I may be overdoing it.
I think in the year ahead I will be away more than I am home. I’m excited about all the trips I have planned between now and the end of 2025, but also worried that I’m going to wear myself out.
Here’s what I’ve got scheduled. Tell me if you think I’m nuts.
Rome
Just three weeks ago I got back from Africa, and I leave for Rome three weeks from today. I already wrote about my plans for Rome, where I’m staying for eleven nights.
But that’s just the first part of a longer trip.
Greece, Albania, and North Macedonia
From Rome I fly to Athens to join a tour with Overseas Adventure Travel for the fifth time. They call this Ancient Lands of Alexander the Great. There’s a pre-trip extension to Crete that starts with one day (two nights) in Athens and then two nights in Chania and two nights in Heraklion. Then we fly to Thessaloniki, where we stay for three nights. After that, two more locations in northern Greece, two locations in Albania, and two locations in North Macedonia.
I won’t be doing the post-trip extension to Serbia. Instead, at the end of the tour I’m flying on my own to Naxos, the largest island in the Cyclades. I’ll stay there four nights before coming home.
All told, I’ll be away for forty days, making this my longest trip to date. (But not the longest I have planned.)
I’ll be back before the trip to detail the itinerary.
Southeast Asia
After I get home from that trip, I have just three weeks before I leave again. And it will be another OAT tour, number 6!
This one is called Ancient Kingdoms: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia & Vietnam, and yes, it goes to those four countries.
I’m doing both the pre-trip and post-trip extensions, plus I’m arriving a few days early and going to a beach resort in Ao Nang.
Total time away on this trip: 41 days. My longest trip to date, but still not the longest I have planned.
I’ll have a detailed itinerary posted before I depart.
Morocco and Iberia
My next trip starts just about a month after I get back from Southeast Asia.
Morocco has been near the top of my bucket list for a while, so I’m finally going. And since I’ll be right next door anyway, I decided to combine it with Spain and Portugal.
Morocco is another OAT tour, number 7. They call it Morocco Sahara Odyssey.
My original plan was to do a self-guided rail tour around Spain and Portugal after the Morocco tour. But I found myself becoming overwhelmed by all the challenges of organizing my itinerary, so I ended up booking OAT #7: Northern Spain & Portugal: Pilgrimage into the Past, and OAT #8: Back Roads of Iberia: Spanish Paradores & Portuguese Pousadas.
I’m doing the pre-trip extension in France, but not the post-trip to Lisbon, which is part of the other tour.
I’m skipping both the pre-trip and post-trip extensions, since they’re covered by the other tour.
There are a lot of parts of Spain that aren’t covered by either of these tours, and because of the timing, I’m able to add some destinations before, between, and after the three tours. I’ll provide details of my itinerary.
Altogether, these three tours plus the independent travel will have me away for three months. And that, my friends, is the longest trip I’ve ever taken and ever plan to take.
But it’s not my last trip of 2025.
London and Norway
I’ve got a longer stretch of time at home before my next trip: 44 days. Foolishly, I’ve managed to plan to be in Ajijic during the most unpleasant time of the year, when it is hot and dry and dusty.
Another bucket list item for me has been to take the Hurtigruten Coastal Express up the coast of Norway. So I booked that cruise for next summer, thinking I’d combine it with another destination or destinations in Europe.
But then I did some calculations and realized that at the end of the cruise, I’ll be at Schengen day 84. The Schengen area includes 29 European countries, and US passport holders are allowed to visit these countries visa-free for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. With my travels in Spain, Portugal, and France, plus the Hurtigruten cruise, I won’t be able to add much time in Schengen countries.
So I started looking at non-Schengen countries, of which the best options seemed to be Ireland and the UK. And then I tried to figure out flights, and I had to eliminate Ireland because flight schedules were just too complicated.
So I settled on a week in London prior to going to Norway to start the cruise.
Altogether this will be one of the shortest trips I’ve taken in a while. Including travel days, I’ll be gone just over three weeks.
But that’s still not my last trip of 2025.
The Surprise Trip
No, it’s not a surprise to me. But I’ve decided to let you all be surprised until my last trip of 2025 is underway. I leave in late November and will be gone for about a month.
That means I plan to be home for more than four months next summer and fall. That’s the longest stretch in about two years.
By then I should have a good idea whether this pace of traveling is good for me. Maybe by 2026 (a milestone year for me) I’ll consider cutting back on my travels.
Or maybe not.
What do you think? Am I traveling too much? Am I going to be burnt out? Will I miss my dog too much?
Timothy Welch
Sounds WONDERFUL to me…those of us that are addicted to travel! Enjoy each and every moment abroad and at home. Tim
Lane
I had no doubt you’d be a fan of my plans, Tim!
Tammy
Lane, fast travel, which is what you are doing, is exhausting after a time. However, if you don’t want to slow travel (one month in each location or more), then you need to figure out how long is too long to be away from home. To date, are you always ready to come home after each trip or do you wish you were staying longer? What is right for others, might not be right for you. Only you can decide. Now that we are retired, we are doing a bit of both. Fast travel through some places and then ending a 3+ month trip with two weeks in Vienna and two weeks in Budapest. But, many of the places we are staying one week. You are certainly getting around this big, blue world of ours!
Lane
Good point about fast vs slow travel. I’d say I’m actually doing a combination. Ten days in Rome. A week in London. Twelve days on the Hurtigruten cruise. And almost all the fast travel I’m doing is on tours, which I find less exhausting than do-it-yourself trips.
However, my last fast do-it-myself trip, to Scotland, was five weeks, and I didn’t want to come home.
I guess I’ll see how I feel around this time next year.
Tammy
A combination is good and what we are doing as well. At least for now, while we are still young and spry! You could do a year in review at the end of 2025 and tell us if you thought it was too much.
Joy Sherman
Hi Lane,
Since travel is really the focus of your life, and is something you really love, I think you should go for it! You can entertain and educate those of us who are stay-at-homers, who prefer gardening and who love going to concert in which our former students are performing.
I absolutely love your travel blogs!
Joy
Trudy Crippen
You are traveling like I did when I was working and it can be exhausting as well as it is fun. One Thursday in September I thought I had a break so I dropped my passport in the mail because I did not have any travel scheduled. The next day my manager told me I had a meeting in Rüsselsheim on the following Friday at 10:00 am. I spent the day talking to US passport offices until one actually told me how to get an emergency passport. The next Thursday I was in the Houston passport office. Then I flew back to Dallas and off to Frankfurt, where I made my way to Rüsselsheim. I few to Brussels that afternoon and moved into my hotel in Antwerp. I will always remember the look on the clerk’s face when I told him I would check out in 12 weeks. I met the team on Monday. Smoothed the ruffled feathers of Marc, who thought he would be managing the project, and got started learning about warranty. I got home on December 17, just in time to buy a Christmas tree. I traveled every weekend that I did not go to Germany. This is what road warriors do.