As retirees on a fixed income, we generally look for ways to minimize our travel expenses. That is why most of our travel is to places where we can drive rather than having to pay for airfare. It’s also part of the reason why we look for house sits whenever we can.

We had had our eye on visiting Europe for a long time but hadn’t felt we could fit it in to our budget. There were certain places that we were especially interested in seeing and we also had some relatives in Europe who we wanted to visit.

Two things came together that helped us to finally take the leap and go to Europe. First, and most importantly, Icelandair had a sale on airfares between several East Coast cities in the US and a few cities in Europe. Normally we are located in the western US, but due to our recent Massachusetts house sit, we could easily fly out of Boston, which was one of the participating cities. Second, we lined up a couple of house sits in Europe, which would reduce our lodging expenses there.

We organized the trip such that we would travel on our own for about two weeks, then house sit for a week, travel again on our own, house sit for another week, and finish up with some more travel on our own. This would help break up the trip, giving us periods of time when we would be traveling and sightseeing, interspersed with more restful periods when we would spend a full week at someone’s home, taking care of their pets, and washing our laundry.

We haven’t traveled like this before. Stay tuned to see how it works out!