Traveling can be so much fun … until disaster strikes. You get sick. You break your leg skiing. Your pocket gets picked. Then what do you do?
This video will help you manage your money when traveling overseas in the safest, easiest way. We’ll cover how to handle cash, the credit cards with the best benefits for travel, the cheapest way to rent a car while being fully protected, and more.
It will also help answer the question: do you need travel insurance?
We hopped on a double-decker bus for a tour of Bath, England, a World Heritage city about an hour and a half west of London with stunning golden Georgian architecture, historic Roman Baths, an incredible Abbey, the homes of iconic authors Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, and too much more to recount. Then we hopped off and strolled around the historic city centre, finishing with some excellent craft beer. Join us!
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Here are links to many places mentioned in the video:
Here’s a treat for Jane Austen fans: Come meet Mr. Knightly, Mr. Darcy, and Lydia Bennett at the Jane Austen Centre!
Bath is a great literary city, and no trip here is complete without a visit to the Jane Austen Centre. This icon of British literature lived in Bath for four or five years, writing Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. She mentioned Bath in several other works as well.
Lisa takes you on a tour of the Jane Austen Centre, which offers you a snapshot of life during Regency times and explores how living in the magnificent city of Bath affected Jane Austen and her writing. Try your hand at writing using a quill pen and ink or have your photograph taken whilst dressed in our extensive selection of Regency dresses, bonnets and shawls. You can also visit the Regency Tea Room for a few scones and a trip into the past!
You can book your tickets online for about $18 at janeausten.co.uk/.
We visited the Roman Baths while in Bath, England, for our oldest child’s graduation, and gazed upon 2,000 years of history. We also gazed upon a few naked Romans! But Bob was upset that they wouldn’t let him soak in the medicinal water. The Roman Baths are one of the finest historic sites in Northern Europe, according to the Baths’ website, romanbaths.co.uk/.
“Once the site of one of the great religious spas of the ancient world, the people of Roman Britain came to the site to worship the goddess Sulis Minerva and bathe in the waters of the natural thermal springs, which still flow with hot water today,” says the website. “Today visitors can explore the Roman Baths complex, walk on the original Roman pavements and see the ruins of the Temple of Sulis Minerva.
“The museum collection, located next to the bathing complex, includes a gilt bronze head of the Goddess Sulis Minerva, and other Roman artifacts.”
The cost per person was about $23, and you buy your tickets in advance for a timed entry.
When we took a Thames River Cruise from London to Greenwich last fall to see the Royal Meridien, we discovered the National Maritime Museum, one of a quartet of the Royal Museums in Greenwich. The others are the Royal Observatory Greenwich, where the Meridien resides, and two others that will have to wait till next time: the historic ship Cutty Sark and the Queen’s House.
The National Maritime Museum takes you on an exploration of British naval history and Imperial arrogance, with a ship simulator, nautical oddities, and interactive games. We loved the giant message in a bottle and the colorful exhibit of ship figureheads. Admission was free.
Ship figureheadsSome rich earl’s ostentatious boatCutty SarkMessage in a bottle
What a fun discovery! Greenwich deserves more than a day.
We took a Thames River Tour to Greenwich, England, which then surprised us with a bounty of attractions: The Cutty Sark, the Greenwich Market, the Royal Maritime Museum, and, of course, the Prime Meridien, where East meets West!
It’s a splurge, at 109 pounds ($145 US) a person (plus tips), so if you can’t afford to do it, join us on a Bateaux London dinner cruise on the Thames River! London at night is lit up like a Christmas tree, especially the bridges. (Forgive the background noise in spots, but a lot of other happy celebrants were also enjoying the night!)
London was a whirlwind of walking (averaging six miles a day), taking boat rides (on the Regent’s Canal, the Thames twice, and even a paddleboat on the Serpentine), running in Hyde Park, exploring markets (Camden Town was our favorite), and more.
Lisa enjoyed the theater on four occasions: Hamilton (excellent, again), Pretty Woman (okay but needing a little work), Back to the Future (surprisingly clever), and SIX (phenomenal).
We visited Greenwich and straddled the Prime Meridien.
We toured Tower Bridge.
We went to the top of the Walkie Talkie Building at sunset.
We embraced the iconic Madame Tussaud’s.
We climbed the Marble Arch Mound, and discovered a laser structure museum inside.
Lisa visited Kensington Palace.
We took a narrowboat ride on the Regent’s Canal.
We visited Camden Market.
We looked at art in the National Gallery.
We visited the Natural History Museum.
When we got back to Vermont, we literally collapsed from exhaustion.
We’ll be going back in April when we attend Aryk’s COVID-delayed graduation from Keele University. There’s still a lot left to see!
In September, we giddily embarked upon our first international trip since COVID brought us back from Mexico City, the latest destination in our traveling retirement, quite abruptly in March 2020. We took advantage of our oldest child, Aryk, restarting their education to carve out two weeks in England!
Aryk had deferred graduate school for a year due to the pandemic, but with two vaccines in their arm and a trove of masks in their suitcase, they were eager to begin pursuing their master’s degree in Creative Writing/Poetry at Bath Spa University in Bath, England.
So the three of us flew to the UK in mid-September. Lisa and Aryk headed to Bath, Lisa driving white-knuckled on the left side of the road to Aryk’s uni lodging, while Bob settled into a condo in London to explore for a few days on his own.
Beautiful Bath
Bath is a stunning World Heritage City about two hours west of London. It has a lovely old center of town and a lively culture. While we were there, the city was hosting a major Children’s Literature Festival. We movedAryk into Student Castle, and did the shopping and exploring they needed, with little time left for sightseeing.
Aryk’s studio flat, still being unpacked, obviously. But the bed is made!
Bath is named after its Roman-built baths, and is renowned as a well-being destination. It’s located in the valley of the River Avon, a scenic, winding river with a path that I enjoyed during an early morning run.
The River Avon
Bath also hosts a scenic stretch of the 87-mile-long Kennet and Avon Canal, which runs from London to the Bristol Channel on the coast. I ran or walked on its dirt towpath several mornings. One day, Aryk and I happened upon it after shopping at Tesco Express just before sunset. The light on the buildings made from golden Bath stone was truly captivating.
Just as interesting to me was the narrowboats tethered along the canal, in which people lived. (Note the bikes lashed on top.)
These are working canals, albeit an incredibly slow mode of transportation, and I was fortunate to witness a narrowboat navigating an 18-foot-deep lock called the Bath Deep Lock, the second-deepest lock in the country. Watch my video on the Messy Suitcase YouTube channel! (And please subscribe while you’re there.)
This narrowboat, captained by two women you can see up at the loch, had a canoe lashed to the top!
I definitely plan to return to Bath for a tourism visit someday!
We’re finishing up our Vermont maple liqueur in a symbolic transition as we prepare to depart next week for the next stop on the Messy Suitcase tour, the birthplace of piña coladas: Puerto Rico!
Our September vacation in England (taking our oldest child, Aryk, who is pursuing their master’s at Bath Spa University, to school) was great preparation for re-entry to our traveling lifestyle, post-COVID version. We are double-vaxxed, indoor-masked, and ready to launch our lives again as traveling retirees.
Before we set off, we’re spending a long weekend in Colchester, VT, north of Burlington, with our son, Gavin, who was also with us when we launched the traveling life in 2018.
Migrating birds taking a break on Lake Champlain in Colchester
On Tuesday, Gavin returns to Champlain College after this break, and Bob and I head to Manchester, NH, to park our car at a park/sleep/fly lot and board a plane the next morning for Puerto Rico!
A Few Changes
This time we will be renting a car instead of driving our own. We’ll have just one cat, Kaylee, instead of the three we started with — Equinox passed away in Mexico City last year, and Ellie lives with Gavin at Champlain College. We are heading to Puerto Rico, a US territory, instead of back to Mexico for COVID safety and COVID convenience — less testing hassle.
Kaylee helps pack
But life is too short to spend any more time waiting for the pandemic to end. It’s time to live again. We have to learn to navigate COVID while staying safe and enjoying life. We plan to spend a month in Luquillo in an oceanfront condo, and a month in San Juan.
