When in Rome
When in Rome
Dennis Friedman | Apr 21, 2023 HumbleDollar
My wife and i visited Italy this year. We flew to Venice, where we stayed three days, and then hopped a train to Florence, where we spent the next five days. After that, we rented a car for three days and toured the Tuscany countryside, before catching a train to Rome for our final six days. I learned a lot about Italy, but I also learned some things about myself. Here are 11 takeaways from our trip:
1. Going home was one of my favorite parts. Before I retired, I thought I’d spend months on the road, and maybe even live overseas for a while. But after two or three weeks of traveling, I’m ready to go home.
I miss my home, friends and routine when I’m away for a while. I don’t see how people, no matter how much time they spend traveling, can sell their house and not have a place to go home to. I wouldn’t feel safe and secure.
2. If I’m going to travel and see everything I want to see, I better do it now. While we were in Florence, my wife and I climbed to the top of the dome that covers the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as the Duomo. It was 463 steps to the top, and the passage is sometimes steep. There are many towers in Italy with breath-taking views that also involve climbing many steps.
I can’t see us being fit enough in our 80s to do things like that. Our 70s might be the last chance to travel without physical limitations.
3. Travel is not cheap. We have two more major trips planned this year. Funding these trips means drawing down our investment portfolio.
I don’t know if I’d have felt comfortable spending this much money on travel if I didn’t have a financial advisor giving me the thumbs up. That reassurance allows us to spend without fear that we’ll run out of money.
4. I wrote in another article about having only one credit card in our later years—how it would simplify our finances and make them easier to manage. I was wrong. We should have at least two credit cards.
My wife and I paid for almost everything in Italy by using credit cards. While dining at a restaurant in a small town in Tuscany, our credit card was rejected. We tried three times with no luck. I checked my Citi Mobile app and it was temporarily shut down for maintenance. Maybe that was the reason for the rejection.
Luckily, I brought another card with me—because we didn’t have enough euros to pay for the dinner. That’s another lesson I learned: Make sure you have enough local currency for emergencies, because you might not be able to charge everything to a credit card. For instance, we stayed at a hotel in a small town where we were required to pay part of the bill—the city taxes portion—in euros.
5. How to manage the exchange rate can be tricky.
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