Life Gave Us Limes So We’re Making Margaritas

By now, you all know that I broke my leg in November. The healing process is taking longer than we had hoped, hence the limes. Since we are having a roving retirement, we are going to Mexico to make Margaritas!

As promised, we want to tell you what we have planned for the New Year. After skiing in Tahoe for Christmas, which is our annual tradition, we headed back to the Bay Area for more visits with family and friends. Our plan had always been to stay in the US for the month of January while waiting for approval of our French long-term stay visas. I’m happy to say that we picked up our passports a few days ago and we have a very nice French visa that is good through the end of the year.

Recovery

Unfortunately, my leg isn’t improving as quickly as I would like. As a result, Mike has kindly agreed to forego his ski season after the end of January. We were planning to go to the French Alps to ski in February, but that is something we really want to do together.

So, we are off to the Riviera Maya in Mexico for the month of February instead. I have found that healing is always improved by warm weather, palm trees, and the Caribbean. We have booked a one-bedroom apartment on Airbnb in Playa del Carmen and we are excited to see if we like the town enough to want to spend our winters there in the future. Our plan while we are there this time, is to write about the food, the lodging, the activities, the real estate and what it’s like to live in a Mexican town rather than just visit a resort. There is so much written about the expat-life in Playa we are looking forward to finding out if it is for us.

Off to France

With our French visas in hand, we will head to Nice at the beginning of March. During March and early April, we will be traveling from Nice to Barcelona and beyond, to check out the towns along the way. We would like to pick a town in which to spend a couple of months in summer. In April, we will come back to the Bay Area for a week or two.

Life said, “Not so fast.”

Going to the Maldives

Come May, we will visit the Maldives, another place on my bucket list. In all of the in-flight magazines, you see these beautiful pictures of little islands in a turquoise sea with over-water bungalows. Who wouldn’t want to go check it out, even if it is in the middle of the Indian Ocean? Mike got a great deal at the St. Regis, but the thing about the Maldives is that it costs so much to get there. First, you fly to Male, the capital, and then you need to fly to the specific island where your resort is. I expect this is probably a once in a lifetime thing and I’m really looking forward to it.

Summer in Southern Europe

We plan to rent an apartment somewhere along the Mediterranean coast for June and July. These are the busiest times in that area, so we figured it might be a challenge moving from place to place during the summer. We believe we can do lots of exploring from there.

So Many Places to Visit

Every time we think of Europe, we realize that there are so many places we want to visit, like all of Italy, Portugal, European capitals, Croatia, Prague. The list goes on and on. Therefore, I expect we will be in Europe for quite a while. But we might make a short detour to South America, who knows.

Where are you going to meet us?