It has now been exactly four years since we kicked off The Happy Idiots tour by traveling to catsit for Seuss in Paris. Wow, time flies when you are having fun. We have done so much, seen so many incredible places , learned a few (or maybe a lot) of lessons the hard way and most importantly met lots of great people.

I compiled a few short lists (in Excel of course)…

We have traveled about 120,000 miles almost all by air. Here is a map of our travels so far. We have visited 5 continents, 22 countries, 45 airports and taken 84 flights on 16 different airlines (this does not include where we landed in the Maasi Mara and in Tsavo because I think an airport is defined by having a paved runway, not just a dirt landing strip).

1. We visited Istanbul and Buenos Aires twice.
2. Stayed in Paris three times.
3. Took trains from Denmark to Sweden, between Paris & London, and all over Italy.
4. Rode ferries across the Bosporus Strait in Istanbul, through the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn and water taxis all around Venice.
5. We added Africa to the list of continents that we have visited, leaving us with just Australia (which we will get to at some point) and Antarctica (which we won’t).
6. Touched the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic Oceans.
7. Watched baseball in Mexico, polo and tennis in Argentina, football in Brazil and pesäpallo in Finland. At least we understood baseball, tennis and football.
8. We traveled to the southernmost city in the world – Ushuaia in Argentina (latitude 54.8 South) for the summer solstice. Eight months later we traveled to northernmost town – Longyearben (latitude of 72.8 North), which is above the Arctic Circle and had 24 hour a day sunlight. We, of course, visited the southernmost distillery and the northernmost brewery in the world, just to make sure that they did exist ;-).

People often ask us what our favorite place is, and quite frankly we give different answers on different days. Some things are hard to compare. How do you compare the magnificence of the night sky in the Atacama Desert with the grandeur of a 2,000-year-old coliseum in Rome with the beauty and symmetry of the grand mosques in Istanbul? Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

My favorite natural beauties:

1. The Atacama Desert (Chile): Tt is stark and otherworldly. There are salt pools, geysers at 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) and, because it is so high, has so few clouds and very limited ground light, the number of stars you can see is just amazing.
2. Iguazu Falls (Brazil & Argentina): It is nearly 2 miles across and has 275 individual waterfalls. The power of the water is just breathtaking (and if you get there, take the boat ride to the bottom of the falls).
3. Silfra (Iceland): The place where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet, and are separating from each other. The water in the lake is crystal clear (and freezing cold) and you can snorkel or scuba between the two plates. You can almost feel the earth splitting apart.
4. The Maasai Mara (Kenya): Staying in a place where the animals roam free and being able to get close to them is very special and certainly something that should be on everyone’s bucket list. Like the others above it, it reminds you of how small and insignificant we are compared to the magnificence of nature.

My favorite cities:

1. Paris, because it is it Paris, the museums, the architecture, the parks and the cemetaries all make it such a wonderful city. There is so much to do, so much to see and it is so easy to navigate.
2. Istanbul, because it is such a clash of cultures. The gorgeous mosques, the historic Galata Tower and the difference between the European side and the Asian side, just make it a wonderful place to visit. The hills are challenging and the language is hard, but I love it.
3. Rome, because the history is stacked one layer on top of another, I feel that I could never get tired of visiting Rome, and if I did, I am only an hour of two by train from so many other wonderful places. Florence, Venice and Sorrento just to name a few.
4. Buenos Aires is not really a city for history or museums, but is beautiful, lively and has great food if you love meat. It is relatively inexpensive for Americans for most things, but their economy is a challenge (the current inflation rate is DOWN to only 39%, in 2024 it was 117%). On the bright side, the steak is excellent and very cheap, the people are very nice; how can you not love a place that classifies wine as food, and so it is exempt from all taxes?

When we reached the two-year mark I wrote that you need to be flexible when things go wrong, because they always go wrong. Our biggest disasters:

1. We started year three by planning to stay in Valencia, Spain, for six months. We made all the appropriate moves, filed what we thought were all the right papers and expected smooth sailing. Ha. We spent hours upon hours at city hall, talking to lawyers and trying to the proper information for our lease to no avail. After about two months of failure, we gave up and headed to Istanbul to ensure that I didn’t overstay my visa.
2. In year one, we planned a three-month trip to Morocco. We had Thanksgiving with our family in the U.S., then headed for New York for our flight, first to Barcelona and then to Fez. Nope. Morocco had an uptick in COVID and closed their borders. We were literally on the way to the airport. We pivoted, and went to Florida for a month, then Guadalajara for two.
3. Later in year one, we had tickets to Israel. We were in Rome, just needed our PCR tests for COVID (no more than 24 hours before the flight), we found the testing place (always a bit of a challenge when you don’t speak the language) and got tested. Sue failed. She had no symptoms and passed the rapid test four times in two days. But, Israel was not going to happen. Once again, we changed our plans and headed to Venice and then to Amsterdam.

You just learn to make lemonade and boy, have we gotten good at it.

What do we miss living this life?

1. Our family. Yes, we know we could stop this silliness and settle down near them, but where is the fun in that?
2. Our friends. Sue and I are alone together. If we make one friend in a city that is a huge achievement, and when I say we, I really mean Sue. When we return to Chicago, we need to get all our friends time in during a very short period, and that has to hold us over until we return, in six months or a year.
3. Our spice cabinet. So many foods are available anywhere we go, that we can pretty much cook anything we want. The spices are the thing we lack. Every month or so when we move on, we need to get new spices, so we try and minimize the list because we never use them up, which means our list of things we can cook is more limited than when we had our own kitchen.
4. Having extra clothes. This is my wardrobe:
   • Three pairs of pants
   • Five polo shirts (now four because one got stained, and I haven’t gotten around to replacing it.)
   • Four T-shirts (two for the gym, two for the weekend)
   • One button up shirt – long sleeve
   • One button up shirt – short sleeve
   • One flannel shirt for cool weather
   • 9 pairs of underwear
   • 12 pairs of socks (some for the gym, a couple of pairs for hiking, the rest of normal wear)
   • One pair each of sneakers, hiking boots, Birkenstocks and black shoes
   • One puffy coat for cold weather (with hat and gloves)
   • One fleece
   • One raincoat.

This is my highlight reel (again, not in any order):

1. The night sky in Atacama
2. Spending my mother’s 85th birthday with her in Brazil
3. Watching a group of lions eat a hippo (which some might say is not dissimilar to watching my mother eat her cake for her birthday ;-)).
4. Watching baby elephants playing
5. Seeing the Perito Moreno glacier calve
6. Standing in front of Teotihuacan
7. Visiting St. Peter’s Cathedral
8. Musees de L’Orangerie et D’Orsay
9. Snorkeling in Silfra
10. Seeing Galileo’s middle finger facing toward Rome.
11. Fallas in Valencia. The build 800+ statutes and then burn them all at the end of the festival. It is magic.

My one word of advice (since no one asked) is to always learn to say Thank you in the language of every country you visit. Here is our list so far:

Gracias – Spanish
Bedankt / Dank u – Flemish
Obrigado / Obrigada – Portuguese
Tak – Danish
Merci – French
Danke – German
Takk – Icelandic
Grazie – Italian
Takk – Norwegian
Teşekkürler – Turkish
Kiitos – Finnish
Ashe / Ashe oleng – Maasai (Maa)

Kiitos lukemisesta (Thanks for reading in Finnish)

Just a few of our many thousands of photos:

Year 1:

Year 2:

Year 3:

Year 4: