Paris to Istanbul to Mumbai - Our first big quest

We’ve been tinkering with this website for a while now. But as we set out on a 40-day journey that will take us from Nashville to Paris to Dublin to Lisbon to Rome to Florence to Istanbul to Mumbai before returning home through London, we figured it’s time to take things up a notch.

The idea of EmptyNestQuest has always been simple. Let’s see if we can take my travel-writing skills and Mary’s digital marketing skills and create something people will see, like, and want to share. If nothing else, it will encourage us to have experiences worth sharing.

Now we’re starting this crazy trip that we – okay, Mary – has been planning for months. We are testing the idea that we can essentially live abroad in various cities for short stretches at a time while maintaining enough of a professional work schedule to make it fiscally possible.

Like most empty nesters, we’re looking to both relax and liven things up a little as a pat on the back for making it through the child-rearing and college-tuition-paying years. We’ve managed to save some money. But we’re also looking to get better at travelling economically. We’ll stay in a combination of hotels and AirBNBs, with all of the hotels booked with credit card points. Our transatlantic flights were also booked with points, and flights within Europe are cheap. The strong dollar will also be our friend.

We’re also trying out a site called Home Exchange. We’ll be sharing our home with some visitors from Texas and France. Fingers crossed that goes well. We’ll let you know.

Our journey is built around three events – a Covid-delayed anniversary trip to Paris; a visit with our studying-abroad daughter in Dublin; and the wedding of a family friend’s daughter in India. In between we’ll be part-travelling and part-working as we make our way from the Algarve region of Portugal up to Lisbon, then over to Rome for a week, followed by a trek either up or down the Italian boot from there, then a short stay in Istanbul before heading to India.

Along the way we’ll be doing a few touristy things, especially in Paris. But mostly we’ll try to explore these places at ground level, ideally on foot, and do our best to see what’s it’s like to live there.

Although Mary has trimmed her consulting schedule for the next month, she will still be working some, thanks to the magical powers of Zoom and other fancy-pants interweb tools. And me? I’m a travel writer, so I’ll be writing, pitching, and collecting stories. I’ll also be posting and updating a travelogue here, and sharing photos and updates on Instagram @empty.nest.quest, and and to our group on Facebook. Please feel free to follow us at either or both places. And tell your friends! And if you have any suggestions for things we should see, places we should eat, etc., fire away.

We’re hoping to build a community of like-minded folks – empty nesters looking to keep things interesting. Here’s hoping the pressure of sharing interesting stories will keep us motivated to have interesting stories to tell.