Full-Time Travel Costs
It’s that time of year again! I get to put my accountant hat on and share our full-time travel costs with you. I started sharing our travel costs in 2019 when I wrote about what it cost for our first eight months of full-time travel in 2018. I did this because I wanted to show how affordable full-time travel can…
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Wind and Whim’s 2021 Full-Time Travel Costs: Hungary
Are you wondering how much it costs to travel the world full-time? Then you are in luck. It’s that time of year when I summarize and share our full-time travel costs for the previous year. Because of the pandemic, we spent all of 2021 in Hungary. Even though our 2021 full-time travel costs are not representative of our usual travel…
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12 Ways To Be An Amazing Airbnb Host
Steve and I are currently in our twenty-eighth Airbnb since beginning our worldwide travels in April 2018. As of December 31, 2020, we have spent 800 nights in Airbnb apartments. Overall, our experiences have been good. Even so, we have identified twelve things Airbnb hosts can do to take their guests’ experiences from good to great. Much More Good Than…
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Wind and Whim’s 2020 Full-Time Travel Costs: Europe
What can I say about the year we just had? No words can adequately express the sorrow of the almost two million lives lost, the lingering health impacts suffered by the long haulers, and the economic and mental costs COVID-19 has wrought. I will not complain about having to hunker down in Hungary for 9 1/2 months out of the…
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Wind and Whim’s 2019 Full-Time Travel Costs: Latin America
With our second year of full-time travel under our belts, it is time for a recap. This post details our Latin America travel costs from February through November of 2019. When Steve and I first toyed with the idea of traveling the world full-time I was very grateful to Never Ending Voyage and A Little Adrift along with other bloggers…
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Wind and Whim’s 2018 Full-Time Travel Costs: Europe
You may be wondering what it costs to travel the world full-time. I think you will be surprised to learn that it can be less costly than you think. When Steve and I first toyed with the idea of traveling the world full-time, we thought it might be a pipe dream. Our main concern was that it would be unaffordable.…
