Sicily 2021 #13 - Accepting Aging, How We Must Transition To Keep Traveling

Before the pandemic shut travel down, Wife and I were in deep discussions on what we needed to change if we were to keep traveling. These changes all related to how we were going to handle the realities of getting older, specifically our declining ability to physically do many of the things that had defined our halcyon travel period of 2014 through 2018. 

Those four years were marked by our traveling like manic gerbils on a diet of pure crack. 6 to 8 week trips were the norm. 4 countries and 12 different destinations were not unusual. If a trips seemed too ordinary like one to Italy, we fit in Albania. Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Greece in one self-planned trip? Why not? A lot of this was motivated by these factors.

• We are insatiably curious
• There is SO MUCH world. How could we see as much as we could before it got too late for us?
• We get bored easily. Guidebooks might tell you it would take a week to see a certain locale. We'd find ourselves ready to move on in a few days.

But the big problem is not the visiting and doing when we were in a place. It is the physical process of moving from place to place. This includes most of all the movement of luggage and other stuff (like food and supplies if you are going from rental house to rental house). That might not sound like a big deal, but it is. And it gets compounded by the unknown nature of many of the places we choose for accommodations, because often these accommodations require a lot of stairs. So now you have a lot of weight being moved up and down. And try as we might, it is very hard to determine beforehand exactly what you are going to run into in the way of the facility. This could be dealt with through taking tours, but that would never, ever do for Wife and I. We just don't like being with people that much and cherish our freedom of movement and action too much. We have booked private drivers and guides in many places and that has helped. But it drives the cost up.

Prior to the pandemic we began to think about how we might deal with these issues. During the pandemic, we explored the thought of relocating to another country as a means of bridging the gap but the complexity and costs were too much. We become really anxious to just get the heck out and travel again. Which leads us to our current trip to Sicily.

This trip has been like our trips of old. We did almost no planning before we arrived because we didn't want to make reservations that might be canceled if Covid regulations prevented us from actually going. So we've ended up moving around quite a bit. You read our story about the arrival at Agrigento and that stress. We had another stressful move yesterday. 

We chose a house that had a great view and which would be very comfortable to just hang around in (see video and pictures below). However we conveniently ignored de_I's First Law of Accommodation Views which states that quality of the 'View' is equal to the difficulty of driving to the 'View' (as measured by incline, narrowness of road, and tightness of turns) to the 3rd power.  And the Second Law as well which states that the likelihood of actually finding the 'View' is only one fourth of quality of the 'View' itself. This leads to our 'classic' situation of being on crazy ass narrow steep roads having to back up and retrace routes to find our 'dream house'.  

This one certainly did not disappoint. It fulfilled both Laws to the max. And left me more than a bit wiped out. This was compounded by having to drag not just luggage but many bags of heavy groceries up numerous sets of stairs. I was exhausted. Hence the great contemplation. Truly it is the moving from place to place that is the issue. So can we find a place that we would be comfortable staying for months? What would we do? These are the questions we are seeking to answer.

After all that great, heaving of great sighs of relief getting this off my chest, aren't you anxious to actually see what this place is?

Tour of the Villa

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