We’ve literally just booked our next big trip and yes, this is a big one! We’re not just travelling, we’ll also be living in some of the most romantic cities in the world, spending some time living like a local and also renting a car for a bit to drive around and explore more of these countries.
In this post, we’re going to announce our next big travel plans for 2020, which is in just a few days!
Table of Contents
Live Video Trip Announcement
Why Are We Going?
In 2019 we effectively used Grenada in the Caribbean as our home base. We’ve been returning to this beautiful little island since we first came on a pet sitting job back in 2014. We love it here and because it’s well-connected to New York and Miami, it’s actually not a bad place to fly out of when we go travelling.
We also have a great group of friends here, a nice house and a lifestyle that we love. But after spending half of 2019 here and almost all of 2018, we’re excited about a new adventure.
Grenada is a paradise. There are so many things to do here. White sand beaches, diving, sailing, mountains, hikes, waterfalls, friendly people… it’s incredible.
But when we stay here for a long time, we start to crave a bit of city life.
This is likely due to the fact that we live outside of the main “cities” in Grenada, so any time we want to go to a decent restaurant or go out for some drinks with friends, we have to drive for almost a half an hour.
This doesn’t sound like a big deal, and really it’s not, but for anyone who has driven at night in Grenada, you’ll know the roads aren’t the easiest to drive in the dark. There are people on the street, goats, dogs and a lot potholes along the way…and being high-beamed the entire drive isn’t all that fun!
This means that Dariece and I often end up staying at home after dark and don’t often venture out to have a “night out”.
We love it here though! Don’t get me wrong. Grenada is our home, so we use this time to relax, get work done and enjoy the beautiful nature around our house. But after a few months, we’re ready to be “in the thick of it” again.
That’s why for our next trip, we’re moving into apartments in the center of a few cities to explore as locals, indulge in a wide variety of restaurants and cafes, take part in some nightlife, and enjoy amenities that only cities can offer.
It sounds hilarious to say because many people would love to live in the Caribbean, but just as you need a holiday from the hustle and bustle of the city, sometimes it’s nice to have a break from peace and quiet and head into society for a while.
Where Are We Going?
Here it goes, the big travel announcement. We are going back to Europe!
This might not be as exciting for some of you who have followed us since we backpacked through Central Asia, hitchhiked through Africa, or explored the Middle East, but trust me… it’s exciting for us. We can’t wait.
Europe has been calling us back for a long time. Even though we’ve spent a considerable amount of time travelling around the continent, we’ve spent most of our time in the East. This time we want to live and travel around more of Western Europe.
While we do have some things planned and booked, there are a few business conferences in the area that we would like to attend, and if a press trip pops up, we’ll consider agreeing to that as well.
This trip is about being Digital Nomads, while working from our laptops and experiencing living in different places.
2019 ended on a massive “low” for us in both our business and personal lives, so we’re looking forward to focusing a lot on our website, getting inspired by new destinations, and spending quality time with one another in these romantic European cities!
Paris
We’ve actually never been to France, so we’re extremely excited to finally visit Paris. We will only be in the city for a few days before flying to our next destination, so we won’t be able to see anything but the capital (we like to travel slower), but we’ve rented a cute Airbnb apartment in Paris right near the Eiffel Tower and we’ll be exploring as many of the neighbourhoods as we can in the time we’re there.
We wanted to see a different side of Paris as well while we’re there, so we booked some experiences with locals through Airbnb. If you haven’t yet checked out Airbnb Experiences yet, you need to go download the app or check out the website to find thousands of cool tours you can do with locals all over the world.
The experiences we have booked in Paris are a chef’s table dinner in a Parisian chef’s home and a wine and cheese tasting experience… yum. We also booked a free walking tour on our first day to take us to some of the lesser-known parts of the city.
While planning our trip to Paris, we realized that the city is actually quite complicated and not that easy to conquer, so we plan on sharing with you guys exactly how we got around, what neighbourhoods we like the most (there are more than a dozen in the old town alone) and more off-track places we find.
Barcelona
This is another city that has been on our European bucket list for years. We visited Spain back in 2011, but we only went to the far south. We were in the country for just a week but we visited Malaga, Estepona and Rhonda. We loved those three towns actually, so it’s surprising that we haven’t returned until now.
Since visiting Spain, we’ve heard so many people rave about Barcelona and many digital nomads are also relocating there. So we rented an apartment in Gracia for a week and we’ll be using it as our base to explore the city. We joined an “Uncensored Underground Walking Tour” of the city (again through Airbnb Experiences) and will be checking out the red light district and some of the more seedy parts of Barcelona.
It will be fascinating to see the underbelly of the city and get a better understanding of why it is the way it is.
Even though this is our first time in Barcelona, we’re well aware that it is the pickpocketing capital of the world, so we’ll definitely be going low-key and keeping a close grip on our belongings, but crime hasn’t deterred us from travelling places before, so Barcelona will be no different.
We also booked a tapas and wine walking tour which, if you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll know is right up our alley. As we have a bit more time in Barcelona, we hope to get some work done during the mornings and then head out and explore during the afternoons.
Again we’ll be coming out with guides and posts about things to do in Barcelona on this blog so stay tuned.
Rome
From Barcelona, we fly to Rome.
Ah, Rome. There is just something about this city. When the end of 2019 had some pretty serious lows, Dariece and I both sat down and thought: “Where is our happy place?”
The answer is always, Rome.
Ancient history, delicious wine, incredible food and being surrounded by people who have a passion for life. Where better than Rome?
We’ve been to Rome before, but this time we plan to stay for around 3 weeks. This is when we’ll really be settling down a bit and living like locals. We have rented an apartment in the Trastevere neighbourhood where we’ll base ourselves to explore more of not just the city, but also some of the small towns and villages surrounding it.
Our plan is to work for the day and head out to explore in the late afternoons and evenings. Because we’re so close to many restaurants, bars and cafes, we’re most looking forward to being in the middle of the action.
We’re just a few minutes walk from Campo de’ Fiori and we’ve already explored many of the sights in the city, so we won’t feel like we have to do “the touristy stuff” while we’re there (although we still do have to see the Vatican City).
We’re excited to walk out of our front door and actually enjoy the nightlife. Instead of settling in at 7:00 pm as we do here in Grenada, we can head out to a restaurant or wine bar at that hour, enjoy a platter of meats and cheeses, some delicious red wine and fresh homemade pasta. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
As digital nomads, we are fortunate to be able to work from anywhere, and by living in Rome for a while, we feel we’ll really be taking advantage of this lifestyle.
But we’re not just staying in Rome for the entire time. We also booked a couple of amazing experiences around the city. One is a pasta-making class with an 80-year-old Grandma in a small romantic village about an hour train ride outside of Rome. The other is a vineyard tour and wine tasting, also outside of town.
We also booked some experiences in the city, including an underground food & wine walking tour and we’re eying up some other ones that we might decide on once we’re there.
We’ve already written quite a lot about Rome on this blog, but after spending another 3 weeks in the city, we’ll be able to beef up that content and really give you guys a better understanding of things to do outside of the main tourist sights.
We will also be writing about our experience living in Rome, where to find apartments, the best neighbourhoods in Rome, the cost of living, etc.
This is our happy place and we can’t wait to have this time together…while eating and drinking our way around the city!
Lisbon
Lisbon has been on our living abroad bucket list since 2015 when we first started hearing of the city in the digital nomad groups. It seems that this hip and beautiful seaside capital has it all. Bright pastel-coloured architecture, a funky city center, edgy neighbourhoods, great restaurants, cool co-working spaces and a large digital nomad community, we can’t wait to finally explore Lisbon.
We’ll be staying in a bright apartment just outside of the main hustle and bustle of the city (which can be quite loud at night apparently). We’ll be living in Lisbon and working on the blog for a little over 3 weeks. We’re hoping to take part in some online entrepreneurship seminars, meet up with some other bloggers and digital nomads and just explore the city for a while.
As of the time of writing this post, we haven’t booked any walking tours, underground tours or Airbnb Experiences yet, but we plan to definitely do some wine tastings, some cultural and historical walking tours and local foodie experiences.
After living in Lisbon for a few weeks, we’ll have a good understanding of the best areas to stay in Lisbon and what it’s like to live and travel there. We’ll be sharing posts on this blog about the cost of living, places to see, off-track experiences, etc.
Hopefully, we’ll also be able to report back on the digital nomad scene there, the conferences and events that happen and the co-working spaces around the city.
At this point in our travels around Europe, it’ll be time to do some exploring outside of the cities. We chose to spend quite a bit of time in Rome and Lisbon because we need to get some work done on the business, but after 6 weeks we should be caught up enough to head out and explore.
Currently, our plan is to rent a car and drive up the coast of Portugal to check out the city of Porto and some towns in the Algarve…but nothing is set in stone.
After Lisbon?
We haven’t booked anything yet, but we do have some amazing ideas floating around our travel brains at the moment. We’re going to play it by ear and see how we feel after 2 months in Europe and how far along we are with the business plans, but if we’re ready, we are thinking of these few ideas:
Asia?
Seeing as we can only stay in the Schengen Zone in Europe for 90 days in any 180 day period, we’re thinking we might leave Europe altogether for a month or so and head to Asia. Perhaps an apartment in Chiang Mai or a villa in Bali? We haven’t decided yet.
Slovenia?
We’ve always wanted to travel around Slovenia and in particular, we’ve been fascinated with living in the nation’s stunning, green capital for Lubjianna. If we’re not too worried about our Schengen Visas running out, we may head to Slovenia for a few weeks to live and travel around this hiking and trekking paradise.
Van Life?
This is something we’ve always wanted to do. We found a very cool RV for rent in Czechia (Czech Republic) and we’d love to rent it for a month or two and drive around Europe in it. Van life has always been on our travel bucket list and while we’ve planned many overland trips in the past, we’ve always done them by car.
Living out of a van or RV would be such a unique travel experience for us. Of course, because of the Schengen limitations, we wouldn’t be able to spend much time in Central or Western Europe, but we’d love to pick it up in Czechia, then head to Austria, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Western Ukraine and Poland before dropping the vehicle back off where we got it.
How Are We Getting There?
As I mentioned earlier in the post, Grenada makes a pretty decent base when it comes to flights, thanks to connections through New York and Miami. Believe it or not, we’re flying from Grenada to New York direct for $192 USD, spending the night in an Airbnb in New York, then flying from New York to Paris direct for $132 USD.
That’s incredible right?! All the way from Grenada to Paris with only one stop for $324 each. The best part is that we used our credit card points to pay for these, so they’re actually free.
These basic fares aren’t even special discounted flight deals though. The flight from Grenada to New York is with JetBlue and they run this same journey every day of the week except for Monday and you can usually get the fare for under $200.
The flight from New York to Paris is with Norwegian Airlines and they’re currently serving many major American cities with some of the cheapest flights imaginable.
We might not be close to much way down here in Grenada, but at least we can find awesome fares like these through New York and Miami.
We could’ve done the entire journey in one day with just a 3-hour layover in JFK airport, but we don’t like to do long flights anymore or stress out about tight connections. We’d rather just spend the night in a hotel room or Airbnb rather than enduring 19 hours of straight travel.
How Long Will We Go For?
For now, we booked an open-ended ticket. We have no idea how long we’ll be travelling for. We have until mid-March booked right now and at that time we’ll reassess and decide what we want to do, continue travelling around Europe, go to Asia or return home to Grenada.
What You Can Expect From The Blog
Our plan is to write a lot of content about our experiences on this trip, what we think of the cities, what it’s like to live and travel around these countries, the cost of living etc. We’ll also be putting together some useful videos on the YouTube Channel to give you a better understanding of what these places are like. If you haven’t yet, make sure you subscribe.
Thank You!
If you’ve read this far in the post, you must be one of the true fans of this blog, so thank you very much for that! If you have read the whole post, please comment below and tell us how long you’ve been reading Goats On The Road. Also, give us some ideas of where we should visit and things we should do in the places listed above!
Please stay tuned for useful articles, videos and social shares for more about our upcoming travels. Thank you for reading and have a great 2020!
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Special Thanks to Shutterstock for providing some of the images in this blog post and on many other posts on this blog. Sign-up here if you want to have access to their incredible library of professional photography.
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What is the best time to visit france, places to visit, do you have any prior article on the same. budget required for france tour if you can explain will be an addon
What a trip! So excited for you guys! (Not all that excited about the “open-ended ticket… please come back). So happy to be able to keep up to date with where you and what you’re up to whilst you’re away! Sounds incredible, looking forward to seeing and hearing all about your adventures!
If you have time check out Bilbao & the northern areas of Spain. Lots of wine & food & art. Haven’t been to the northern beaches but they are supposed to be nice.
Thanks Lily! We are definitely returning to Grenada, we just don’t have an exact date yet Looking forward to sharing our findings, photos and stories with you!
Have an amazing trip. Look forward to your posts. Just going through the Panama Canal whilst writing this.
Thanks for the recommendation. There are so many places to visit in Spain
Oh wow, that’s amazing! I hope you’re having a great trip. Thanks for reading and commenting, we’re looking forward to sharing our findings and photos
I am absolutely loving your website/blog! Every time one of your newsletters arrives in my inbox I excitedly open it.
Hearing that you’re off to Europe in 3 days is just mega. I have been meaning to email you properly, which I will try and do soon as my boyfriend and I are off for a 6 month adventure later this year having secured sabbaticals from our jobs. Your website has just been a never ending source of useful info! However I just had to message you about Lisbon – you will love it, it is the most wonderful city. If you want to book onto anything check out We Hate Tourism Tours. I did an open top jeep tour with some girlfriends and it was fab. They do other experiences too- including some foodie experiences. Hope this is helpful. Sally x
Hi, from Roaming Uncle Richard .
Your new trip sounds great. I’m no great fan of cities, but I did enjoy Rome, although I advise you to wear decent footwear, as the cobbled streets made my feet very sore.
I’m planning to go around the Annapurna Circuit Trek again in April, raising funds for 2 charities, as well as hoping to arrive at Thorang La for my 75th birthday, on April 10th.
I’ve previously mentioned about the Hornbill Festival in Nagaland, north east India, which I’m sure you would enjoy, starting in December 1st each year, and lasts for 10 days. You will find the friendliest head hunters you could ever wish to meet, there. Honest !
Safe journey and I hope to hear from you soon,
Hi Sally,
Wow thanks so much for the kind words! It’s always nice to hear from our readers, so thanks for commenting Exciting that you and hour bf are off on a 6 month adventure…where to?! We’re looking forward to Lisbon and will check out the tour company you suggest. Cheers!
I’ve been reading your stuff since since around 2015-16 I believe. Not exactly sure but around there somewhere. While you’re in Portugal, I definitely recommend checking out Viana do Costello. It’s a beautiful town in northern Portugal and there is a cool community of young entrepreneurs and travelers there I was lucky enough to meet in a while back. I hope to visit there sometime this year, but probably not before May or June. If you want any contacts there shoot me a message.
How exciting! We’re going to Rome, Switzerland (Murren) and Paris in June. It’s our family’s first time to Europe (2 adults & 2 teenagers) and we’re so excited. We have an AirBnB in Rome, near the Colosseum and an AirBnB in Paris near Marais district. Can’t wait to hear your adventures!!
Nick & Dariece – it will be fun to read (& see piccies) of your extended travels in 2020. We wish you good health, fun, safety & happiness. Cheers from Australia
Been following you guys for a few years now, and have traveled to a lot of the countries in your articles since taking early retirement in 2015. Paris, Barcelona and Rome, definitely watch out for the pickpockets: No wallet in your back pocket, spread your money around in different pockets, locks on backpacks, etc.
I don’t recall you doing a trip to Turkey. There are quite a few things to see and do there also. Worth a stop on your way back to Asia.
Ray & Debbie
Texans seeing the world
Hi Dariece and Nick! I’ve been a fan for years <3
Do you ever do "meet ups"? I'm going to be in Paris in April. How cool would that be to meet you?
How did you get an "open ended ticket" for that price. Do tell all!
You had me at “Europe” and staying in apartments! All the places in Europe mentioned are of interest to me as well as living as a local. Looking forward to hearing more about these adventures. Thanks for the tips on low cost flights from Grenada!
Hi Nick and Dariece,
I’ve been following your blog since it started and before! . This sounds like a great trip. We were in Barcelona
lately and found this restaurant a lot of fun.
Restaurant Pirineus
Carrer de Duran i Bas, 3
08002 Barcelona
Spain
Hi Guys
Amazing to have a new trip planned, have been following you guys for some time, and Europe is definitely exciting. Surprising to hear some of the places you’ve not been to yet. Make sure you get to Italy and have a few big lunches.
Like many of your readers i’m sure, I am someone who also loves to travel, having done a good bit of my own. I have hitchhiked the middle east, driven the length of Africa, and later this year will be going overground via train from Shanghai to London, in total having visited almost 70 countries (so far). I am also someone who is more than extremely concerned and distressed by the ecological breakdown the world is now going through. Likewise, I am sure a great many of your readers, and people who love to travel in general, are in this same boat. The natural world and biodiversity it offers being precisely the reason many people take themselves away.
As time has moved on it has brought into full undeniable view how our travel feeds the issues of climate breakdown and global heating. I am wondering if this decade you intend, hopefully even for your upcoming trip, to bring these issues into how you travel, and promote travel? I don’t intend to stop travelling, but I intend to make every effort I can to travel as cleanly as possible, such as only taking trains within Europe from now on, and drastically reducing long haul flights. For example I notice that on your itinerary for this upcoming trip you will be flying from Paris to Barcelona, which is a journey very easily done overground. As a lot of your advice is how to do things on a budget, I’ll point out that I am not, at least by western standards, hugely wealthy, so these are changes which for me personally will take planning and consideration, but I feel that as responsible travellers it is the very minimum we will have to do in order to move around with our heads held high.
I am also wondering if you currently, or plan to in future, offset your carbon when you do fly? (Which is something that the lonely planet will do for its authors and staff), which again I feel the very least that responsible travellers who recognise the fragility of the situation should do.
I hope to be able to enjoy your content, and of course carry on clicking on your links, this coming decade.
Happy travels.
Marco
Hi Nick and Darice,
Love you blog and I’m looking forward to reading about your upcoming trip! If you haven’t purchased your ticket yet to go up in the Eiffel consider booking a reservation to eat there — two restaurants to choose from. No waiting in line was the way to go. Our dinner reservation got us up one level and we purchased two additional tickets to get up to the top after dinner. Best time to go so you see it during daytime and at night with the lights twinkling every hour after dark.
We, too, like the open ended ticket. We are cruising from Vancouver BC Canada to Tokyo Japan in September and haven’t planned anything yet for the six months following that, but hope to spend 3 of them in Asia and another 3 in Australia (for the 3rd time) or New Zealand (2nd time). After that not sure. Hopefully we’ll read about your travels in Europe and decide to return there again — maybe to Spain and Portugal.
Can’t wait to hear about your van travel. Haven’t done that yet. We also want to do a pet sit on a river barge, or one on a sailboat.
I’ve not done much on my blog, just stuck I guess.
I’ve been following you for 2 to 3 years and I read every word of every post!
Diane (and David)
SitsFoFree@gmail.com
You go guys. Make me jealous!
Wow amazing itinerary. We are still overlanding through South America in our truck camper, we drove all the way south to Ushuaia. We just came back from a 2 week expedition to South Georgia Island and Antarctica so you may consider that as a future destination. We absolutely adored it!
We’ve been traveling through the Americas for almost 5 years and ready for a new continent which will probably be Africa but before we go we are considering renting an apartment for a month or two and I remember you guys doing that in Thailand I believe. It was a 2 bedroom with a pool. Would you recommend it and what was your monthly budget.
I’ve been reading your newsletter for a couple years now and really enjoy it!
Cheers from Argentina
If you want to stay in Europe avoid schengen hassles you could visit my own country Ireland ! As its actually not in schengen. US citizens can stay for upto 90 days. If you need some inspiration or advice on places to visit in Ireland check out my post.
Sounds like a great way to start the year! We’re spending a month in Malaga right now, and then we’ll be in Lisbon from mid February to mid March, might be fun to meet up if we’re in Lisbon at the same time.
Thanks for reading and commenting! Arriving at Thorang La on your 75th would be an incredible feeling We would happily do the Annapurna Circuit again as well, it’s such a beautiful route. Enjoy your trip.
Hey Mark, thanks for reading and commenting on our post…and for following since 2015 Viana do Costello sounds interesting, we’ll have to look into it. Cheers!
That sounds like a great trip! Enjoy your family Europe trip
Thank you for commenting Coral!
Thanks for following along and for commenting on this post We’re aware of the pickpocket issues and will be cautious. We spent about 5 weeks in Turkey back in 2012 and LOVED our stay there. We’ve been back to Istanbul a couple of times since then as well. Such a great country to travel! All the best
Hi Karen,
We’ve only done a meet-up once, which was in Malta and it was a lot of fun. We might do some here in Europe, I’m not sure! We’ll be out of Paris in January actually. For tickets, we just booked a one-way using Google Flights, and we flew with Norwegian Airways. We search for a day that’s the best value in terms of flight duration, being non-stop, and what time it leaves and arrives at. I hope this helps!
Thanks for the comment! We’re very much looking forward to this Europe trip, and to sharing our findings. Make sure to follow us on our social media channels for up to date posts. Cheers
Yes! One of our biggest and earliest fans 😉 Thanks for always reading and commenting on our posts! I’ll look into this restaurant. Cheers!
Hey Marco,
Thanks so much for the awesome comment and for coming at this from such an open-minded angle. This topic has become so political and so polarizing that it’s almost impossible to do anything correctly. Nothing we do will ever be “the right way” in everyone’s eyes.
However, all of the flights in the itinerary you’ve mentioned and all of our future journeys have been carbon offset though programs audited by Gold Standard and other third-party accreditation.
Another topic not talked about enough is the consumption of meat and beef, the latter of which we have nearly completely eliminated from our diets, which may have a larger impact than our flights.
That’s not to say you won’t see a ribeye steak on the blog when we head to Argentina, or a bit of sausage when we’re in Germany, but once we can calculate our rather sporadic diet in carbon offsets accurately, we’ll also consider that.
We feel that carbon offsetting is the best option for now and we focus more of our donations on local social projects with companies and non-profits that we either know personally or have worked with in the past.
For now, this is what we do. We do avoid flying in many cases but won’t hop on a 12-hour train with 3 changes when we have limited time in the region when we can offset a flight and be there in an hour and a half. Until Elon Musk finishes and globalizes the hyperloop, this is a necessary evil for the amount of travel and the type of work we do.
Either way, I understand and agree with your concern. As I said, not everyone will be happy with this response and carbon offsetting in itself can be controversial, so I hope this doesn’t start a comment war.
We do what we can for the environment and more for less fortunate people. We don’t claim to be “eco-bloggers” as to avoid the millions of hypocrisies that almost always comes with that statement. Instead, we keep our donations and offsets to ourselves and choose to highlight the life of working online and travelling instead.
I hope you can see why we wouldn’t want to move too much in that direction at this time.
Thank-you
Nick
As you know we have been following your blogs since your first trip. We’ve enjoyed being part of your travel lives and are so proud of all your accomplishments. I hope this new chapter will be filled with great fun and new and exciting adventures. Keep safe. Love to you both.
Nan and Charlie
Following a few yrs. used your PV Mexico stuff, food tour was great. We been to italy about 4-5 times is our must stop at country if in EU.
Go to Porto! We visited as a day trip from Lisbon and wished we could have stayed the night. I also LOVED Girona (an easy day trip from Barcelona). I included my post below: BARCELONA TO GIRONA DAY TRIP | A COMPLETE GUIDE.
https://abroadwithash.com/barcelona-to-girona-day-trip-a-complete-guide/
Thank you top fans! We’re looking forward to spending this time together in Europe xo
Thanks for following along and commenting Glad you enjoyed the PV food tour! Agree, Italy is a must visit – no matter how many times one has been…
Thanks for the suggestion!