Preparing for the Adventure

As I’ve talked with friends about our plan to shed possessions and travel the world, I’ve promised to create a blog through which you can follow us on our great adventure.  Here is the first installment.  I promise they’ll get more exciting…

We have accomplished a lot in the last several months in preparation for our Nomad Year(s).  We sold our house in Baltimore (settlement was July 15), gave away an incredible amount of furniture and stuff (to friends, our children, the Butcher’s Hill Flea Market and the new owners of our house), and put the rest of our things in storage.  We even found a storage facility for what is left of our wine.

We are spending the summer in Chautauqua, as we have for many years and it has given us time to sort through things like how to handle our mail, how to apply for a long-stay visa (more on that later), and deciding what we REALLY need to carry with us (much less than we originally thought!)

MAIL:  Beginning in April, I diligently called every company that sends us mail that we no longer want to receive and asked them to remove us from their mailing list.  We immediately saw a decrease in the junk in our mailbox.  We then registered a change of address with the Post Office to our P O Box in Chautauqua.  At the end of our time here, we’ll change this to a P O Box in Bend, OR, that Andy has agreed to monitor periodically.  Since we do all our business and banking on line, we don’t expect to receive much snail mail…

LONG-STAY VISA:  We learned that one can apply for a long-stay Visa (up to a year) for France.  This will allow us to travel throughout the Schengen Zone pretty freely and should also allow periodic trips back to the US without the need for anew Visa.  The process is not easy.  We have to appear in person at the French Embassy or at a full service Consulate and bring with us a whole list of documents.  We have our appointment on July 27 in Chicago (since this is closest to Chautauqua) where we’ll have a chance to visit our old Baltimore neighbors, Tori & Ray, who’ve agreed to put us up for the night.

WHERE WILL WE GO FIRST?  Paris, of course! We’ve secured an Airbnb flat in the Marais (4th arr) from September 20-October 23.  It looks like a nice space and we know it’s a great location.  Lew & Pat Mastrobuono will join us in Paris toward the end of our time there.  And we really hope that many other friends will do this as we move around. (We’ll keep you posted through this blog).

Stay tuned and let me know how I can improve this modern means of staying in touch.