Scott Barronton (00:00)
Welcome back to the Sunshine Travelers podcast. Today's episode is going to be just a little bit different. We're not breaking down one destination. We're not reviewing a ship or cruise line. 2026 is going to be the first full year where we're building our calendar around travel instead of squeezing travel into the margins of work and life. And that is some substantial change for us.
It changes how we choose destinations. It changes how long we stay. It changes even how we stay. So today we're talking about what's on our 2026 list, not the deep planning details, but really the big picture, where we're going, how it all fits what it really takes to plan something this extended.
Speaker 2 (00:52)
We're Scott and Melissa, The Sunshine Travelers.
Speaker 1 (00:55)
We're all about exploring the world and sharing the journey with you. Whether you're a seasoned traveler, dreaming of your next adventure, or just here for the stories.
Speaker 2 (01:03)
No matter where you are on your travel journey, we've got first-hand experiences, tips, and plenty of inspiration from some of the most amazing places on Earth.
Speaker 1 (01:12)
So buckle up and get ready to travel with us.
Scott Barronton (01:23)
So Melissa, how do we even begin to describe this year?
Wow. So it is definitely the year where we can stop rushing. And then I think it's just a year where we'll be able to plan, where is it that we have just really wanted to go? What is it that we've really wanted to do? And I think be able to fit some of that in and
A lot of the things that we've talked about for long times as far as destinations, but also the other thing I'm excited about, and we may not get to it this year, but maybe, there's a flight deal. we can actually book this. Yeah, that's exactly it. And today we're going to do the episode that we would normally do closer to the front of each year.
We usually go through and we talk about where are we going to go? What are we planning for each year? But because of reasons of me needing to time when I announced my retirement, we had to let it simmer just a little bit longer. Or, we would have said, Hey, we're going to all these places. We're going to be gone for so long. And some people probably would have been like, what? I don't know where are you going to do that? So that's what we're going to talk about today.
I'm really excited about really just digging in and sharing some of these details with you. Yeah. So one of the questions that we keep getting asked over and over, is where are you guys actually going to go this year? Because for the past couple of years, as you know, we've had the opportunity already to travel to so many places. It was just that they were
very limited. And sometimes it was when we were there, it was limited in the fact that Scott, you were working as part of that. So it won't have those restrictions. Like an example is we would never purposely say 24 hours in Singapore. That's not our style. It's not what we want to do. We definitely will share with you what we did in 24 hours in Singapore. Singapore is one of those places that requires
a little bit more than 24 hours to really dig in. in that case, in order to do Singapore, in order to spend a couple of days in Hong Kong, but you legitimately had to get back and be at work after being gone and doing kind of that modified schedule. So certainly, we will probably even move a little bit faster this year than...
I think maybe we will in the future as well, just because it's like, my gosh, we have this opportunity and here's all these places that we wanted to go. And some of them don't need a week And we're going to get to that. But I think in the future, it will probably be even slower than it will be this year. think some of this is just, my God, we're so excited ⁓ to do this. So today we're going to lay out the plan for 2026, along with some of the why we chose these locations.
And as Melissa was just saying, it's probably a lot more than what we would normally plan for, but let me get to the route and as to why we're going to so many places. Scott, before you start that, I also want to say that as we are planning this, some of these places are way more affordable.
than I think that you would imagine. And so we also know that there's places in the world that are way cheaper than this. And so when we get to the end, we're gonna talk about kind of a mindset and share with you a couple of other things. So even if this doesn't necessarily apply to you right now, I really want you to stick around for that because I think it's a very interesting thing to think about.
I also just want to compare it to traveling in the US is so expensive. Melissa said the other day, she was like, I don't know that we'll ever travel in the US again. That's not true because I've got some huge bucket list things that are US, but we've always said that right now, while we have our health and while we're able to, we're going to go as far as we possibly can. And then as we can't go that far anymore, we'll start to scale it back.
And so that's why you hear a lot of our international travels and why we spend so much time there along with what Melissa was saying is it has so much cheaper. and I think you'll be able to see and kind of think for yourself, my gosh, I could really have a bucket list trip for not that much money. So a route was designed around.
a few key events and we wanted to avoid the expense of traveling back and forth across the Atlantic. So let me go through real quick just what those events were. First of all, my dad and stepmom wanted to go to London. And so we were headed there and we said, let's go, we'll take you there. But London is not one of those cheap places. It's very expensive. However, there is so much to do there. And after like
13, 14, 15 times that we've been there, there's still things that we haven't done. And we're going to cross off one of those this year. Then we wanted to meet up with our kids in Spain. They're going to be living abroad for a while and we wanted to go and see them. So we're going to do that in Southern Spain. And then we're doing a habitat for humanity build in Kenya. So
Like those were some of the key items for this period of time that we wanted to try and do. And so a lot of this travel is built around that schedule. originally those two trips we were going to do. Yeah, we were going to do them separately. But now that we don't have that time restriction, it's like, OK, there's no reason to
fly back to the US to fly back. Yeah. Cause those transatlantic flights are usually the most expensive part of your journey or one of the more expensive parts of your journey. Definitely is the most expensive part for some of these places that we're going to. mean, I know that's girl math, like it's cheaper to stay than fly home. I mean, it's not, I mean, yes, you could come home and then not have that expense and then fly back.
But since we're already there, I just want to throw that in. You're right. We're already there, But at the same time, there's nothing rushing us back home this time. And that's what's so freeing and that's what's so different. But we want you guys to follow along because as we go through this, we're going to be talking about lots of trip possibilities that you could take this year, right?
You don't have to do our entire itinerary, but you might want to pick pieces of what we're doing. So let's jump right in and get started.
So our first stop is going to be in London, England.
And this was a part that we had already had planned. We had actually already said to Scott's dad and stepmom, would y'all like to come join us? They had mentioned over the past couple of months, maybe even at Christmas, like this was their kind of their next bucket list. We've done this a lot and we said we would love for you to come and join us. So that's what we're gonna do. We'll have what about four full days?
⁓ which as we talked about the itinerary, it was like we could do this in four days or we could take the same amount of stuff and you would probably take that and then stretch it to five days or six days or so I think it's very doable. We'll talk about why only four days here in a second. But it was very cool. Scott put together a little almost questionnaire like a Google, what is it called? Like a Google questionnaire that you can create on Google.
and just had them rate the experiences that they wanted, picked out the top things. They are adorable. They have been watching YouTube videos and had some ideas and would send us some things. So that was what we used to put together that itinerary. We wanted that to make sense in terms of...
kind of an area of the city every day. Scott and are really bad about, let's go to South Kensington and then now let's go over to the tower or over to Greenwich. I like one end of the city to the other. So we wanted to kind of make that. So that's how we will do this. And I did want to say one thing. You alluded to the fact that it's so expensive. This was a place where we looked at our travel credit cards.
and said, where do we have a hotel credit that we will need to use anyway? And so you had one and I had one. We actually kind of double dipped on this. We used one before the end of the year and booked this hotel. So it was basically like getting one night free. And then we did the same hotel for this So yes, we do have two different reservations, which hopefully that they can link.
for us, but that was a way that we made it a little bit more affordable. I mean, I think we got a good deal, but like minimum, I think in London, you're gonna pay is 300 US dollars a night
Yeah. London is one of those places that we can keep going back to time and time again. if you've been following our podcasts for a while, you would know this time of year, we always go to London. It's usually been tied to work. but it just so happened that this year I don't have to worry about that. And so, we're just going to be full blown tourists in London this time. We also used points for that flight.
even though it was a one way and it was Delta, which I know sometimes people are like, that's a lot of points, but we had them in the Delta account. And in our opinion, it was a good value for the use of the points. Well, from there, we're going to head to Southern Spain. And as I said, this is where we're going to meet up with our daughter and her family while they're living abroad. And so we're going to take the grandparents and we're going to go down and meet with them in
Southern Spain, I guess I should say the great grandparents. and so, something really neat, ⁓ when we were planning this, we told my dad that, and I don't think he fully caught on until we started talking about Spain. And he was like, what do mean Spain? I thought we were going to London. So we snuck that one in on him that we're also taking him to, ⁓ Spain on this trip. And, ⁓ he didn't mind though, because he gets to meet up with the.
the great grandkids and that made everything better. Yeah. It'll also be Easter weekend. And so there will be the good Friday festivities So we wanted to make sure to get there in plenty of time to be able to take part of that. We also rented an apartment for all of us,
and then are keeping that apartment for like a whole week, which is cheaper than what I think would be three nights in one hotel room in London. So just to give you an example. Yeah. And we're going to go and see some areas around where we're staying. So like one weekend, we're going to try to get off and go to Sevilla and we've been there before, but it was on a cruise. we had one day to spend there.
We're going to give ourselves a long weekend to spend there and just immerse ourselves a little bit deeper. We'll definitely be doing kid friendly activities since we have the grandkids with us. But we're really looking forward to that. And one thing I would say is that we decided that when we flew from London to Spain, that we would rent a minivan. And then that way we would have the ability to
get around and go see things during the day, take the grandkids and my parents and all with us. And so we will have the use of a minivan while we're in this area of Spain. Yeah. I mean, Spain, large cities, I think are well connected by train. And then once you get outside of that, it's buses. And so I think this will be a great way to be able to see a little bit more.
The other thing I would say is this episode is gonna be full of like random tips that I think of as we go along. When we fly from London to Spain, we're not flying out of London Heathrow. It's out of another airport. So that's the other thing about London is you've got Stansted and you've got London City and you've got I don't Luton and...
I don't know, you've got all these airports that gives you a lot of options once you are there. So just keep that in mind if you ever use London as like a jumping off
Spain is one of those areas that we have been to before. We just didn't have a lot of time to explore it. And this time we're going to get to slow down, experience the culture, and really see it through a very different lens. That's a good point. We talk about, we love Spain. We love Spain. We love Spain. It's funny because we've been to Madrid and stayed. We've been to Barcelona and stayed a couple of times.
The rest of the places we've been literally on a cruise for one day, but here we are like, we love Spain. So this will give us a chance to really be in smaller places. Like I mentioned, it's apartment with a kitchen. So we'll be able to go to the market and cook and cook with them, which we're excited about too. like we need to do a cooking lesson or a cooking class there so that we can find some authentic dishes to cook.
in the apartment. That sounds like a great idea. All right. Well, let's move on. The next place we're going is Morocco. Guys, I cannot tell you how excited I am about Morocco. It has been among the top of my bucket list for years. And this year we're going to finally cross off that and another destination that are my top two. So Morocco and Antarctica. Antarctica, literally we're like
little over a week away from leaving on that one. I am so excited right now, but we're going to not only check off those two destinations, but this year I thought about it. We're also checking off one of my personal bucket list items, which was to visit all seven continents. So in the next few weeks, we're going to have that one checked off and it's going to be amazing.
So as Scott mentioned, we have wanted to go to Morocco for a long time.
Probably a year, year and a half ago, we talked to a friend of ours, daughter, Kaitlyn, who had planned and organized their trip to Morocco. It was a place that we had kind of thought we might do before we went to Kenya the last time, and it just gonna link that episode in the show notes. If you wanna go listen to that. And then obviously we will be sharing more once we do our trip.
This is one that we've always said and she confirmed, you really need a guide. You really do need somebody to help you like plan the trip and then especially be with you. And so we found that person. that we would love to lead a group trip just because of that. Like it's just one of those destinations where I feel like it lends itself to that and having somebody
with you and leading that is like really beneficial. And so this is going to be our testing the waters for that. And then also hopefully recommend that to you if you just want to go do that with this tour as well. Let's talk about some of the things we're actually going to do on this trip. So we're going to the markets in Marrakesh and doing all of that. Then we're going to get outside of Marrakesh and go out to the
High Atlas Mountains and go into the Berber villages. We're going to go out into the desert and ride a camel. We're going to go to an oasis, stay at an oasis out in the desert. We're going to go to the Caspas, right? We're going to do all of the things and see what this group trip would look like so that we can come back and then start to plan it. And I'm so excited about that. We'll end up in Fez and Fez will be the...
last point before we leave Morocco. But this is going to be a great trip and we really can't wait to share more about it with you and get you guys excited about potentially going with us on a trip to Morocco. Yeah, so there will be a lot of moving around on that just because of the nature of the trip. But basically we were just like, what do you recommend? Kind of like what we did when we went to Egypt. Like, what do you recommend? What's the itinerary? And so, yeah, so we're really, really excited about.
And so just thinking through that, one of the things, a little tip to help make it easier for you when you're going on a trip like this is to try to put those things into a smaller bag, that you're going to need during that time so that you're not having to unpack at every location. Because like Melissa said, we will be moving from place to place. use those packing cubes pack into a smaller bag.
so that you don't have to unpack everything at every stop. Yeah, we're definitely going to have to share a lot about how we end up packing for this trip. Kind of already starting to think about that because it will be a lot of moving pieces, a lot of different climates. So that will be interesting. We're going to leave Morocco and we're going to fly into Bologna, Italy. Now, you might ask yourself why Bologna?
We had to look at where could we go from Fez and Bologna was one of those locations that was ⁓ very central and it was probably the easiest one to get to from Fez. But it turns out as we were looking at our list of things that we really wanted to do, it ended up being a really good central location to fly into and then lead us on to the next parts of our trip.
Yeah, so like Scott mentioned, that was just one where we literally looked at where could we go nonstop and for kind of inexpensive and a good place to really start if you haven't ever heard about flight connections and they do have a free version and you literally can look at a map and see like where can you go and there was like three places I think in Italy that you could go fairly easily, fairly inexpensive, nonstop. That's one place that we typically start.
and then might go off onto Google flights or something else. Italy. We're going to spend a lot of time in Italy. We have always said, I think we have said we've been to Italy four times or I've been to Italy four times, I think three for you. Italy is huge and you really kind of want to do that by regions, which is what we have kind of tended to do.
We've never been to Florence or Pisa or Venice. Again, we spent one day at the Amalfi Coast. And then there's places that we've always said we want to go back to Tuscany. we spent one day in Tuscany. And so it was really a way for us to see these places, which yes, they're more touristy places, but I just feel like they're places that we really want to see.
there are other places in Italy that are not going to make it onto this list. For example, the Dolomites that is on our list. We learned that you do not go there in April and May, that it's a soggy, soggy mess. You go there in the winter or you go there in the summer, or you're going to be in the mud. and so you just have to like be aware of some of those things. we're going to have almost six weeks that we spend in Italy and let's go through the list real quick.
So we're going to go to Bologna first. From there we'll leave and go to Pisa. And so this will help you if you pull up a Google map and you kind of start looking at these locations, it'll help you start to see these regions unfold as well. And you can kind of get an idea of why we've scheduled the trip the way that we did. From Pisa, we're going to go into Tuscany, kind of in the area of Siena.
And this is where we're going to do another of our walking trips with Macs Adventure. And we are so excited about this one. It'll be a great comparison because we did Umbria last time and we can now compare that with Tuscany. So we're going to do kind of a more relaxed path. We're not going to move quite as much. We won't move every day on this trip.
And so this will be a really neat trip for us to come back in to contrast with you guys for Umbria. It's called the Relaxed Trails of Tuscany. It will actually be a week, whereas the other one was like four days of walking, I believe. So this is a little bit longer trip, but like you mentioned, yeah, we'll have two nights in some places. Some it will be just city.
walking. So I think we'll really get to relax and slow down and kind of do Tuscany in a way that we've wanted to. We're going to leave from there. We'll go to Florence and spend some time in Florence. Like we didn't want it just to be one night in Florence. We want to go and spend several days there. From there, we'll go down to the Amalfi coast. We found this great little cute town
it's there right outside of a Malfi and we're going to make that be our home base while we're there. And then we'll go off and do different things. ⁓ one of which is making sure that we do a day trip to the Isle of Capri and, that was big on Melissa's list. we'll have to tell that story.
⁓ another time, maybe on the Amalfi episode that we do. it's also Capri, apparently I've been scolded on that before. Well, know, we will butcher our own language. anybody else's language is fair game. we're going to rent a car though, and drive from there to Puglia. And so in Puglia,
It's you need to have a car. It looks like it's just a little area, the hill of the boot of Italy. but it's a long distance between, the places that we want to go and see. And so we're going to have a car to get around there. So we decided what we would do is just rent one, in Salerno and then we will drive from Salerno over to Puglia. Puglia is kind of that region we've got.
three different places that we're going to be staying there and venturing out each day doing little day trips. And then we will finally leave from Puglia and go and make our way north up to Venice. Now, you may be asking yourselves, why are you guys going back north? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And there's good reason for it.
We'll get to that in just a minute. But Venice is one of those places on our list. We haven't been there before. It's one that everybody says that we need to go and check out. And so we're going to go and do that. it of the places it's the most expensive? Yeah, it did seem to be the most expensive. Now we're not going to Rome because we've been to Rome. So I don't it could be about the same as Rome, maybe. But I think we found this little hidden gem.
in Amalfi because everybody talks about how expensive Amalfi is, but, we got to, I felt like we got a really good deal there. Puglia very affordable. I think there was one place that we're staying that was a little bit more expensive, but I mean, I think the most that we spent for a single night in Puglia was around $150. We will give a shout out to culture craving couple here.
We talked to Taylor about Barcelona, I believe, right? In Spain and we talked to her about Vermouth and the Sangria several episodes back. They did an extensive trip in Puglia and have lots of great recommendations, suggestions that we are taking. So we're excited to take those and then share those. And here's the other interesting thing. Yes.
Italy is very well connected by trains to like a lot of the major cities. But then once you get outside of those, it's like Scott mentioned, we definitely need a car. And then the other reason is that to get to the Amalfi Coast to Puglia is not super easy. Like you'd have to go back to Rome or Florence and it would just take a lot more time.
Also, interesting enough, we are gonna fly from the Puglia region up to Venice. It's about a seven hour train ride. The flights that we ended up getting, I think the cost is, it could be cheaper or it's even gonna be a wash, but we get there a whole lot faster. So just keep that in mind if you're gonna go like long distances. ⁓ So this one was a little bit of a puzzle at first to figure out, okay, like what order do we wanna do these things in?
And of course, because we are doing the Macs Adventure,
We had to, work with them to, okay, when can they book this, that kind of thing. We will also be doing a cooking class with a company called Cesarine. I I have heard about this, heard great things about this. We actually saw them, their little place that they have when we walked into Assisi last year. And I've actually sent a couple of our travel clients ⁓ to cooking classes there.
And so I'm not sure which city yet, but we're going to be doing a cooking class with them. And then the cheese making class in Puglia. Correct? Yes. That one seems to be amazing. this is the most time that we've ever spent in one country outside the US before. So what are some of the kind of the things that excite you in any fears you have with spending so much time in Italy? ⁓
excites me. I think hopefully we can be better about learning a lot ⁓ more words. Conversation. mean trying to. Instead of you know I mean just trying to learn a little bit more of that. Some of the phrases right that hopefully we can do.
you know, more in everyday fun, like what will be beneficial to us because we will be there. so one of our requirements was, well, I guess I should say, with the exception of PISA, our requirements was we're not gonna spend one night in any place. The reason that we're doing this for PISA is to start the Macs Adventures. We had an option of PISA or Florence for them to pick us up.
and just the way that the itinerary worked. And we were like, you know what, it'd be fun to go see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And it would also be fun to see it at night because most people do this as a day trip, right? Or they go by there on the way to Florence or a half a day from a cruise ship or something like that. So we will get to do that at night. So that's our only exception, I think, is getting to stay in places no less than, two nights. And then you've even got three and four in a lot of places.
What about you? Yeah, I think for me, it's the being able to unpack your bag and not worry about it for a couple of days. because we're still moving around a lot, even though we're spending a good number of days in places, we're still going to a lot of places. So I think that's kind of the, what I'm looking forward to. I'm definitely looking forward to the end of the trip and we'll talk about that later.
but spending this much of time in Italy is going to be really good. We get the most requests and the most interaction anytime that we talk about Italy. that's, that is just, it's something that a lot of people are interested in and it's a place that they would like to go to. And so from a content perspective,
This is going to be great and we'll have tons of content to share after this trip. want to also mention there are places that yes, we're leaving out. We looked at, we'd love to go to Sicily. We'd love to go to Sardinia. It also didn't seem to be maybe quite the right time of the year to do that. Cinque Terre and then of course the lakes region, but then that was kind of very far from where we were going to be. So like I mentioned, there are other places, but Puglia
really piqued our interest in addition to the places that are like, okay, we really want to do, like I said, Florence, Venice. We'll also be there not in the prime like sunbathing, swimming time. The weather should be really nice while we're there and it should be nice and warm, but the water temperature is not going to be quite warm enough to swim just yet. And before we move off Italy, Scott, give an idea about
average cost per night for most of these places? For most of the places that we booked, generally less than 150 a night. So somewhere between 120 to 150. And then Venice being closer to probably 300 ish or so. Yeah, mid twos to three. Yeah, and that was one where it was like, okay, does this make sense? We had another card with a hotel
credit that we needed to use and we ended up using for that because it just made sense. and so that's where it's like, wow, even on the Amalfi coast for where we are staying. and then some of these are apartment type places. So we may have the opportunity to grab a few things and, and be able to just pick some simple meals. We're going to be in a lot fewer hotels on this trip. It's going to be mostly apartments.
All right. So from Italy, we're going to France. we've worked our way back North. but there's a reason for doing that. And if you're asking yourself, why didn't we do France while we were in Spain, Melissa, why don't you tell them? So at the end of our daughter and her family's trip, they are going to end in Paris. and then they are going to come home and when they decided to do this.
that our granddaughter asked me, would I come back and do Paris with her? She has wanted to go to Paris forever. We rode a train through France a few years ago when we did that trip and she's just been excited for that ever since. So I am not gonna turn her down. So again, the original plan was before we go to the Habitat Building, Kenya, we would fly to Charles de Gaulle. That would be a great way to get kind of part of the way.
As you know, last time we did Egypt and then went to Kenya and it's easy to get from Charles de Gaulle to Nairobi. And so was like, sure, the dates worked out like they couldn't have been more perfect. yeah, so we're gonna do that.
And then while we're not just going to do Paris, on the front end, we're going to get there a few days early and we're going to go and really see something that I've never done before. It wasn't necessarily at the top of my bucket list of things to do, but I can tell you we're very excited and we're going to go spend some time in Normandy. So we had talked about, I mean, yes, we could have stayed in Italy longer.
We knew that we were gonna go to Paris. There were actually a couple of other places that started our France conversation. Different places that we said, we'd love to go to Burgundy. Oh, I'd love to go to Colmar. Just different places like on Normandy.
I have had Governy, Monet's Garden on my list. And so this region will allow us to do that. Yeah. And then Mont Saint-Michel also. So we've got just a great little itinerary that we're going to do in Normandy. It's one that I think is going to make a great mini itinerary that we can share with people. And this is a place where you could go and spend a week and
be able to do a little bit of Paris, but then also Normandy as well. Yeah, so that you could do the city and then get outside of the city. We will need a car for that part as well, but we are also picking one spot and then we're going to be able to go see the other things instead of moving around the hotels. And in Paris, we have two big kind of bucket list things. We've actually never been to the Palace of Versailles.
So we're gonna do that and then Disneyland Paris, which I have checked off and this will allow you to check it off But something that the kids wanted to do as well. The new frozen land will be open So we'll have seen the frozen land in both Hong Kong and Paris Yeah, I think last time you only got to spend a couple hours there though. So we'll get a a good day in Disneyland Paris and Like you said will now be caught up
you know, together on our Disneyland visits. I still have another season that I want to do in France where we stay in like a 17th century Chateau or a farmhouse out in the countryside with these huge fireplaces. That's still something that is really high on my bucket list. I had kind of looked to see if I could find something like that, but I think that we just need to be in a different area to really find some of these and
So we'll keep that on the list and we'll go back and do that. I had the opportunity to stay in one of those for work one time and it was so hard to get away from those big fireplaces that were taller than me and sitting in a chair in front of a nice roaring fire, with a little bit cooler, damp temperature or weather outside. so
That's why I said it's just another season that we will go back and spend the time and do that. Yeah. And here's another thought about that, that we can maybe look for in the future. So some of you might be asking, don't you have dogs? Like, what are you going to do with the dogs? Especially if your daughter and them are gone. So over the past year, we have been using trusted house sitters. fantastic. It's kind like a membership that you join and then people can come stay in your home. They house at your home, they pets at your home.
It's you don't pay them in addition. Like they have a membership, they're vetted, you have a membership. But what I'm thinking as you're saying this is maybe we could do a sit sometime in France of somebody who has a house like that and a cute little French dog. All right. Probably a French bulldog.
Palmer's not coming. All right. Well, from Paris, we are going to then go to our last region, which we're going to go back to the continent of Africa. And we've got some amazing things that we're going to be doing in Africa this year.
We are. So we had already mentioned in our earlier 2026 episode, we'd already planned to do the Habitat for Humanity build. And so that will really start out our trip. So we're super excited about that. It's an area that we have been to before near Mount Kenya, near Solio Ranch that we did before. So we're...
Excited to experience Kenya in a different way. Yeah, in a way that allows us to kind of give back, not just be the tourist. We did go to a village last time in the Samburu tribe, but this time we're actually going to go into this town. And I don't think we know yet what exactly we're building, but it'll be a chance for us to spend a week working on a project.
to give back to those people. so, very excited to be able to do that. But of course we're the sunshine travelers. And so we can't just end it there. We've got to put something on the back end of that. And so we're going to do another small group Safari that we're going to lead and, go to some of our favorite places. And matter of fact, this we're using as a.
test for another group trip that, we talked about it this year. We wanted to do the group Safari in 2026. It just didn't work out from a timing perspective. And I think there was a lot going on with travel. I'm hoping that, 2027 is going to be a much different scenario. They're telling us that across all of the different providers, they're starting to see 2027 activity really pick up. And so.
We will be announcing in the very near future our plans for a 2027 group Safari. And we'd love to have you come and do that with us, but we'll go off. do the Safari. then before we come back, we're going to need an opportunity to just relax, decompress, slow down. And we're going to spend a little bit of over a week, on a beach.
in Africa, something that we've never done before. So we have heard a lot about Zanzibar. There was actually several options. There was some beach options for some beaches in Kenya, but this will give us an opportunity to add Tanzania. You may have heard it said Tanzania. I think either of them are fine,
to add at least new country each year. And so that will give us that in Morocco and Tanzania for sure. Yeah. mean, the goal is to get us out there and experiencing as much as possible. This year, it just so happened that, it wasn't about seeing new places. It was going deeper in the places that we wanted to visit. But,
Yeah, I'm excited to go to Zanzibar. We're looking at what our options are right now. But we've got a little over a week that we're going to spend there decompressing.
And so really excited about visiting Zanzibar. And one thing I wanted to add, we're going to try some different things as far as sharing this. Of course, we will definitely have podcast episodes about each of these different places and things that we learned and things that we think that will be helpful. We also want to be very intentional about breaking down the budget as well for each of these.
I'll probably keep some kind of running total as a blog post and then split it out by the different things because I think it'll be very interesting to see how affordably you can travel off season, different places, things like that when you can think out of the box. And then we'll be honest about, okay, we use points for this or these hotel credits or just some different strategies to be able to travel more.
And so that wraps up that big long trip that we're going to do this spring. We do have a couple of other trips planned for this year and we'll go through those real quick. The first one is Kazakhstan. I don't know that I've ever really thought much about going to Kazakhstan, but the travel conference that we go to, or we at least try to go to each year is going to be hosted in Almaty, Kazakhstan this year.
So in traditional sunshine travelers fashion, we said, let's go. Yeah, I think that's probably September, mid September timeframe. This is not a part of the world that either of us has traveled to. But lots of people have recommended this, that we should visit the STAN countries. And then of course the travel conference, they really do a good job of you get to have experiences and immersion experiences.
that you would kind of miss out on your own. So it's definitely been worth it for us from that standpoint. And we won't be rushing to get back so we can actually spend a little bit of time there. And so we're looking forward to that one. And then I would just say finally is we're looking to go to Germany at the end of the year and do some Christmas markets. This is something that has been really a dream for Melissa for a while.
And so we're going to take the time to go and go through several of these and do some reconnaissance. And I really want to visit some that are more off the beaten path too. It's funny because you have a colleague who lives and works in Germany and he said, even for them, it's like, let's go to this one. Okay. Is this, and then now let's go to this one. Is this one better than this one?
doing some comparisons even on their own, even as Germans. But for us, I think it's really become a big thing to go and check out these Christmas markets. And then a lot of course, German style Christmas markets have come to the US. So yeah, this is something that ⁓ we would eventually like to try to lead a group trip on this, but we wanna make sure that we...
go to these places first and kind of really think about the itinerary and the best way to get around. So stay tuned for that as well.
Well, we want to close out just talking a little bit about what it takes to plan a trip, that is so big with so many moving parts. And we have so many different locations, countries that we're going to different ways that we're getting around the accommodations, know, tours, sites that we want to go see. I mean, it is a lot of stuff. And so all of this, doesn't just happen.
You have spent a long time on this. Hours and hours, if not days, like researching and looking at the different options because a lot of times you do have to think about, how does the transportation piece fit in with the hotel piece? Which days could it be cheaper, maybe to fly on? And we're not finished by any means. We have, a few more pieces, but you have spent a lot of time.
doing this and you really do have to design it like I mentioned
in Italy, how do we get from Morocco, Fez specifically, where can we go that kind of makes sense and then, how can we do all these things. So it does take a good bit of research as well. And then the other thing that I wanted to mention, I think that I alluded to at the beginning is you also have to design the opportunity, I think, to do this.
It was really interesting because I recently ran across the book Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. And then you mentioned that a colleague of yours gave you an audio book, Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. I don't think that that was a coincidence. And so I had read part of it. We listened to part of it. And it's so interesting because I think his main thing is focusing on
Long-term travel, but if you don't want to do long-term travel, I don't think you have to, So meaning there are a lot of people out there who travel full-time. As of right now, that has never really been our goal. But it's also about, I think, budget-conscious travel if you do it this way. So yes, you have some big experiences. Safari, maybe for example, or you have places where you book a tour guide
for the whole time or regions that might be more expensive. But one of the things that he talks about in this book is that being creative about how you can do this. So for example, if you are a remote worker, can you get permission to do something like this where then you still work somewhere else? You know, can you take what you're doing and freelance instead of working for?
a company, can you work seasonally or can you do contract work where you work for so many months or weeks or whatever and then you take that money and then you go travel. It was interesting when we were in Greece a couple of years ago, our daughter and her husband were asking one of the guys on the island of Crete because it's very seasonal there and he said, what do you do
when there's nobody here. And he was like, well, we close. And they had just opened up and it wasn't their high season, because summer is their high season and we were there in spring. He said, well, we close. And he was like, I take the money and I go to the Caribbean and I just go from island to island to island or somewhere every year. And so even though this guy has a business and yes, he probably works hard. think he told them that they stay open till like 4 a.m. during the summertime.
Right, so he works hard, but then he travels the rest of the time. So it's really about how you look at work differently.
It's looking at the way that you are traveling, right? And it's being intentional to make sure that you prioritize doing these things. And because you've landed on a travel podcast, our assumption is that you have some interest in travel. And so I think Melissa, as you're kind of collecting yourself
This is about being intentional. It's about thinking, what am I spending my money on? And, know, we're not going to turn the rest of this episode into a Ralph Potts book, but you should go read it because he's very intentional about the way that he looks at things that he spends his money on so that he can go off and travel. And, or at least that's how it was when he first started,
We've got friends, Mo and Erica, who we've known them since they started their journey. And at first I thought it was kind of crazy. They were, they were both young professionals and had great jobs and they decided to quit their jobs and travel full time. Now it's like, why did it take me so long to realize that what they're doing is amazing?
So we'll have Mo and Erica back on in a future episode. We'll talk more about this kind of concept. We'll hear how they've done it and dig into that more in the future.
So this episode really isn't our itinerary. We're gonna be putting together several little smaller itineraries that you can download and turn into your own bucket list trip. It's really about designing travel that flows, permitting yourself to stay just a little bit longer, thinking beyond just highlight travel.
and building life chapters instead of checklists in your travel journey. We want everyone to be able to take away something from our 2026 Travels. If we can help you plan your own bucket list trip, please reach out to us directly at melissa at sunshinetravelers.com or We have a link on sunxtravel.com that's sun the letter X travel.com. And then there's a link that says
book your trip where you can contact us and let us help you plan your next adventure.
But we're really excited about what 2026 means for our travels and our ability to bring you even more enriched content. It's about going deeper for us, staying long enough to notice the patterns, moving slowly enough to experience the culture, and letting ourselves steep in destinations. We hope you are just as excited to follow along with us.
And we also hope this conversation helps you think about your own next chapter, whatever season of life you're in. The world is full of sunshine and surprises. Let's travel more and travel better.
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