ADVENTURES, CHALLENGES, AND INSIGHTS OF A COUPLE IN EARLY RETIREMENT
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.
Having savored our final meal in San Sebastian, it was time to make haste to get to Nice for our date with visa renewal destiny. We decided to break up our 500+ mile journey with overnight stops in Zaragoza, Barcelona, and Montpellier. This made for a very roving retirement stretch of days.
For years, people have talked to us about going to San Sebastián Spain to eat. That is because there are more Michelin stars per capita in San Sebastián, a town of 200,000 people, than any other place on earth. We decided to visit San Sebastián, the foodie mecca, even though it was a 7-hour drive from Santiago de Compostela.
After our stay in Porto, we felt compelled, COMPELLED!, to head up the Douro River to seek out the sources of all of the port wine we saw being aged in the warehouses in Gaia. We were not disappointed by the visit, neither by the Port, we tasted, nor the stunning views the Douro Valley affords.
