ADVENTURES, CHALLENGES, AND INSIGHTS OF A COUPLE IN EARLY RETIREMENT
It was time for our nearly three months in Europe to come to an end. We weren’t unhappy with having to return to Barcelona to fly back to the Bay Area. Our roving retirement isn’t like a vacation, it’s like living in lots of different places while managing life stuff, much of which is in the Bay Area.
We have been looking forward to visiting Carcassonne, on our roving retirement journey, since we were in France in 2020. Both Diana and I had visited many years ago and we only remembered the climb up the hill, the “fairy tail” walls, and the cassoulet. This time we chose to stay inside the city walls of Carcassonne, to maximize our time in situ.
Many people we meet discuss their issues with how long they can stay in the Schengen Zone, which covers much of Europe. For non-residents, the rule is that you can stay 90 out of 180 days using a rolling calendar otherwise you need a residence visa.
Our main reason for heading into France was to attend our visa appointment at the Prefecture in Nice. That said, we lived in Nice for more than two months last year and we were anxious to visit some of our old haunts. We toyed with the idea of staying in and exploring another part of town but finally settled on staying in roughly the same neighborhood as we did before.
A big part of our roving retirement is traveling around Europe. However, during Covid lots of extra things need to be done. So, we thought we would describe our EU Covid pass experience. On our recent trip, people in Portugal and in France required our Euro QR code to verify our vaccination status.
