Here’s how Amtrak describes this swathe of track: 

New York – Washington, DC – Charleston – Savannah – Jacksonville – Orlando – Tampa / Miami
Up to 28 + hours, 1,300 miles
Daily Departure
Welcome aboard the Silver Meteor, Silver Star and Palmetto — a journey between exciting Northeast cityscapes, the Deep South’s Civil War history, and the sights and sounds of Florida’s beaches, cities and family attractions. Onboard, you will witness scenery not accessible by other modes of transportation while experiencing the unique comfort and relaxation of rail travel.

The beast has awoken, and it won’t take “but I could fly for less” as an excuse. 

Long distance train travel defies logic. It will almost always take you longer to reach your destination. It’s likely to arrive late; possibly many hours late. And chances are, it’ll cost more than flying. 

But…

You’ll save hours trudging to/from airports and languishing in various airport lineups. Overnight trains (in sleeper cars) include the cost of accommodation and food. It’s more environmentally friendly. And frankly, at least for me, it’s just plain magic. 

But by now you’re probably familiar with my bias. I have taken long-distance trains in 25 countries. I wrote a book about some of the more epic trips. I created videos about the opulent ones. And you’re reading a 4-part series about circumnavigating the U.S. by train. 

I like trains. A lot. 

And I can’t just stop. After a horrendous pandemic lockdown, I unleashed the hounds of travel with my epic train trip from Chicago to New Orleans via the entire west coast. (And yes, I’m well aware that the west coast is the very long way around between these destinations.) Now all I can do is dream about where else I can travel by train. 

The east coast of the U.S. is blatantly missing from my repertoire on this trip, and I have to travel from Florida to New York anyway. So, why not by train? 

Oh. This is Different. 

As the train pulls into the station in south Florida, I tearfully embrace my best friend with whom I’ve been staying for the last six weeks. I visit her at least once a year, but our parting moments don’t get any easier despite repetition. 

I climb up onto the train and find my Roomette. After my experience on the Empire Builder, I am prepared for the tiny space, which is much better-suited for solo travelers than pairs (especially a pair that has just met!). To my surprise, this roomette is bigger! I think. It feels at least a little bit bigger, because it has a toilet and sink. 

While I’m initially quite excited about my plumbing situation, as the hours go by I can’t bring myself to actually….go….in this toilet that is very much in my personal bubble. Instead I pop into neighbouring cars to visit the dedicated restrooms and do my business. I figure the toilet in my cabin will be convenient for a midnight pee, but I have no plans to use it otherwise. 

While I’m visiting neighbouring cars, I see that they are brand new. The Roomettes have the same dimensions, but the toilets have been removed (the fold-down sinks remain). I guess I’m not the only person to question the sanitary wisdom of using a toilet inches away from where I sit and sleep. I cringe to think of how Matt and I would have managed in such a room; the thought of doing my business in an open space within whispering distance of a travel companion is laughable, no matter how tight we are. We simply wouldn’t have used it. 

While the roomette spaciousness as a solo traveler is a win, the dining situation is not. Unfortunately, this route on Amtrak doesn’t have linen table service or chef-prepared meals like the other Amtrak distance routes do. Meals are still provided, and there is a choice of entrees, but they are pre-made and a cut (a sliver, perhaps) above airplane food; actually, depending on the airline and class of service, I have had better airplane meals. 

Worse yet, everything is served in disposable containers on disposable trays with disposable cutlery and napkins and cups and plastic bottles….I cringe with each meal as my zero waste ambitions fade into oblivion. 

I ask the dining car attendant if it has always been like this on the Silver Meteor route. 

I learn that they used to have table service and a chef. But they cut it before COVID; presumably a budget move. In fact at that time Amtrak had cut the full dining service on all their trains, but the other routes just brought it back a couple of months ago. 

I realize I got lucky with my train rides so far; while I had assumed dining service has always been of the caliber that I received on the Empire Builder and Sunset Limited, apparently it was only resurrected a couple of weeks before I began my trip. I now understand why the Silver Meteor route seemed comparatively cheaper than the other trains I took. 

Although the food situation is disappointing and the toilet situation is confusing, I am still utterly elated to be spending another 28 hours on a train. 

Silver Meteor Amtrak Tip: My impression from speaking to the staff was that Amtrak will at some point reinstate full dining service on this route. You can check in advance; the website has clues – I’d just failed to pick up on them.

Sleepless in Savannah 

I spend the entire day in my delightful cabin, amusing myself with the normal accoutrements of train trips: writing, listening to music, and hypnotically gazing out the window. 

“What are you going to do tonight? Are you ready for your bed to be made?” asks the cabin attendant around 9pm. 

“I’m going to lay in bed and read my book until I can’t stay awake, then I’m going to sleep like a baby, then wake up and lay in bed some more while I watch the world go by,” I reply with a bright smile (that I hope he can see underneath my face mask). He smiles despite (or perhaps because of) my overshare. “So yes, I’m ready for the bed to be made, thank you.” 

Things don’t quite go according to plan however. The reading part is great, but the sleeping part is horrendous. I’ve experienced this before; I learned when I rode 15,000 kms of trains in Australia that sleep is a total crap shoot. I count myself lucky that the rest of my Amtrak experiences have been pretty solid sleeps, because tonight is an exercise in tossing and turning. 

As a silver lining (on the Silver Meteor – ha ha), when I eventually give up trying to sleep, I get to watch the sun rise while laying in bed. There’s something luxurious about lying in bed on a train, and I quickly forget about my substandard snooze. 

The Silver Meteor Amtrak Experience: Home Stretch 

By 8:30am we are pulling into Washington DC and I stretch my legs on the platform. The sticky south Florida summer heat has been replaced with more comfortable temperatures. After Washington comes a steady stretch of urban landscapes including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and a long approach to New York City via New Jersey. 

I’m excited to have a night in Manhattan; the last time I was here was over 10 years ago. I’m going to check out the High Line (which has been built since my last visit), and I may even try to catch a Broadway show. 

As we pull into Penn Station, can you guess what I’m doing?? I’ll bet you can. 

I’m dreaming about my next train trip. 

Need to Catch Up?
Adventures With Amtrak, Part 1: The Big Idea

Amtrak Adventures, Part 2: The Empire Builder 

Amtrak Adventures Part 3: Portland, LA, Sunset Limited Train to New Orleans

Interested in some of the other epic train trips I’ve done? Check out:
The Indian Pacific (Australia)
The Ghan (Australia)
The Ultimate Train Challenge (Lisbon to Saigon) – VIDEO 

This post The Silver Meteor – Amtrak Adventures Part 4 (Florida to NYC) appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

The Cascades: Seattle to Portland 

After lunch with some more of Matt’s friends in Seattle, we return to the train station for the four hour train trip to Portland; an easy commute with lovely scenery. The Amtrak Cascades train route goes from Vancouver to Eugene Oregon, but we are just on board for the well-trodden middle portion from Seattle to Portland. 

While standing in line to board the train, we run into our dinner companions from our first night on the Empire Builder, and enjoy a spirited reunion and comparison of our respective Seattle experiences. 

The beautiful scenery along this small portion of the west coast makes me very sad that our second scheduled train – the Coast Starlight from Portland to Los Angeles – has been canceled due to fire damaged tracks. While long-distance train trips such as these are far from money-saving adventures, the entire refunded money from this stage of our train trip is immediately swallowed up by an additional night of accommodation in Portland plus flights from Portland to LA. 

Pinot and Pizza in Portland

Having long heard about the delights of Oregon State in general, and Portland in particular, I really enjoy getting to know Portland as a “city of neighbourhoods”, each with its own style and pace. 

Matt and I immediately find a coffee shop close to where we are staying in the northeastern part of Portland with a work-friendly ambiance and coffee so good that we can’t bring ourselves to go anywhere else for our work sessions. But we still get around the city, using their well-appointed public transportation infrastructure to check out different neighbourhoods and sample a variety of fare including some excellent Ethiopian, Mexican, gourmet donuts, and we even find a pizza place that is apparently considered the second best pizza in the United States, but I am so hungry and a bit drunk from a day of drinking wine that I may not appreciate its finer qualities. 

That’s because the pizza follows up the highlight of our time in Portland, which is a winery tour of the Willamette region. Being one of a few places in the world with a similar altitude and terroir suitable for finicky pinot noir grapes, said grapes were imported from Burgundy France to Oregon in the 1960’s and have flourished ever since. In fact, although I can’t find any written proof to substantiate this, rumour has it that the original grapes in Burgundy were subsequently destroyed and it was the Oregon varietal that was used to repopulate Burgundy’s vineyards. 

At the start of the day we are thrown together with four other strangers and an enthusiastic guide who can’t seem to make the air conditioning work in our van and does her best to distract us with a monologue about the history of the area while we drive to the first winery. As tends to happen with group tours like this, by the end of the day we are all laughing like we’ve been friends forever. The scenery at each vineyard gets increasingly more beautiful and climaxes at the exclusive Domaine Serene winery where we are treated to a private tasting by a sommelier who is evidently confused as to how such a motley crew gained admission as our giggles waft to the tables of other more serious patrons. 

Which takes me back to the second best pizza in the United States; a claim made in a CNN article about pizza published just a week prior and one that we simply must substantiate. (You know, for science.) The pizza joint is so exclusive that it’s only open a few days a week, and only for pickup after ordering online hours in advance. Our initial plans to take our bounty back to our place are foiled by both hunger and curiosity, which result in us eating the entire pizza while standing on the sidewalk. This enthusiastic consumption is certainly evidence that it was a damn good pizza, but with Chicago deep-dish still in my rear-view mirror, I remain dubious about its status as second best in the country. 

“Matt! What have I done?! Why did you let me eat two dinners?” I moan in bloated agony. He snickers. With an appetite befitting his height and gender, Matt generally eats more than I do, so when we are walking back to our accommodation following wine and pizza, he wanders into a food truck pavilion and orders more food. The night is young and with eyes bigger than my stomach and wine-impaired judgement, I am bedazzled by a sushi burrito that I figure is small enough that surely it’s an appropriate follow up to pizza. 

I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten two consecutive dinners, but hey – travel is for new experiences. This trip is nothing if not indulgent.  

Los Angeles (Cough Cough)

I’ve visited Los Angeles a few times and never found it to be particularly memorable. Matt, a former LA resident for seven years, is determined to change that. We are staying in the downtown area (his former hood), and he’s eager to show me the diversity and energetic pulse of Los Angeles. The pandemic makes this challenging, but not impossible.

Thus far in the trip, we have been living a fairly effective “post-pandemic” life. Leaving a horrendously long lockdown in Toronto and arriving to Chicago is a shock, as I have almost forgotten what “normal life” could be like. I re-learn how to be indoors and not wear a mask. What it’s like to eat in a restaurant. And what it’s like to meet people and forge new friendships. 

That is not to say that masks are a thing of the past. Amtrak requires masks to be worn on the train at all times unless eating or in the privacy of a sleeper cabin. Airports also require masks at all times. And as our train trip progresses, it becomes apparent that the pandemic is far from a thing of the past; the Delta variant is having its way with the United States, and by the time we reach LA, it is becoming a hotspot. 

So Matt’s initial attempt to betroth me to LA isn’t met with universal cooperation. 

“Want to go for a walk?” he says as we drop our bags at our accommodation. It’s 9pm and I’ve got a belly full of In-and-Out Burger (an obligatory LA experience I’m told). 

“Sure! Why not,” I reply enthusiastically. 

With gusto, Matt shepherds us to the LA Live area, normally a hive of activity with a stadium, convention center, and myriad of restaurants and bars. 

It is completely deserted. 

“I don’t understand. I’ve never seen it like this,” Matt wonders. It’s obviously pandemic-related, but this level of emptiness – on a Saturday night no less – is unexpected. Even the Starbucks that is normally open until the wee hours of the morning closed at 8:00pm. 

With the original place he intended to take me to being a bust, Matt conjures up another bar with a great view from his memory and leads me there. Also closed. We call around to a few other places. Closed. We find a roof-top night club that’s open, but it’s ridiculously crowded and comes with a hefty cover charge that deters us. 

“Perch will be open. It has to be,” Matt says, and a couple who overhears us confirms it. At this point we’ve been wandering for almost two hours, although it’s far from a hardship. The weather is perfect and we are both walkers at heart; walking is one of the best ways to discover a city. 

Our circuitous journey makes arriving at Perch Rooftop Bar all the sweeter. “Perch: An Elevated Resting Place” is adorned with fairy lights and offers amazing views of downtown Los Angeles. We enjoy a glass of wine at the bar, and Matt orders another burger for us to share; this $20 burger a bizarre juxtaposition to our $3 In-and-Out burgers a few hours prior, and my second shot this trip at a double-dinner evening. I make a mental note to double up my exercise routine tomorrow. Little do I know I’m about to get a great workout and unconventional tour of LA. 

In downtown LA, electric kick scooters litter the sidewalks. There are a variety of scooter rental companies (Lime and Bird being two popular examples). Using them is as simple as downloading the app, inputting payment information, finding a scooter, and scanning the QR code with your phone. The scooter magically comes to life and you can take it anywhere while the clock ticks. You are charged based on time used and/or distance traveled. I’ve never done this, and I’m curious. 

“Let’s take scooters home instead of an Uber,” I suggest. 

“Sure, but just in case you think we’ll save money doing this, we won’t,” Matt warns. 

“It’ll be more fun though!” I say, and he nods in agreement. I also can’t imagine it costing that much more than an Uber, so I take Matt’s warning with a grain of salt. 

The $28 bill (per person) at the end of the night is just as much our fault as it is the scooters being expensive; instead of heading straight home we end up on an impromptu two-hour joy ride around a deserted downtown LA at 2:00am. It’s ridiculously fun and I can’t help but giggle joyfully the entire time; I mentally vow to explore other cities that have scooter programs in a similar fashion. 

Considering the evening started out with a whole stream of roadblocks due to the pandemic, it ends on one of the highest notes of the trip yet. It’s a poetic simile to travel in general; you can plan as much as you like, but you’re inevitably going to get some curve balls along the way, and your resulting experience will depend on how you choose to pivot and make the most of what’s available. 

Over the next few days we certainly make the most of Los Angeles, the majority of our experiences involving food in different neighbourhoods (LA being another city that, like Portland, is considered more a collection of neighbourhoods than a cohesive city). We meet up with a few of Matt’s friends as well as a dear friend of mine from San Diego for an epic dinner accompanied by multiple bottles of wine in Santa Monica. I meet yet more of Matt’s friends for a feast in Little Korea. And Matt and I dress up to the nines one night (he in his three-piece suit and me in a unique silk dress from Indonesia) to have a ritzy dinner on the Sunset Strip. 

By the time we leave LA I have a collection of amazing experiences that will fade into fond memories. Much to Matt’s chagrin, I still wouldn’t cite LA as a favourite city of mine; while the scooters were fun, public transportation on the whole is lacking for a city that size. Also, the concentration of homeless and mentally-disturbed people in tent cities comes as a disturbing shock as I’ve seen nothing like it before and I must admit it throws a certain degree of shade on my experience as a whole. 

That said, Matt’s efforts are far from wasted, and I can tick off Los Angeles on this train trip as a place we “did” really, really well. 

Boarding the Sunset Limited Train 

Here’s how Amtrak sets the stage for the Sunset Limited Train: 

Los Angeles – Phoenix – Tuscon – San Antonio – New Orleans
48 hours
Departures Three Days a Week
Travel between Louisiana and California along our southern-most route. While onboard the Sunset Limited Train, settle back and watch the Bayou Country, Mexican border, southwestern deserts and California mountains pass by your window.

We boarded the Empire Builder in Chicago exactly two weeks ago. Having missed out on the Coast Starlight portion of the journey, it seems like ages since we’ve been on a train, and it feels a little bit like coming home. 

Our boarding time isn’t until late in the evening, but our required 12pm checkout from our accommodation doesn’t phase us, since sleeper-class passengers have access to Amtrak lounges, and certain major departure points (like Los Angeles) have great lounge facilities. 

We lock up our luggage in a secure room connected to the lounge (another perk for sleeper-class passengers), set up shop with our laptops and free WiFi (and snacks) for a few hours, then hit the streets of LA for a brisk pre-train walk and dinner. 

We board at 10pm, and settle into our bedroom cabin (which is considerably more comfortable than the roomette we had on the previous train), which has already been turned down for us. Despite the beds being down, there is still space for us to move about (albeit cramped space, but let’s get it right: it’s a train), and with the sink and bathroom we can tend to our pre-bedtime routine with relative ease in general; and much more ease compared to the roomette. 

I clamber up into the top bunk again which has a bit more headroom, and with space enough for a proper ladder to ascend, makes for a much more civilized experience. 

Again, I am lulled into hypnotic sleep from the train’s movement and rocking. 

It’s great to be back. 

Sunset Limited Day 2: Tuscon to Somewhere-In-Texas

Matt has been feeling under-the-weather for a few days. It is no more than a cold, but it’s taking a toll. Last night he said he intended to sleep in as much as possible, knowing he’d likely miss out on breakfast. I intend to get breakfast, but I accidentally sleep almost late enough to miss it myself. Despite the extra space in the bedroom cabin, trying to get up and changed and out of the room without waking Matt is challenging. Thankfully last night I had laid out some clothing and shoes so I could steal away with a few items to amuse myself until he awakes. 

Little do I realize I’m going to be amusing myself this way for three hours. 

I do, however, thoroughly enjoy sitting in the observation car watching the beautiful Arizona mountains, red soil, and green cacti passing by outside the window. I’m so smitten feeling the motion of train, taking in the gorgeous views, and generally enjoying the excitement and poetry of this trip, which was dreamt up and booked in an impulsive 24-hour period just a few weeks prior. 

Unfortunately, the staff on this train aren’t nearly as friendly as on the last one (and frankly, most of the trains I’ve been on around the world). One of my observations over the years is that most of the people I’ve met who work on trains adore their jobs, and it shows in how they conduct themselves and interact with passengers. But the staff on this train are harder to chat with, and while I’m loitering in the dining car after breakfast, I overhear them in the neighbouring section, complaining about many things from unruly passengers to unharmonious encounters with other train staff, to disgruntled soliloquies about the inner workings of Amtrak. 

Also, there are considerably fewer passengers on this train than there were on the Empire Builder, so meeting people in the dining car doesn’t happen as it did on the last train, largely because every party is seated at their own table. The Delta wave of COVID is currently surging through the U.S. however, so it’s possible dining alone is also being mandated, and all things considered I think it’s a good idea. 

Despite a less social experience, this train ride is a dream. The scenery is beautiful, and I wile the day away intermittently gazing out the window and writing on my laptop. The American Southwest is new territory for me, and I regularly catch myself wishing I could sit on this train forever. 

My love for this form of travel simply can’t be overstated. Some travelers (myself included) feel a surge of excitement when their plane takes off, and the point of origin fades away slowly, the clouds bringing the promise of arrival to new land and landscape in a few hours. For me, that surge of excitement lasts for the entire train ride, which in this case, means two days of bliss. 

Matt and I get permission to camp out in the dining car between lunch and dinner for our espresso-making ritual. As on the last train, the staff members sitting nearby are enthralled with the process. We laugh and joke with them about the our finicky routine of grinding the beans by hand and then making the espresso in Matt’s little portable espresso maker. They amusedly supply us with hot water so we can feed our passionate caffeine addiction. 

When I started this trip with Matt, I informed him that under no circumstances do I drink coffee after 2pm, as I don’t wish it to affect my sleep. In truth, I’m not actually sure if it does. I had one experience years ago when I had a coffee after dinner and then I couldn’t get to sleep. For this reason alone (and the general idea that caffeine affects sleep), I’ve since held to the no-coffee-after-2pm rule. 

Matt shrugged when I told him this. “I drink it at all times of day and night. Doesn’t affect me.” 

Since that day, I’ve found myself joining Matt in his espresso sessions later and later each day. And here we are, at 7:30pm, making our pre-dinner espresso. 

“Didn’t you have a 2pm cut-off time for drinking coffee?” he says with a smirk while grinding beans for our second shot of the night. 

“You’re ruining me for coffee. I’m becoming a full-on espresso-snob. And now I need shots throughout the day. You’ve created a monster!” 

“On the contrary,” he replies with a smile. “I’m quite impressed with how far you’ve come on this trip.”

Traveling with Matt has been an enjoyable exchange and sharing of ideas. I’ve not only levelled up my coffee game, but he has introduced me to new ways of traveling and socializing as a digital nomad; techniques that, had I employed them in years gone by, might have circumvented the catastrophic burnout I had that led me to return to Toronto and set up a home base after 12 years of full-time travel. While there’s nothing for me to regret, I do plan to try out a few new dance moves in terms of my travel style in the next few years. He has also given me some great perspective and ideas for my online business that I am inspired by and grateful for. 

Likewise, I’ve helped Matt in the travel gear department. After dissecting the contents of our bags together with childlike joy and wonder, I was fascinated to discover just how much stuff he fits into his carry-on entourage; things like an espresso maker, wine aerator, three-piece suit, and an entire podcasting studio. But that’s far from the extent of his gear, as evidenced by his ridiculously heavy bags. I coach him to drop this and that, and replace a few items with more lightweight multi-functional alternatives. We also speak at length about podcasting, and he asks me for online content creation and marketing advice. 

Traveling in extremely close quarters with Matt (a relative stranger just a few weeks ago) has, despite the warnings of my skeptical friends, been a lot of fun. One or two inconsequential disagreements thus far have tested our mutual communication and problem-solving skills. We both understand the challenges of traveling in close quarters with other people, and our respective experiences have served us well. 

It’s great we have this foundation, because my patience is about to be tested. 

Sunset Limited Train Day 3: San Antonio to New Orleans

When I awake the train isn’t moving. I look on my Goole Maps app and see that we are in San Antonio, Texas. I quickly dress and emerge from the cabin to ask the conductor how long we are in the station. “Oh at least 30 minutes. They’re inspecting the train.” 

I wonder if the inspection has anything to do with what I perceived to be a breakdown last night. While falling asleep I remember the acrid smell of burning rubber wafting though the cabin as the train came to an abrupt stop accompanied by the sound of a loud clunk of metal and a long hiss coming from somewhere below me. 

I laid in bed, awake with curiosity, listening to subsequent clunks and hisses that happened over the next hour or so before the train eventually jerked back to life. 

After taking advantage of the 30-minute break on this sunny quiet morning to take a spirited walk in the neighbourhood around the San Antonio station, I return to the dining car for breakfast, thankful that they were willing to hold breakfast for me so I could take this walk. The staff’s demeanour towards me seems to have softened since yesterday morning, and I wonder if it’s the espresso that endeared them to Matt and I. 

“Is the train on time?” I ask the dining car attendant as she takes our reservation for lunch and dinner seatings. 

“Nope.” I laugh at the immediacy of her response. Last night I overheard a staff member saying this train last week was five hours late arriving to New Orleans. 

I’m not surprised. Many of the long-distance routes I’ve taken have been delayed. Passenger trains play second fiddle to freight trains, so when a freight train needs to pass (or is coming the other way), trains like this one need to pull over wherever there is a secondary track available and wait for the freight train to go by. Depending on where the passenger train is able to pull over, the wait can be long. And in the last 24 hours, I’ve noticed a lot of long waits. This, coupled with what I manage to confirm was indeed a breakdown of sorts last night, will have put us well behind schedule. It’s possible to make up a lot of time, but I mentally prepare myself for a late arrival tonight. 

Matt continues to doze in the cabin while I set up my laptop in the lounge car and do some writing, again inspired by the romance of passing landscapes, listening to the muted train horn as we approach intersections, and curiously watching the land go from being red and flat and full of cacti with a backdrop of faraway mountains (as was the case for most of yesterday), to lush green dense foliage and forests interspersed with fields of citrus trees, farms, and small towns. 

Lunch approaches and Matt still hasn’t stirred. I rouse him from his slumber in the cabin, slightly irked that I’ve been ousted the last two mornings running. My absolute favourite thing to do on overnight train rides is to wake up and watch the world go by (ideally with a cup of coffee in hand) and luxuriously welcome the day while lying in bed. Not once on this 5,000 mile trip has that been possible. The top bunk has no windows, and Matt has closed the curtains next to his bottom bunk, requiring me to get up and sneak out in the dark the last two mornings. 

If I’d known I’d be spending the majority of my time in the lounge car, I wouldn’t have paid the extra money for the bloody upgrade to a bedroom! But I cool my jets, reminding myself that he has a cold and if I felt unwell I would appreciate the extra sleep too. 

After lunch, we each take turns commandeering the cabin for a shower. The sleeper cabin’s private bathroom resembles what one would have on a boat. A teensy space with a toilet, a shower head against the wall, and a drain on the floor. The sink and mirror are outside the bathroom in the main part of the cabin. 

The bathroom situation is far from a luxurious experience, until I remind myself that I’m on a train and that having a private bathroom with a shower on a train is still pretty lux. (That said, I remember my full-sized bathroom on the Deccan Odyssey; the Deccan Odyssey this is not). 

While Matt is taking his turn, I chat with the man sitting next to me in the lounge car. He’s also on a month-long train trip around the States, except he’s doing it in coach class and for the most part he is breaking it up into much smaller chunks, staying with various friends and family members along the way. I discover he also works remotely, and this is his first stab at traveling long-term while working along the way. We quickly find a conversational groove speaking about various nuances and logistics of managing a travel lifestyle along with remote work obligations – something I specialize in helping people do effectively. He peppers me with questions and I happily oblige before we start trading travel tales. 

Matt reappears and it’s time for another espresso session. While we are making espresso, the woman sitting at a table across from us overhears us talking about website management and SEO and asks some questions as they pertain to some work she’s trying to do around writing for economics publications. 

The train pulls into El Paso Texas, and we are informed we’ll be in the station for at least 15 minutes while various passengers are off-loaded and others on-loaded. Long-distance train travel is incredibly sedentary, so every time there is a station stop long enough to stretch my legs, I get off the train and walk. If the stop is short I keep my stroll to walking up and down the platform, for fear of the train departing without me. On the train from Chicago to Seattle, we ate lunch in the dining car with a couple who described exactly such a scenario happening to them in Italy, and while it made for an amusing story (as many travel mis-adventures tend to with a good dose of retrospect), I am in no mood to follow in their footsteps. 

“Okay, Nora. Go enjoy the cabin. You’re wasting valuable time,” says Matt sardonically, after we’ve started moving again. Earlier on, I couldn’t contain my frustration that I’d shared a not-insignificant expense with him in upgrading to a bedroom that I’d felt largely ousted from while he slept. 

“I thought you said one of the things you love about train travel is meeting people!” he had replied at the time. 

“It is, but that’s more about the dining car experience – since eating with people is one of the best ways to get to know them. And besides, in all my time sitting out here the past two mornings, I haven’t met anybody. The vibe isn’t here this time.” 

His solution to my beef is to give me the rest of the day at my leisure in the cabin. So at the moment of course, the irony is not lost on me that in the last hour I’ve met and conversed with two interesting people, on the eve of my last night on the train, and I would happily have remained in the lounge car with Matt, chatting with various folks. 

But instead, out of some mis-directed form of pride in combination with donkey-like stubbornness, I head to the cabin for a different kind of train experience (and one that thankfully turns out to be equally enjoyable): reclining by the window with my feet up, playing some music, and lulling myself into a hypnotic state while watching the world go by. 

Over dinner, I wonder aloud whether I could continue the train journey to my next destination in south Florida where I’m due to visit a friend. While the 55 hour circuitous trip via Washington DC doesn’t put me off, the price point (at $1,000 more than my already-scheduled flight) does. I decide to stick with my existing flight, but I also vow to take the train from Florida to my next destination in Connecticut the following month, where I’m speaking at a conference. 

The train is due to arrive in New Orleans at 9:40pm, but when I ask the conductor, I’m told it will be a minimum of 90 minutes late. I frown. 

“What? Doesn’t that mean more time on the train? Don’t you loooooove train travel?” Matt playfully says in response to my frown. 

Despite poking fun at me, he has a fair point, and I settle back in to the cabin to continue enjoying my space, the canter of the train, and doing some inspired writing about my train trip thus far. 

We pull in to New Orleans after midnight, and despite the late hour, the muggy heat of summer in the deep south doesn’t let up, and it re-calibrates our body temperatures (which have become largely accustomed to a very air-conditioned train for the last 55 or so hours). We walk to our apartment for the week in a moody silence, reflecting on the last 5,000 miles of travel (largely by train), happy to have completed a trip of such magnitude, and sad that it couldn’t have gone on just a bit longer. That sadness is a common ailment for most travelers; it’s what keeps us planning the next trip, and the next. 

Conclusion: New Friends Become Old Friends 

Matt and I spend an epic week in New Orleans together before parting ways; he to his own lifestyle travel adventures and I to mine. A little over a month ago, we were relative strangers; colleagues at best. Now, after a month of traveling and living together (at times in ridiculously small spaces!), we share a knowledge of one another and a level of friendship that would take years to develop under any other circumstances. 

Traveling does that. I’ve long professed that travel accelerates the pace of a romantic relationship, and it does for friendships as well. If I consider the sheer amount of time Matt and I have spent together and the experiences we’ve shared in the last month, and try to amortize that over three and four-hour weekly lunches and coffees such as one might experience with a new friend (in a non-travel world), it would probably take years to break even. So by “normal” friendship standards, we’ve been friends for years now. 

The double-edge to that sword is that sometimes, the natural progression of a relationship includes a fallout or breakdown that can spell the end, and while in a non-travel world it could take months or years to reach that crisis point, it can happen a lot faster when spending such a concentrated amount of time together as happens in a travel scenario. 

Lucky for Matt and I, we part with big hugs, much gratitude for the laughter and learning we have experienced together, and the promise of another shared travel adventure, someday.

Probably on a train. 

But wait, there’s more! I kept to my vow to continue the train journey from Florida to Connecticut, seven weeks later. Stay tuned for Adventures With Amtrak Part 4 to see what happens!!

Need to Catch Up?
Adventures With Amtrak, Part 1: The Big Idea
Amtrak Adventures, Part 2: The Empire Builder 

Some Other Train Adventures for You to Enjoy
India’s Deccan Odyssey from Jaipur to Mumbai
The Indian Pacific Across Australia (and Back)
Taking The Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver (sort of)
The Ghan from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia
The Ultimate Train Challenge from Lisbon to Saigon (25,000 kms in 30 days)

This post Amtrak Adventures Part 3: Portland, LA, Sunset Limited Train to New Orleans appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

The Empire Builder train, as explained on the Amtrak site: 

Experience the rugged splendor of the American West. Traveling between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest along major portions of the Lewis and Clark trail, the mighty Empire Builder takes you on an exciting adventure through majestic wilderness, following the footsteps of early pioneers.
From Chicago, you’ll have magnificent views of the Mississippi and see the glowing night skyline of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Awake the next morning as you cross the North Dakota plains and travel over the spectacular Gassman Coulee Trestle. Skirting the Missouri, you’ll cross into the Big Sky country in Montana, passing by a travelers’ favorite, Glacier National Park. From Spokane, you can continue on to Seattle or head down the Columbia River Gorge toward Portland for spectacular views of Mt. Hood and Beacon Rock.

Meeting in Chicago

“So good to finally meet you!” Matt says while enveloping me in a big hug in the lobby of our Chicago hotel. It feels more like meeting an old friend than a new one. 

We immediately go up to the room and do what a couple of digital nomads who just met would do: we talk about travel gear. We are both ultralight packing enthusiasts, traveling long-term / full-time with carry-on luggage only, and anybody who travels this way is likely to be not only enthusiastic but also a bit obsessive about curating the perfect items balancing both fashion and function. 

Matt turns out to be my travel-gear-soulmate. 

The next couple of days are a blur of working in coffee shops, walking around downtown Chicago, and meeting up with a number of Matt’s friends who live in the area. Matt is a connected guy in digital nomad circles, having participated in various co-living and co-working programs like Remote Year, Hacker Paradise, Nomad Cruise, Nomad Train, and more. We already have plans to meet up with more of his remote working friends and colleagues in Seattle and LA. 

Never having been to Chicago before, we make a good go of it. We gorge on deep dish pizza (how did I not know such things existed??), take in sweeping views of the city from the 96^th floor at Signature Lounge, sip wine and people-watch on the river bank, race around on an Indian-style pub crawl on Devon Street (instead of drinking beer at each place we sample an Indian dish each restaurant is known for), and laugh uncontrollably while sharing travel stories with Matt’s fellow Remote Year alumni over multiple bottles of wine at the funky Time Out Market. 

Boarding the Empire Builder Train (What Have We Done?!?!)

There are two kinds of sleeper class accommodation on Amtrak’s trains: a Roomette, and a full Bedroom. The Roomette consists of two single seats facing one another during the day; at night the seats fold down into a single bed, and an upper bunk bed comes down from the ceiling. Roomette passengers have access to bathrooms and shower facilities shared with other Roomette passengers in the same car. The Bedroom has twice the space of a Roomette, including a private toilet and shower in the cabin. 

Matt and I are intrepid travelers, not afraid of tight spaces, and the bedroom comes at a premium we’re feeling gun shy about; we assume the Roomette will suffice. 

We are immediately horrified at how small our Roomette is. I mean, we knew it would be small, but there isn’t even enough room for us both to stand in the tiny space that exists between the two seats. Just trying to find enough room for us and our carry-on luggage necessitates a comical version of anatomical Tetris.

I had every intention of seeing if we could navigate an upgrade to a bedroom anyway (as I have learned on other long-distance trains around the world, you can upgrade on-board for a deep discount), and my latest search on the Amtrak site indicated there was at least one bedroom cabin available. Seeing the size of the Roomette adds a sense of urgency to this mission. 

I set off in search of the conductor, who informs me that they don’t actually do upgrades on the train any more, and that I’ll need to call the 1-800 number; an experience I’ve already discovered usually entails sitting on hold for 30-90 minutes. 

Undeterred, I get on the phone and am surprised to be immediately connected to somebody despite the automated attendant cheerfully informing me I’d be waiting for more than two hours. 

There are no bedrooms available, much to our chagrin. 

“While I have you,” I say, “what’s the deal with the Portland to LA route? Has the track reopened?” 

Two weeks prior, wildfires had literally melted a section of track but I was told the repairs were scheduled to be complete a week before our trip and that everything would be fine. 

“Didn’t you get the email?” she responds. I gird my loins and say no. She proceeds to describe the results of an imposed itinerary change: a 1-day train ride, followed by an overnight bus ride, before picking up the final leg by train for another full day. “We’ve upgraded you to a deluxe bedroom for both of the train rides and we refunded $150 to your card for the inconvenience.” 

Matt, sitting across from me with wide eyes, still trying to comprehend how we are going to survive the next two days and two nights in this closet-sized room, signals he’s not interested in this new itinerary. We’re on the same page. 

I politely inform the Amtrak rep that we didn’t pay (somewhat exorbitantly, despite a $150 refund) to spend a night on a bus. I request a refund, and am luckily obliged. 

“Ask about upgrading to a bedroom for the final train,” Matt whispers. Perhaps knowing we’ll have nicer digs for the final ride from LA to New Orleans will help us survive this first leg. 

I’m transferred to another department where I’m informed it will be an extra $500. I look to Matt to see if he’s on board. He nods vigorously. They could have said the upgrade was $2,000 and we would probably still have agreed. (Well, maybe not, but it gives you an idea of how panicky we are given our brand new friendship and the size of this Roomette). 

We haven’t even left the station, and we’re wondering if we’ve made a mistake booking this epic train trip with Amtrak. 

Empire Builder Day 1: Chicago to Somewhere-In-Minnesota

It’s immediately evident to us that we won’t be spending time in the Roomette. Even during the day it’s cramped. So we find various nooks and crannies to stuff our belongings and head to the lounge car. 

The lounge car is shared between sleeper class and coach class passengers, and as such it’s the point of congregation for everybody, which makes it the best place to eavesdrop and people-watch. I’m always fascinated by the various people who travel long-distance by trains, and I’m excited to spend the next few days observing and meeting some of these people. 

There’s a guy who is drinking beer (a lot of it), and reading the bible, and talking loudly about how he likes to drink beer and read the bible. A lot. He’s holding captive a young guy who is spreading peanut butter and jelly on bread (presumably this is his dinner); he is nodding and smiling, and obliging Bible/Beer-Man’s requests to read various passages. 

So far, so good. People watching is off to a great start. 

Matt and I settle into a table and Matt proceeds to make round after round of small espresso shots; he’s testing out a new portable coffee grinder and hand pump-style espresso maker, determined to get the perfect balance of grind, tamping, and quantity of water and coffee. 

We are being watched, intensely. 

Sitting across from us is a group of five young men playing cards and wearing tailored navy blue pants, royal blue collared shirts, and navy blue vests to match the pants. Their haircuts are identical: it’s worn ear-length, with a straight line of bangs across the middle of their foreheads. It’s a bit reminiscent of a monk’s haircut circa the medieval times, minus the shaved spot on the crown. They are speaking a language that bears no resemblance to any language I understand, but intermixed with their unintelligible vocabulary are words and small phrases of English (which I note is said in a perfect American accent). Two of these fellows are mesmerized with our espresso operation. We interpret their fascination as an opening for conversation. 

“Where are you from?” Matt asks. 

“Michigan,” one boy responds after they collectively recover from the shock of somebody interacting with them. 

“What language are you speaking?” 

They seem to contemplate the question for a while, before saying “Pennsylvania Dutch”. 

Curiosity gets the better of me and I ask “What is the significance of your clothing?” They look at me in a way that requires me to elaborate. “You are all wearing the same outfits. The same shirts, vests…” Their spokesperson shrugs and says “this is just the way we dress in our community.” 

It seems our cultural exchange is complete as they shyly return to their card game, and Matt and I return to the task of making espresso. 

I hop online and a quick search of Pennsylvania Dutch reveals a tight-knit community from a lineage of Germans who emigrated to the Pennsylvania area in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Over the years, their language has become a dialect all its own, as has their religion which has roots in Lutheran, German Reform, Anabaptist, Mennonite, Amish, and Brethren. 

They mostly keep to themselves, but over the next few days we exchange nods and smiles, and I manage to learn this is the first time they have ever traveled beyond their community, and they are on this train trip because they have always wanted to travel this way. I completely understand; for me, long-distance train travel is as much the destination unto itself as it is the place the train is traveling to. 

After Matt and I take turns in the roomette juggling luggage and changing outfits, we head to the dining car for the last dinner seating. As with many long-distance trains, the dining car can’t handle all the sleeper class passengers at once, and so we choose pre-reserved seating times. I adore the last seating because there’s no rush to leave to accommodate another seating, and I have consistently had the most interesting experiences while languishing after meals in the dining car. Tonight is no exception. 

After dining with a very enthusiastic very well-traveled retired couple who pepper us with stories of their decades living and traveling abroad, they leave and we keep the conversation going with a boisterous group of three Indian-American couples. Everybody in our merry band shares their top two favourite places in the world, and with each share people contribute stories and anecdotes. Before we know it, we have conversationally traveled around the world a few times over and we’ve also closed down the dining car. 

Going to bed is beyond awkward. While we’ve been at dinner, our cabin attendant has converted our cabin into a bedroom and prepared our beds for us. There is literally almost no space to even stand in the cabin with the sliding door closed. The entire cabin is the size of the single bottom bunk.

One at a time, each of us vacates the room while the other pulls out their carry-on bag to dig out and change into sleeping clothes and gather toiletries for our evening ablutions in the restrooms a few doors down. 

Full-on acrobatics are required to climb into my upper bunk in the roomette, which has all of two feet of clearance to the ceiling. I am in the best shape of my life, and I have absolutely no idea how less able-bodied people manage to get in and out of these bunks. 

“It’s hot as balls down here,” Matt calls up from his bottom bunk. “How is it up there?” The air vent on the ceiling is blasting arctic air two feet away from my face. “Cold as shit.” 

We both burst into uncontrollable laughter, before falling asleep to the canter of the train much quicker than either of us had anticipated would be possible. 

Day 2: Minot North Dakota to Somewhere-In-Washington

The on-board (read: in-cabin) announcements begin with the opening of the dining car for breakfast at 6:30am, so we end up paying for our late-night escapades with our new friends in the dining car last night. Luckily, I am pleasantly surprised at the quality of sleep I get for the majority of the night; it has been a few years since I’ve slept on a train, and I’ve forgotten how the roll and canter of the train can lull me into deep sleep, as it does on this night. 

Again Matt and I are among the last to sit down to breakfast, which is great because after all the other diners have left, he embarks on another round of espresso-making that both amuses and baffles the staff on train who are now sitting at tables around us, eating and taking breaks. 

I have a habit of getting to know staff on trains. In my experience the vast majority of people who work on trains enjoy it; it’s a lifestyle more than a job, and one that requires you to be away (on trains) for days at a time. So although an inherent love of trains is not a prerequisite, it certainly helps. 

Likewise, it doesn’t generally take long for a staff member on-board to figure out that I’m not on the train to get to a destination so much as to enjoy the train as the destination. I love to chat with them and I take an active interest in what they do on board, how they came to work on trains, and more. With this camaraderie, I generally get on a first-name basis with various staff quickly, and I tend to get perks such as occasional upgrades (I’ve already been alerted by one of my new staff-buddies that if there is a no-show tonight by a passenger who has booked a bedroom that the room will be ours) and the ability to hang out in the dining car long past meal-time. They don’t mind my presence while they tend to their work, and I appreciate theirs. It works out well for everybody. 

“Be in the observation car by 6pm. That’s when it gets really good,” my staff-buddy tells me in the morning. Thus far in our train journey the scenery hasn’t exactly been spectacular. I haven’t minded so much; I enjoy softening my gaze out the window and allowing the passing landscape to wash over me. Yesterday I enjoyed the greens and browns of farmland and rolling terrain as a backdrop to sipping espresso with Matt while chatting about life and business, speaking randomly with fellow passengers, and tapping away on my laptop, recording various musings such as you’re currently reading. 

But my train-friend isn’t wrong about the shift in scenery. By 6pm we are in Glacier National Park, and the observation car (with large picture windows and a glass domed roof) is the place to be. After a full day of prairies and shallow rolling terrain, a wall of mountains appears out of nowhere, and suddenly we are snaking around (and even through) mountains, across valleys, and over rivers. We eat dinner while watching a magical sun set over layers and layers of mountains shaded in pink and purple that fade off into the distance. 

It’s a good thing the scenery is fantastic over dinner because the company is a bust. We are seated across from a couple for whom conversation is not a forte. The body language of the woman (who tries as best she can to dissolve into the corner of her seat) is signal enough to me that these introverts would rather have dined alone, but unfortunately that wasn’t an option given the number of people in the dining car. So Matt and I quietly chat amongst ourselves and take in the passing scenery, which isn’t such a hardship since it’s part of the reason we are on the train to begin with. 

By our second night in the tiny roomette, we are better equipped with a system to manage the game of anatomical Tetris required to get ready for and into bed. I perform my acrobatics to climb into the top bunk and only hit my head on the ceiling three times. 

Again surprisingly, I fall asleep quickly and rest very well. 

Empire Builder Day 3: Arriving to Seattle

Breakfast is served from 5:30 to 7am, which means we don’t eat breakfast. But that’s okay, because by 10am we are pulling into Seattle (30 minutes ahead of schedule – a minor miracle given that we were 90 minutes behind schedule a few hours prior). And given Seattle’s reputation for coffee, it’s no hardship to go in search of coffee and breakfast on arrival. 

After settling into the hotel (thanks to my Marriott Gold Elite Status they don’t flinch at an 11am check-in and late check-out the next day), our 28 or so hours in Seattle are filled with market lunches, seaside strolls, work-sessions in coffee shops fuelled with incredible espresso, and dinner at a wine bar where we sample flights of wine from Washington State. 

In Part 3 of this Adventures With Amtrak series, we head down the west coast of the United States (in a slightly different way than intended), before boarding the Sunset Limited to New Orleans. Check it out! 

And if you missed Part 1, you can read it here and learn how we dreamt up this crazy trip around the U.S. by train: Adventures With Amtrak: The Big Idea.

Some Other Train Adventures For You to Enjoy:
India’s Deccan Odyssey from Jaipur to Mumbai
The Indian Pacific Across Australia (and Back)
Taking The Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver (sort of)
The Ghan from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia
The Ultimate Train Challenge from Lisbon to Saigon (25,000 kms in 30 days) 

This post Amtrak Adventures, Part 2: The Empire Builder appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

The months roll on and on. I’m in a groove so deep I actually worry about how I’ll learn to break my iron-clad daily routine when this pandemic lockdown finally lifts. I’m so grateful I had a home base to return to when COVID-19 reared its ugly head back in early 2020; I’d simply never intended that this base would become a prison of sorts for a year and a half. Surviving the world’s longest lockdown in Toronto has taken a huge toll. 

I’m not alone in this, so I’ll spare you the sob story. The pandemic has changed everybody, in subtle to grandiose ways. And somewhere around June of 2021, I hit a wall. At the same time my number finally comes up in Canada to get vaccinated; an act which simultaneously breaks down the wall as I’m hitting it. 

I’m chatting online with Matt, a digital nomad friend of mine and fellow train travel enthusiast. 

“I’m getting my second vax tomorrow. I’ll be in the States in two weeks,” I start off in a text thread. “I’m going to visit a friend in Florida, but before that, what do you say to a wee U.S. travel adventure?” 

“What about that rail pass?” he responds. 

The month prior Amtrak had come out with a 30-day rail pass at a great price and we had bantered about it in a daydreamy way. I call up the article and dig a little deeper. 

“The offer just expired, and besides, it’s for economy travel only. That’s not how I like to do long-distance train travel. It’s all about sleeper class.” I reply. 

So he sends me another article; this one a collection of the most scenic long-distance train rides in the United States. In the article is a collection of long-distance routes offered by Amtrak. I scour the article and pick out some favourites. 

“Any of these three would be good,” I reply. 

“Great. Let’s do all three,” Matt responds with a proposed itinerary that connects all three routes. 

I blink at my phone as I read the message a few times over. 

“I was just thinking about doing one of those routes.”

“C’mon. You’re The Professional Hobo! Considering the train journeys you’ve done, this is totally on brand! I can’t believe I’m telling you to do all three!”

He’s not wrong. I kicked off my full-time travels in early 2007 by taking the train from Toronto to Prince Rupert (in British Columbia), eventually circling back to Edmonton via Vancouver. 

Three years later in 2010, I got my hands on a rail pass in Australia and rode every possible train they had including their signature long-distance routes: The Ghan and the Indian Pacific; the latter of which I combined with another overnight train ride and rode one way then immediately back the other way (all in all covering 11,000 kilometres in 11 days straight, all to see if it’s possible to get bored on a train. I wrote a book about it instead, so suffice it to say boredom eluded me). 

And the very next year, I did the Ultimate Train Challenge: a train travel stunt dreamed up and embarked on by me and two full-time travel colleagues, It involved traveling from Lisbon to Saigon (a total of 25,000 kilometres) in 30 days, all by train. 

If all that weren’t enough, in 2017 I experienced the world’s most luxurious train: The Deccan Odyssey in India. 

Matt has called me on my own game, and now I can’t back down. We must do all three of these long-distance train rides around the United States. And so it is. 

Adventures With Amtrak: The Grand Plan

Within 24 hours, Matt and I have constructed an ambitious itinerary. We will meet in Chicago, and a few days later we’ll board the Empire Builder train from Chicago to Seattle (46 hours and about 2,200 miles). 

After a day or so in Seattle, we will hop down to Portland (3.5 hours and 200 miles), where we’ll spend a few days. 

Then we’ll board the Coast Starlight from Portland to Los Angeles (35 hours and 800 miles), where we’ll spend another few days. 

Last up, we will take the Sunset Limited from Los Angeles to New Orleans (53 hours and 2,000 miles), where we’ll spend a week. 

All in all, over 5,200 miles and almost 140 hours on trains. 

Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty “on brand” for me. 

“But….It’s Amtrak.”

“You know Amtrak isn’t like European trains, right?”

“I’ve been on the Empire Builder. It’s cool. But the rest, sounds kinda…’Amtrak-y’.”

“How many hours? On a train?!”

Skepticism abounds from friends and colleagues. I know it’s Amtrak. And I know the Amtrak skeptics are referring to. 

I grew up taking Amtrak commuter trains back and forth between Toronto Canada and Albany NY every summer (400 miles and about 10 hours, with a lengthy border stop) to visit my grandparents. While somebody who wants to get somewhere expediently may not have enjoyed the experience, it actually planted the seed for my lifelong love of trains. I adored those train trips; walking up and down the train while it jostled from side to side, napping peacefully with the canter of the train, looking out the window at the ever-changing scenery, and playing cards with my mum in the lounge car. Trains for me became synonymous with summer vacation, freedom, and adventure. 

Many years later this seedling of inspiration would propel me to experience some of the world’s most epic train rides, but the United States remained largely undiscovered from a railway perspective. 

And I am completely undeterred by people’s lack of confidence in Amtrak. Because what most people don’t know about Amtrak is that when you book a long-distance trip in sleeper-class, it is a totally different experience. Not only do you have a private cabin with seats that convert to beds at night, but you also have access to a special sleeper-class-only dining car that provides three meals a day, with dinner involving linen table service, three courses, and even a glass of wine (or beer). 

This ain’t no commuter train experience. 

Oh Yeah, By the Way…

At this stage it’s relevant to note that Matt and I have never met in person. We have conversed online through messaging and emails, been on one another’s podcast shows, and had social video calls over glasses of red wine. Like many friendships of the digital nomad persuasion, the fact that we haven’t actually met in person is somewhat incidental. 

And yet. 

“Are you crazy??” my friend in Toronto says (and she is one of a few who offer similar objections). “What if you two don’t get along? You’re going to be stuck on trains and in hotels with him for a whole month!”

I shrug. “It’ll be fine. We are both super-experienced lifestyle travelers, and we’re accustomed to traveling in close quarters with other people. I did the Ultimate Train Challenge with two people I’d never met in person before and that went fine…” I respond. 

“I guess you can just get off at the next stop if it comes to that,” says one friend, creating a mental escape route in her predictions of a possible blowout. 

“The hell I will!” I say. “I’ve spent a small fortune on this trip. I’ll be damned if I don’t see it through! Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. I know we can do this.” 

Secretly I’m wondering if we can. 

Check out Part 2 of my Adventures With Amtrak – The Empire Builder! 

This post Adventures With Amtrak, Part 1: The Big Idea appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

In this interview, we discuss Derek’s last 21 years on the road, how remote work is changing the economic landscape globally, productivity tips and traps, the dangers of over-planning, and he shares some of his travel adventures from over two decades on the road. 

Jump right into my Awesome Interview Series videos on YouTube here – and please give it a thumbs up, leave comments and subscribe!

Derek has also been featured on my site here:
How 8 Digital Nomads Survived the Pandemic
A Week-In-The-Life of Wandering Earl, in the Middle East

This post 21 Years of Full-Time Travel with Wandering Earl appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

Gary is a multi-award-winning travel photographer, and runs one of the most popular travel blogs of all time. In this interview, we talk about his travel career (including a random focus on the nine months he spent traveling across the Pacific), how he created such a popular travel blog, his thoughts on remote work, and of course, his pivot to podcasting along with his strategies for success and hints at what’s to come. 

Jump right into my Awesome Interview Series videos on YouTube here – and please give it a thumbs up, leave comments and subscribe!

Introduction to Gary Arndt and His Travel Experiences

The best place to start any interview is at the beginning, so when I asked Gary about how he got his start in the travel industry, he shared some interesting tidbits, including: 

• How Gary went from never seeing the ocean until he was in his 20s, to being one of the world’s most accomplished travelers. 
• What it’s like to travel without a plan, and how it (almost) always worked for Gary.
• How he took nine months to cross the Pacific, visiting Pacific Islands that nobody goes to, and what life is like there. 
• The fear of travel, and how to overcome it. 

Full-Time Travel and Remote Work

Balancing full-time travel and working remotely takes finesse. Interestingly Gary’s take varies pretty dramatically from what other colleagues tend to say about it. We discuss: 

• Building a remote business on the road, including “Gary’s Paradox” of traveling and blogging. 
• Being a “digital nomad” versus a “traveler”, and Gary’s preference for being a “traveler”. 
• How Gary uniquely created a name for himself with his blog. 
• How to make the most of a destination while working remotely. 
• Vacationing versus working remotely and how it affects the travel experience. 
• How smartphones revolutionized remote work (and what it was like before). 

Challenges of Full-Time Travel 

I’m the first person to admit the travel lifestyle isn’t all roses and lollipops, and Gary agrees. We chatted about: 

• Going from full-time travel to having a home base. 
• How friendships change and evolve when you travel full-time, and how social media totally changed how we stay in touch while traveling. 
• The difference in pace of travel when you travel full-time versus taking trips from a home base. 

(See also: Being a Digital Nomad vs. Having a Home Base, with Sherry Ott)

Gary’s Pivot to the Everything Everywhere Daily Podcast

I’ve watched (or rather, listened to) the Everything Everywhere Daily Podcast blossom from conception to an incredibly popular podcast that is growing exponentially. Truly, this is a culmination of a lifetime of experiences for Gary, and this is one of more fascinating parts of our interview. We discuss: 

• How travel content creators have reacted to 2020 (which pummelled the travel industry), and Gary’s own response to the challenges therein. 
• The inherent challenges of blogging versus podcasting. 
• Why a daily podcast is brilliant, but also more taxing than anything Gary has ever done. 
• How Gary is growing the Everything Everywhere Daily Podcast, and the various ways he plans to repurpose the content. 
• Is is possible to podcast (daily) while working remotely and traveling?
• Why Gary is willing to put travel on hold in the meantime. 
• The additional opportunities (like very creative tours) that the podcast is opening up. 
  
  

Watch the Full Interview with Gary Arndt of Everything Everywhere Here! 

Enough dallying. Enjoy this interview with Gary Arndt! Watch below, or click here to see it on YouTube. And please give it a thumbs up and leave a comment while watching! It makes a big difference in getting my video noticed by others who may be interested. 

Also, please subscribe to my channel so you don’t miss future exciting interviews! 

This post Podcasting vs Blogging After 9 Years of Full-Time Travel, With Gary Arndt appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

You Might Also Be Interested In:
Remote Work: Tips & Tricks
How to Become a Digital Nomad
Filing Taxes as a Digital Nomad
Virtual Mailboxes: How to Get Mail While You Travel

I decided to write this article out of voyeuristic interest. Two years ago I got a home base in Toronto Canada after 12 years of being a digital nomad (in the purest sense of being proverbially homeless). I was spending the winter in Crete when the pandemic got its legs, and seeing the writing on the wall, I elected to return home ahead of schedule, shortly before Canada officially urged its citizens to do so and the first wave of lockdowns began. 

I had never intended to get so much consistent use out of my apartment; it was meant as a base for lots of travel, and has instead now been the longest place I’ve stayed in one go in the last 15 years! But I must say I was immensely grateful that I had a place to call home where I could lock down in comfort. 

If I didn’t have this place, returning to Canada would have been infinitely more complicated and expensive; so much so that I might not have come back at all. 

While revelling in my home base (despite feeling a wee bit “stuck”), I’ve wondered how my digital nomad friends and colleagues without home bases have managed, dealing with closed borders, visas, business challenges, and more. Whether for reasons of practicality, finance, necessity, or simple preference, some digital nomads have continued to stay abroad. 

Here’s a fascinating look at how 8 digital nomads have managed their lives and incomes throughout the pandemic. 

A Note About Travel Shaming. 

As you read the following detailed descriptions of how these digital nomads managed, you’ll see everybody handled the pandemic differently. Some stayed put, and others bounced around. You may be inclined to judge some of them for the decisions they made. 

Acting on these judgements is called Travel Shaming, and it has become a problem, especially with a universally heightened use of social media, where people can hide behind their screens while flinging hurtful remarks and often unfounded criticisms at others. 

So while reading this article, I’d like to encourage you to be empathetic and compassionate. What would you do if you had no home and perhaps a decreased income limited your options? 

DARIECE AND NICK: Stayed in Portugal, then to Mexico

Dariece and Nick have been traveling since 2008, and are the Canadians behind Goats On The Road; a website dedicated to teaching people how to make money online, both at home and on the road, so they can lead a freer lifestyle. They’re experts in saving money, finance management, building an online business, and of course…travel. 

All of the countries near Portugal were shutting their borders and we found ourselves in Lisbon with not much of a choice but to stay put. We thought we may be there for a month at the most, but we stayed in Portugal for almost seven months!

It was almost two and a half months before shops and restaurants opened back up in Lisbon (with limited seating and hours), and as soon as they did, we went to a few of them to support the small businesses. 

With restrictions lifted by the government, we went on a 10-day campervan trip around northern Portugal. Hiring a campervan is probably the best way to get around safely and we had everything we needed with us — the campervan was our transportation, bedroom, bathroom and restaurant. We enjoyed that trip while being out in nature and being able to safely distance ourselves from others.

During the summer months, we rented a car and made our way south to the Algarve region while staying in a few private Airbnbs along the way. We moved around slowly while working on our websites along the way.

We knew we weren’t able to stay in Portugal forever. As Canadians, we are only allowed 90 days in the Schengen Zone, and we had reached that shortly after lockdown started. Luckily, there were some automatic visa extensions allowed due to these unforeseen circumstances. 

However, we didn’t hear back from immigration as to whether or not there would be another extension granted, so we decided it was best to leave rather than staying illegally in the country. It was a stressful decision trying to figure out where to go during these times. Which countries were open? Which countries could we go to without a visa? Which airlines had the best chance of actually taking off, rather than just cancelling our flight? What documentation did we need to provide? Were we making the right choice?!

Eventually, we decided on Mexico, found a route, and flew more than 24 hours (with layovers) from Lisbon to Madrid, to Mexico City to Cancun — all while wearing a mask the entire time. We plan to live here in Playa del Carmen for at least six months.

[Nora’s Note: This is a very important consideration. International health insurance does not usually provide coverage while you are in your home country, and in Canada once you are absent for a certain amount of time you are no longer part of the provincial healthcare plan and can only re-qualify after having resided in the province for 3-6 months (depending on the province). This means if Dariece and Nick had returned to Canada and ended up in the hospital – for COVID or other reasons – during the re-qualification period, it could have been financially devastating.]

Since we haven’t lived there for more than 10 years, it’s somewhat of a foreign country for us at this point! We will return to Canada to visit our family when it is safe to do so.

When we were in our campervan, we took some time off from the computers. And, when we were in the Algarve, we had our usual routine of working in the morning in our apartments and beach or pool in the afternoon.

Playa del Carmen in Mexico is also a digital nomad destination. Here we have the amenities we need for living — fast wifi, comfortable accommodation options, food delivery services, grocery stores, places to exercise, and if we want, co-working spaces. 

So, while we haven’t been able to properly travel and work this year, we’ve been able to move around a bit while working on some projects. 

One major lesson we’ve learned from this year is that we need to diversify our income streams. We can’t rely on one website for all of our earnings, even though it’s diverse in terms of topics.

Just before lockdown, we purchased a destination based website which was all about travelling to Ireland. We completely redesigned it, revamped it, hired a team and produced lots of new content. That site did pretty well for a while (traffic and income were up) until the UK went into full lockdown and no one was travelling there — not even domestically. 

In Lisbon, we built a new website from scratch which is all about fly fishing (Nick’s passion!). We’ve hired a team and it’s already doing really well in terms of traffic and income in just eight months. 

Recently, we hired a team and started a music website — this one is still in the beginning stages. The goal is to have that up and running and earning an income within six months. 

Finally, we’re learning Facebook ads, beefing up our SEO online course, and are continuing to (hopefully) provide useful and inspirational content on Goats On The Road. The goal is to have another website up and running by next month.

GABRIEL MORRIS: Mexico, USA, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Turkey, and back to Mexico

Gabriel Traveler (Gabriel Morris) has been wandering around the world for three decades, visiting five continents and 70+ countries. He is author of “Following My Thumb“, “Gabe’s Guide to Budget Travel” and several other books available on Amazon.com. He posts videos regularly chronicling his adventures and provides practical travel info and tips for travelers. You can find him on Youtube at Gabriel Traveler. 

I was there for a month as the pandemic started getting serious, but it still wasn’t clear how serious it was going to get, so I flew back to Mexico to relax and see what was going to happen. Just a few days after I arrived in Mexico, President Trump closed the borders to Europeans and I realized things were getting serious and happening quickly, and I should probably go somewhere that I was prepared to be for a while, possibly under lockdown conditions. 

Mexico was kind of a gamble not knowing what was going to happen, so I decided to go to Vancouver, Canada instead. I was there for six weeks, mostly in quarantine, but since it appeared the world wasn’t going to end yet and spring was coming, I flew back to California and went on a road trip for a couple weeks, then visited family again to watch what was happening and see if there was hope for a summer of traveling. 

Mexico was one of the first countries that announced it was opening up to tourists in June. And Europe was announcing that it planned to open to tourism in July, though it wasn’t clear yet if that would include Americans. So I flew to Cancun and planned to stay there for two weeks, then fly to Europe. 

Unfortunately just a few days after I arrived in Mexico the Covid cases started spiking dramatically in the U.S. When Europe (specifically the EU and the Schengen Zone countries) published their list of countries that would be allowed to visit, the U.S. wasn’t on the list. 

But Serbia had opened up. So I flew from Mexico to Serbia and was in Belgrade for a week, during which time the government announced a lockdown due to a rise in Covid cases and there were protests in the streets. 

Luckily Croatia had just announced they were opening up. So I flew to Croatia and spent seven weeks there. During that time things had calmed down in Serbia, so I went back to Serbia for a couple weeks, then to North Macedonia for two weeks and then flew to Turkey for six weeks. From there I flew to London and spent a week in quarantine trying to decide where to go next, and finally decided to come back to Mexico, my current whereabouts.

It stayed that way until I got back to traveling again in June, when fortunately things got a lot better, and I had my biggest paychecks ever from Youtube.

MIKE & ANNE HOWARD: RVing in Eastern Europe and USA

Mike and Anne Howard left on their honeymoon in January 2012 and never came home. They created HoneyTrek.com to chronicle their journey across all seven continents and help people mobilize their travel dreams. They are the authors of National Geographic’s bestselling book on couples adventure travel, Ultimate Journeys for Two, and the first glamping book, Comfortably Wild. Follow their adventures @HoneyTrek.

While this was alarming, we take pride in our adaptability and positivity as travelers, so fear wasn’t going to hold us back. We sparked up Plan B and an adventure we’d long been dreaming about…a camper trip around Eastern Europe! We rented a van from Indie Campers and plotted a journey through Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia.

The first week in Poland was blissful, retracing Mike’s family roots, wandering medieval streets, and connecting with locals (before “social distancing” was a thing). In the Czech Republic, we heard whispers of the borders closing. We weighed our fate, “Do we cross into Slovakia or go back to Poland where we have a few friends and can live off pierogies?” 

When the time came to return our looong overdue camper, we made a break for the German border, dropped it off in Munich, and carried on to the Netherlands for another month until we could finally catch a flight to the U.S. (three cancellations later). 

Considering our “primary residence” is a house on wheels, with everything we need to be self-sufficient and maintain social distancing, we were able to safely continue our travels. We decided to finish our great American road trip by exploring our four remaining states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. It was 3.5 years of road tripping in the making, but this fall we finally made it to our 50th state! 

That said, we weren’t willy-nilly about the places we explored. We made a point to stay away from cities and focus on the wilderness areas with lots of hiking, kayaking, and boondocking. While we miss the local interaction that normally inspires our travels, the pandemic made us find solace in nature. 

 

While we heard the Schengen Area was giving visa extensions to foreigners delayed for pandemic reasons, we didn’t want to risk it and left Europe the day before our three-month tourist visa expired.

While there are still ups and downs, our nine years as digital nomads have taught us to be resilient and make the best of even the worst situations.

AYNGELINA BROGAN: Returned to Family Home in Canada

Ayngelina is a fellow Canadian who has been in and out of the digital nomad lifestyle for over 10 years. She runs the culinary travel site Bacon is Magic, which shares how to find the best food around the world and how to make it at home. Get her advice on everything from the best Cuban food to tastiest drinks in Mexico. 

I still felt quite secure as the government of Cuba was very proactive at identifying cases, announcing the region and then sweeping through those areas to investigate if it had spread. They were very forthcoming about announcing how someone contracted it, if they had traveled from somewhere or been around someone who had it. 

I planned to stay in Cuba. However, within a week things changed drastically around the world and Prime Minister Trudeau asked Canadians to come home to Nova Scotia. To be honest I made the decision for my Mother more than myself, to come home. I figured I would be back in Cuba in a couple of months so I could just use the time to work.

Obviously that did not happen although I did continue to work. Thankfully Nova Scotia was not impacted like the rest of Canada and once Coronavirus was under control we opened up an “Atlantic Bubble” within our four Atlantic Provinces where we could travel freely. However, non-essential workers from other affected provinces were not allowed to enter.

I am also so fortunate to have decided to leave Cuba when I did. Some people thought they would wait it out. But the government decided that non-residents of Cuba could not stay. And those who remained would be moved to hotels to wait for flights. I agree with the move as tourists were the cause of the virus. However, I heard it was complete chaos to get flights out and quite expensive. I’m glad I left when I did.

I also decided I would finally learn to shoot and edit video and that opened doors for me this year. I approached our provincial tourism board to shoot a series of videos giving locals inspiration to take inexpensive day trips around the province. After shooting four videos I continued to work in Nova Scotia, but also went to Prince Edward Island and recently Saint John New Brunswick.

It was an incredible opportunity to learn a new skill (video) and travel domestically. Atlantic Canada is very active on Facebook so while I’m not seeing a lot of traction in YouTube, I’m getting great feedback on Facebook which keeps me going. It has also been my most fulfilling work as small businesses have contacted me to say people came in because they saw my video and thanking me for the help. 

Although I do have a bit of jealousy when I see others in Mexico, I don’t envy those who got the virus. And because this region of Canada is the safest in North America it is tough to leave. 

I didn’t think I’d spend a year back in my childhood bedroom, but I am grateful that I like my family and my mother is so supportive. I think the least I can do for her is to just wait and see.

MIKE AND OSHIN (and Baby Hank): Stayed in the Philippines

Mike is a Canadian and his partner Oshin is a Filipina. Together they make up Hobo with a Laptop, a digital nomad family blog about making money online through blogging and online work.

Our Palawan apartment isn’t too small, but it’s pretty bare bones. We only had life basics there, and we were ill prepared for a pandemic. 

With Oshin being pregnant and knowing that getting her to Canada would be complicated, we decided to bunker down where we were. By the end of the first week of February I had successfully bought the appliances we needed to live there long-term, and stocked up a year’s worth of food, just in case. We also cancelled our trip to Panglao, which cost us a couple grand in non-refundable expenses. 

Today we’re still in Palawan. Our son Hank was born on 9/11. 

I also got fat. But of all places in the world I could be right now, I’m glad we chose Palawan. 

Logistics are difficult. As a far-flung island in the Philippines with businesses shutting down, it’s harder to shop for essentials. We rely on Lazada and Shopee to get vitamins and baby needs. And shipping domestically takes as long or longer than international shipments. 

The Philippines also prohibited domestic flights, which I don’t mind. A lot of Filipinos in Manila (where cases were flaring) took early pandemic flight discounts as a signal to travel in spite of the risks. 

So instead of focusing on new content, we’ve tweaked keywords in our existing content and added affiliate offers for new programs that fare well during a global shut down. We poured everything we could into a friend who writes and publishes guest posts on relevant websites on our behalf.

As a result our traffic went up (and down, and up, and down, and up) 5x, and our affiliate commissions went up 3x+ consistently. We make more money today with our blog(s) than I have ever made on all my blogs combined, ever, in my history of blogging. Even more than I made working a suit job in Canada in Liberty Village, Toronto.

This is because our focus changed. We pondered: “who still has money to burn when most people don’t?” Niches like gourmet dog food, vegan nutrition, financial services, and luxury items that used to be a hard sell when things were good — have all sold in greater numbers than ever before during this pandemic.

We used this money to start an online community of current and aspiring remote workers/entrepreneurs  called The Roaming Economy. It’s designed to help members grow, become more profitable, and network with their peers. 

JARRYD AND ALESHA: Bought a Campervan in Australia 

Alesha and Jarryd are the travel couple behind Australia’s top adventure travel blog, NOMADasaurus and the new van life blog, Van Life Theory. They’ve been travelling the world non-stop together for over 12 years, and are now travelling Australia in a campervan. You can find them on YouTube and Instagram, as well as their van life Instagram account.

After three weeks there, Alesha flew home to Australia and I headed to Kyrgyzstan for our next campaign. In Australia, the only restrictions at the time were for people coming from China, so she experienced nothing strange landing home. In Kyrgyzstan COVID was the talk of the country, but it was still a bit of a joke. By the time my two-week project was finished, people weren’t joking anymore about it and uncertainty was kicking in.

I landed back in Australia in the first week of March with no concerns, and the plan was to be at home for three weeks before jumping on a flight to California for the next job. In those three weeks, the entire world shut down, and our whole year of international travel was cancelled.

We were staying with family during the lockdown, and once the severity of the pandemic became clear and our government started indicating that Australians couldn’t travel internationally for 12 months or longer, we decided to buy a campervan to focus on domestic travel. When our lockdowns eased on June 1st, we hit the road and have been travelling non-stop in New South Wales and Queensland ever since.

But we still managed to stay in the black month after month. Surprisingly we landed a couple of big contracts throughout the pandemic, both with old and new partners, and we pivoted our business strategy to reflect current markets. We focused less and less on the main travel website and social media accounts, and instead created a few new (non-travel niche) sites, building teams to manage them. 

Our commercial photography and videography side of the business grew exponentially, and we’re doing a lot more consulting, SEO management and content creation. By the end of 2020, we’re forecasting to be back on track to pre-pandemic profit levels.

DEREK EARL BARON: ‘Stuck’ in Bali, then to the USA then Mexico

Derek Earl Baron has 21 years of non-stop global travel under his belt, with over 120 countries visited. He left home (USA) in 1999 for a short 3 month trip to Asia that never came to an end. Derek is known for his personal, down-to-earth style of blogging and his popular small-group tour company, Wandering Earl Tours. They offer unique, locally-focused trips to some of the coolest off-the-beaten-path destinations around the world. Derek also rescued an adorable 5-day old kitten in Bali that he now takes with him wherever he goes.

Keep in mind that I was not doing any of the above traveling for fun. I went to Bali because my girlfriend was sick and stuck there. Then, Indonesia told foreigners they had to leave in August, so I left to travel to the U.S. to see family. Then I needed a place to stay longer-term so I moved to Mexico.

BRYANNA & FAMILY: Traveled Back to the U.S. from Israel, then RV Life in the States

Bryanna and her husband sold everything, bought an RV and have been living, working and traveling full-time around North America with their 4 kids since 2014. At Crazy Family Adventure (as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube), they write about the best things to do with kids at the destinations they visit, road trips, RV-ing and family travel. 

That night, the U.S. President announced they wouldn’t be letting flights in from other countries. It also came out that starting on Saturday morning at 12:01am all flights would be directed to a few major airports in the U.S. and it would be quite a process to get back into the States. 

So we were so glad we had selected the Friday flight and that we would be getting back to the U.S. before Saturday! It was definitely a stressful time waiting for our flight to take off, landing in Poland (where they boarded the plane to take everyone’s temperature) and waiting for our connecting flight back to Miami, Florida. 

We landed in Florida around 5pm on Friday and it was a quick process getting through customs at the airport. We were glad to be back especially after we saw all the lines and packs of people in the airports starting on Saturday. 

Our next decision was where we would spend time quarantining. We live in our RV full time so we don’t have a home base. We just have a home on wheels. We had friends who own vacation rentals in Destin, Florida. They invited us to stay with them in one of their houses as we quarantined for two weeks – since we had just been out of the country. We parked our RV in a lot in their neighborhood and it worked out great to be with friends in a nice big house! 

Once things really started shutting down around the U.S. we rented a vacation home from our friends with my parents and sister’s family who are also full-time RVers. We spent the next six weeks in an amazing vacation rental in Destin where we could walk to the beach (when it was opened). The house also had a pool and hot tub in the back! My sister has two kids who are best friends with our kids so it really was a great place to be “stuck” for the next six weeks. 

Once the six weeks was up we headed to an RV park in northern Alabama for three weeks. We had a huge site and were right by a lake that the kids could swim in. All of these situations made it easy for us to quarantine and stay away from other people. 

From there we traveled through Tennessee, Nashville, Kentucky, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona and are on our way to Texas. 

Are you a digital nomad? How did you survive the pandemic? Tell us in the comments below!

This post How 8 Digital Nomads Have Survived the Pandemic appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

In Panama, Guacamole the parrot flew away, despite the homeowner’s instructions to open her outdoor cage daily with assurances that she wouldn’t fly anywhere even though her feathers weren’t clipped. The dog also developed a nasty case of fleas, which necessitated not only treating the dog but also the very expensive rug the dog loved to roll around on (and I ruined the rug in so doing). I wasn’t held to blame for either of these losses (the parrot or the rug), but I felt bad and it was pretty stressful. 

In Grenada, the job was billed as watching the dog, but it was really about watching the employees (whose jobs were actually to watch me). All this surreptitious watching aside, the dog ended up in doggy-hospital and almost didn’t survive (the dog, that is. Though my own life also felt tenuous at times with a glorious bout of dengue fever + heartbreak). 

And in Japan, the cat in my charge was certifiably crazy who could, when not taking a swipe at my ankles, puke and poop at will. We got into a tiff one day, and while I was cleaning up the angry poop he left on my yoga mat, he puked on the bed.

I’ve got a few other dramatic tales of pet-sitting, but I’ll stop there. Why? Because they utterly pale in comparison to what you’re about to read. 

Tom Bentley is a colleague and friend of mine with whom I became acquainted in the Florida Keys. He is a business and travel writer, an essayist and a novelist. He’s published hundreds of freelance pieces in newspapers, magazines, and online. He is the author of three novels, a book of short stories and a how-to book on finding and cultivating your writing voice. He would like you to pour him a Manhattan right at five. See his lurid website confessions at www.tombentley.com.

Tom and I were chatting about how the pandemic has curtailed our travels, and he especially mentioned missing his pet-sitting adventures. Which got us on to how talented homeowners can be in not disclosing everything about a house-sitting gig, thus luring us unsuspecting travelers into situations we might not have agreed to if given a chance. 

We’ve both learned a few lessons the hard way; lessons you can learn in advance (and thus avoid  experiencing the consequences of) here. 

Want to see just how hairy (literally and figuratively) a pet-sitting gig can get? Read Tom’s tale here. This article was originally published on a now-defunct publication called BluntlyMag. I asked him if I could republish it here because I enjoyed it so much. I hope you do too. 

Pet-sitting on the Road: Do I Need a Vet or a Shrink?

The dog’s name was Bentley. I should have known there would be trouble, because my name is Bentley too. And though I don’t poop on the carpet, I have some anxiety issues as well. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s anchor: for years, my girlfriend Alice and I have house-sat all over the world, for a month or two at a time. 

Panama, Hawaii, Ecuador, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, Mexico, lovely places all, where the setup is that you stay rent-free in exchange for taking care of the house, the garden, and often a pet. Or two pets or four pets or more pets. As a rule, prior to arrival, the owners will give you a bit of information about the animal and its care. 

As another rule, though unspoken, we have found that the owners have neglected to mention some minor matter—say, that the dog might need to have its anal glands manually expressed—that might have given our house-sitting promise a pause.

We’ll get to inflamed glands later, but let’s talk about Bentley, our Oahu charge. Bentley’s owners had explained by Skype that because Bentley had some anxiety issues about being left alone, and that he expressed that anxiety by peeing or pooping as soon as the door was closed, he had to be diapered. 

OK, that seemed a mite odd, but we could do it. What we didn’t know was that Bentley’s diapers would only corral his pee. And that Bentley would invariably—remarkably, distressingly—poop anywhere in the house (except on the positioned poop pads that were supposed to entice him) pretty much anytime you left. So, we learned that whenever we returned from even a short excursion, we had to search the house for the prizes Bentley left us.

We also didn’t know that Bentley needed to have a Prozac pill put down his throat every day, in order to quell said anxiety. This is something one has to practice, since pill placement is tricky, and pill spitting frequent. Bentley, who is actually a charming dog, is a toy poodle with soulful, mournful eyes; if you were sitting on the couch with him, he would lock eyes with you for long, expressive moments. Because he didn’t like to be watched while he ate, he would train those woebegone gazes upon you with deep meaning until you looked away, when he could then eat unimpeded.

But Bentley was easy compared to Billy. Ahh Billy, our Caribbean island companion whose anxiety made Bentley appear the laughing Santa Claus of dogs. We’d been told Billy had specific food requirements at specific times: no dog food, but cooked hot dog in the morning, deli meats and cheese in the afternoon, cooked hamburger at night. What we weren’t told was that Billy wouldn’t eat his food. Since most dogs will eat socks, plastic Easter eggs and road maps, we thought this was unusual.

Offering him food made him visibly depressed. We would show him his food and his face and sunken body language spoke loudly of his sorrow. He once went 36 hours without eating—we went mad trying to think of a remedy. He would also howl like the hound of the Baskervilles when we left the house for walks, and we could hear it echoing through the hills.

His dietary habits were unsettling enough, but another of his neuroses extended to thunder and rain. Any time there was a thunderstorm, even a mild storm, or if the wind nosily arose, he would tremble for literal hours, and glue himself to your side. 

Since Caribbean islands regularly have weather squalls, that was a lot of side-gluing. Once he was tucked up against my leg trembling so violently that I thought he was having severe seizures, and because there was no vet on the island, we thought—to our terror—that this was the night he would die.

We were pleased that he didn’t die, because Billy, like Bentley, had a fair amount of likability tucked between his anxieties. Alice and I were also pleased that neither of us died every time we went into to kitchen to prepare his food and saw on the counter the latex gloves and medication  to express Billy’s anal glands if they became inflamed. The only thing that became inflamed was my panicked imagination, and that was enough.

You would never think that taking care of a neurotic dog was a blessing. You would never think that—until you had to care for four crazed dogs. OK, prior to arrival we were told it was only two dogs, but as I say, homeowners sometimes have trouble with details. The first two Bahamas dogs, Churchill and Dolly, seemed pretty doggish at first, but that was a ruse: Churchill turned out to be a crafty Svengali and Dolly his assassin.

No matter what fence or gate or enclosure that we’d put Churchill behind or in when we left the sprawling property for island excursions, he would always be outside the grounds when we returned. And he lock-picked with a laugh: he seemed delighted to see our surprise when we ever found him out of bounds, racing merrily about.

Dolly wasn’t as clever as Churchill (though she could bark like an orchestra on meth), but she was brutally skilled in one talent: on every walk we went, down that white-sand beach next to those impossibly blue Bahamas waters, Dolly would find something to kill in moments. She would rush on to the sand, frenziedly dig out a large crab, and then snap it lifeless with her jaws. Every walk. That made her day.

We thought these two were quite enough, until the owner flew in Bruno from Florida. Bruno was a big bear of a dog, perhaps as old as one of the Pyramids. When we walked him with the other dogs, he lagged way behind, perhaps reading a long novel on his Kindle while he trudged along. When it was time for him to come in the house, Bruno couldn’t seem to cross a threshold of a door, hesitating, inching forward, drawing back, until he would burst through, long—long—minutes later.

So there were three. Until there were four, with the arrival of Fluffy, who was not. Fluffy, that is. Fluffy was rendered near hairless by a skin condition so he resembled a possum (ugh, that spindly black tail), and he expressed his affection for Alice by biting her heels with needle teeth from behind while we walked. When we tried to feed all four dogs (two of whom needed medication), it was a veritable circus act, for you had to protect one dog’s food from another, and they would all race from bowl to bowl in a hierarchy, some the banisher and some the banished.

So, we managed four dogs—we could take care of any pets, right? Wrong. Oh, so very wrong. In Panama, there was only a single dog and a single cat, both of them reasonable creatures, though the dog had a freezer full of specially prepared foods we had to thaw and cook. But the toucans, two beauties in a large cage, required a bit more exertion, because the owner thought that all of that toucan evolution that allowed them to eat in the wild for thousands of years didn’t apply: we had to hand cut the mangos, papaya and watermelon that we fed them daily, pieces of which they would raucously flip all over the cage. 

The parrots required even more attention. The large one required the attention of you trying to prevent him from killing you, because he was a nasty tempered thing, always stretching his neck to give you a good bite. The tiny one, a beautifully colored bird of bright pastels, required our attention because he seemed to be dying. 

We had to feed him with an eyedropper, which didn’t seem to help his listless doldrum and near inertia in the cage. We only found out after we left that he’d been sold to the owners as a species of rare parrot, but he was actually a regular green parrot, hand-painted with paints that made him sick, though they faded with time, and he perked up. 

The deer, however, alarmed us the most, because, well, it was a deer. They had trapped Punkin (yes) and gelded it—not best for a deer’s mood—and put a harness on it. The deer was kept in a very large pen on their 40 acres, but the owner wanted us to walk him on the grounds to keep him in good shape. I saw the owner walking, arm muscles straining, this lunging, thrashing thing once, and that was enough. After they left, Punkin stayed in his pen.

And a brief nod to Margaret the dog on the Big Island who never had visible worms, but who had the charming daily habit of sitting up on her rear, and using her front paws to twirl herself around and around in full circles on the shag carpet to stimulate her nether regions. That was carpet I had started lying on to do stretches—no more! 

And I won’t elaborate on the cat in Mexico who couldn’t remember that you’d fed him minutes before, and would rush at you in the kitchen screeching for more food every time you entered, so that we had to carefully creep around, always, to try to get to the kitchen unheard.

I could tell you more tales of all these beasts and more, but I’ve gone on long enough. I love animals, and will sit them again just to see what antics they get up to. (And just so you know, my own cat is a genius). But understand this: If you keel over your bowl of ice cream one day at home, your loving cat will indeed eat you before you’ve even gone cold. Animals!

[Note: all the animals’ names, except for Bentley, were changed to protect the guilty. And the furry.]

This post Pet Sitting Disasters: Read This Before You Apply for Your Next Pet-Sitting Gig. appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

Note: this also works for other languages, as similar principles and tools apply and are available.

Further down in this article I will share details about the most effective way to learn Spanish – by taking classes with a native-speaker at Live Lingua.

This post was originally published in 2015. It has since been completely overhauled and rewritten (now that I actually am fluent, rather than trying to be).

How Long Does It Take To Learn Spanish?

Is Spanish actually easy to learn?

Spanish might be one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to learn. Learning Spanish can be a complex process that requires dedication and discipline. 

Spanish is considered a difficult language to learn for English speakers due to its grammar and sentence structure being quite different from English. However, it is possible to become proficient in Spanish by following a few simple tips and tricks – which I’ll share later on.

Depending on how quickly you can absorb and apply new material, learning Spanish can take anywhere from two to six months of consistent study or up to two years if you’re aiming for fluency.

Despite the difficulty of the language itself, Spanish can be learned at different levels of proficiency. 

Conversational Spanish

For basic conversational Spanish, the things such as counting and simple phrases can be learned in a few months or even weeks if you’re particularly quick at picking up languages. In three months, depending on how much time and effort you put in, you should be able to hold basic conversations with native Spanish speakers.

Fluent Spanish

How long does it take to learn the whole Spanish language, you might ask. 

For those aiming to achieve fluency, it is best to plan for a minimum of six months of consistent study. The more time and effort you put in, the sooner you will be able to speak Spanish fluently. It’s important to make sure that you are actively using the language as much as possible – whether through conversation with a native speaker or immersing yourself in Spanish culture and media.

An average person can learn the whole Spanish language in about two years. For most people, this is a realistic time frame for mastering Spanish. 

However, it’s important to remember that everyone learns languages differently and at different speeds. So the amount of time it takes you to learn Spanish may be shorter or longer than two years depending on your individual learning style and how much time you are able to dedicate to learning.

In short, how long it takes to learn Spanish depends on your goals and how much time and effort you are willing to put in. While two years is a realistic timeline for mastering the language, it’s also possible to achieve conversational fluency within just a few months. Thus, in an average of a year, you can still achieve a good level of Spanish proficiency and fluency.

If you really want to master Spanish, I highly suggest you take lessons at Spanish language schools or in private tutoring sessions that can help you learn Spanish faster. (I’ll share some specific resources in a bit).  

Immersing yourself in the Spanish-speaking culture is also an effective way of learning the language faster than traditional methods such as textbooks and online courses. Even so, Spanish can still be learned through self-study and dedication.

7 Tips On How To Speak Spanish Fluently

Now that you are much aware of how long it can take for one to learn Spanish, here are some useful tips on how to speak Spanish that you can incorporate into your studies to help you reach fluency faster:

1. Utilize Spanish-speaking media sources

As mentioned above, immersing yourself in Spanish culture is one of the fastest ways to learn a language. Watching television shows and movies in Spanish is a great way to learn the language. 

Not only will it improve your vocabulary and pronunciation, you can also get used to the rhythm and flow of spoken Spanish. 

Additionally, listening to Spanish music can help you understand the nuances of Spanish culture and gain an appreciation for different dialects. Reading books, magazines and newspapers in Spanish is also highly recommended.

2. Practice speaking with native speakers as much as possible

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect! Whenever you have the opportunity, try to converse with native speakers of Spanish. This will not only help you gain confidence in your ability to communicate, it will also help you learn faster. 

You can search for language partners online or join language exchange events in your local area.

3. Take advantage of learning resources and tools

Studying Spanish with textbooks, flashcards and other materials is an excellent way to supplement your learning experience. There are also some great mobile apps (like Duolingo) that you can use to practice on the go. Additionally, you can find online language courses that can help you improve your Spanish skills without having to leave the comfort of your home.

4. Reading aloud and mimicking native speakers

Reading aloud and listening to recordings of yourself speaking Spanish can be helpful in understanding how you sound when speaking the language. It will also help you identify any errors or pronunciation issues that need to be addressed. 

Listening to native speakers and mimicking them is a great way to improve your accent and intonation in Spanish. Not only will you get accustomed to the way Spanish should be spoken, you can also develop an understanding of the different dialects and accents within the language.

5. Build your own phrasebook

Creating your own phrasebook or vocabulary list is a great way to learn and practice Spanish. You can keep track of the words and phrases you have learned by making flashcards or writing them down in a notebook. 

Additionally, you can also use online tools like Quizlet to create virtual flashcards for easy access. Quizlet is an intelligent flashcard learning system that allows you to create and organize sets of flashcards, as well as provide quizzes, games and learning activities to enhance your language learning experience. It’s free and incredibly user-friendly!

6. Stick to one Spanish variety

Spanish is a language that is spoken across the world with various dialects, accents and varieties. 

There are several versions of Spanish including Castilian Spanish (spoken in Spain), Latin American Spanish (spoken in Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean) and Peninsular Spanish (spoken in Portugal and Galicia). 

Each variety has its own unique pronunciation and grammatical constructions, so it is best to stick to one variety when studying Spanish. This will help you create a solid foundation for the language and make your learning process easier and more efficient.

7. Have fun with it!

Learning a new language should be an enjoyable experience. Don’t get too caught up in studying and make sure to take breaks when needed. Incorporating some fun activities like playing Spanish-language games, listening to music, or watching movies can help make your learning journey a more positive and memorable one.

How I Became Fluent in Spanish

“I want to become fluent in Spanish!” I declared one day. I’d already spent quite some time learning Spanish casually using various tools and modalities, all the while without realistically expecting to attain fluency. But somewhere around 2014 shortly after arriving to Peru, it occurred to me that fluency was actually possible.

The above information is theoretical. Now, I’ll show you exactly how I became fluent in Spanish.

Determination

Spoiler alert: there is no magic pill. No one way. And it sure as heck ain’t easy. Or fast.

Sheer unwavering determination is a precursor to all the best ways to become fluent in Spanish – or any other language. I’d go so far as to say it’s a deal-breaker. If you don’t want it badly enough, it simply won’t happen.

Learning a language is work, and it takes a ton of determination to put in the hard yards required.

I Started With Classes and Audio Lessons

Before I started traveling full-time in 2006, I took Spanish lessons for six months, for no reason other than I figured Spanish was a good language to travel with. And because I spent a lot of time in my car for my job at the time, I listened to stacks of audio lessons on CD.

However I rarely practiced it on the road until I started spending time in Latin America seven years later. Even then, I was in Panama, where the accent was so thick I may as well have been on the moon; I could barely understand the most patient and slow-speaking of Panamanians.

But those initial classes and audio lessons proved to be incredibly useful once I committed to becoming fluent in Spanish, a few months later in Peru. They gave me a basic understanding of grammar, conjugations, and simple vocabulary, most of which came back quickly when I started using it.

A Note About Immersion. (It Doesn’t Work for Me)

I don’t know how people do it. It’s a relatively well-known fact that the best way to learn a new language is to immerse, plain and simple. I know a guy who started living in rural Italy without knowing a word of Italian. He was surrounded by Italians who didn’t speak English, and he asked those who did know English not to speak it with him. Within six months he had learned 100% through immersion, and within a year he had developed a vocabulary and accent so bang-on that most people thought he was local.

His is far from the only story. I know a few people who have learned new languages this way, and to them I say “good for you”. Jump in the pool, learn to swim, and all that. But that’s not me.

I’m not saying that because I’m scared of immersion. I’m saying that because my brain works differently. I’m not a particularly auditory person. Even in English – for me to really retain something, I need to see it. I needed to have those initial classes and textbooks to grasp the basic structure of the language, which I could then build on with other modalities of learning languages (which I’ll outline shortly).

You may be in a similar situation. Perhaps there is no “best way to become fluent in Spanish”. For some people, straight immersion is perfect. For others, not so much.

For me, it was a full-on, down and dirty, multi-faceted approach.

So I Took More Classes

Once committed to fluency in Peru, I took more Spanish lessons. Because they were private classes, my teacher met me at my current level and quickly moved me forward (see the section on Live Lingua below to learn more about this). The classes combined immersion (because we would converse in Spanish), text book work to help my cognitive brain understand what I was learning through immersion, and lots of homework to keep me progressing between lessons.

For me, Spanish classes are invaluable – but at the same time, they’re useless without practice and determination.

I Practiced (Even if it Was Easier to Speak English)

When I was first in Peru, I was staying in an area heavy with expats and visitors from all over the world. This was a double-edged sword on a variety of levels (see also: The Irony of Expat Life).

Thus the common language was often not Spanish – but English. It was almost too easy to not speak Spanish; a sure-fire way to never become fluent.

My room was next to a fellow from Spain (whose English was impeccable). There’s an unspoken general rule on the road; when conversing with somebody, you default to the easiest language for all to speak. In this case the default language was most certainly English, but the difference was that he specifically offered to speak Spanish with anybody who wanted to practice. Still, for myself and others, it took huge discipline to speak Spanish with him, since it was quicker and easier to just do it in English.

Without practice though, you’ll never become fluent. You have to throw yourself into it and speak as much as you possibly can, even when you don’t have to.

And if you’re learning a new language from abroad (ie: there aren’t any locals to practice with), never fear! You can attend local meetups with fellow language-learners, or find a language exchange partner (where you have Skype calls with half the call in their language and half the call in your language).

I Played With Duolingo

Duolingo feels more like a game than a free online language learning program (available in desktop and app formats – see also Best Travel Apps), but it will definitely help you learn a new language, especially if you’re consistent. It covers different modalities of language learning with listening, writing, identifying objects, translation, etc. And it’s so much fun you barely realize you’re doing the hard work of learning a new language.

I don’t believe that you can learn a language with Duolingo alone because it’s not super comprehensive, and on the whole it’s slow-going. Regardless, I “played” with Duolingo daily, and especially as I became more advanced in my Spanish, I was able to lean new forms of past and future tenses with Duolingo and increase my vocabulary very effectively.

I Listened to (More) Audio Lessons

Because I was living in an expat-heavy neighbourhood in Peru where English was spoken almost more so than Spanish, I hit myself from all possible sides with Spanish. Thus, I listened to a 30 minute Spanish audio lesson every day, while I was getting ready in the morning.

Pimsleur was my poison of choice; they offer audio courses with reading materials/lessons (available in both download/PDF and CD/book formats) that use the perfect amount of repetition and translation to take you through various conversations to increase your every-day vocabulary. Listening to daily 30-minute lessons helped take Spanish to a new level.

As an example, I learned some past tense phrases without really knowing the mechanics of using the past tense at the time, but they were words and phrases that I could immediately use in conversation (in so doing, getting over my cognitive self that thinks it needs to know everything about a word before using it). This in turn, opened up my brain to continue to become fluent more effectively when I was in immersive scenarios.

After two months of listening to a Pimsleur 30-minute lesson daily, plus my weekly private lessons (complete with homework) and practicing whenever I could in Peru, and playing Duolingo daily, I achieved one of the pinnacle moments when trying to become fluent: I started to think in Spanish.

I Set a Specific Goal/Challenge

When I first had a Spanish thought, I didn’t really believe I’d done it. But by this point, my brain was in Spanish-overtime; I was learning daily in so many different ways, I found myself subconsciously practicing translations of my own thoughts.

This made me realize I could in fact become fluent in Spanish if I continued. So I set a specific goal to up the ante and keep me on the path.

By this point I had been in Peru for about nine months. I had started my apprenticeship with a shaman (who preferred to speak English). But in five months I would be traveling to the Peruvian jungle to undertake a one month intensive shamanic “dieta” with my teacher’s teacher – an indigenous Peruvian who spoke almost no English. I set the goal of being able to speak with him without anybody translating (which, given the circumstances would require discussion of much more than basic pleasantries).

And so, it was. With that specific challenge to push me, the next five months of continued Spanish classes, Duolingo, audio lessons, and regular practice, allowed me to successfully reach that goal.

How to Become Fluent in Spanish

The Best Way to Become Fluent in Spanish is a Multi-Faceted Approach

Learning Spanish didn’t end there. It’s not like achieving the goal of having some proper Spanish conversations with a Peruvian meant I was done. In fact, it only fuelled the fire for me to learn more. So, in addition to all the above stuff, I went in even deeper by watching movies and reading in Spanish.

As the months and years went by, I continued practicing. My already good Spanish took another leap when I was volunteering at a retreat centre in Ecuador, assisting – and even translating for – some shamans there. While some of them spoke great English and some of them not at all, all of them spoke with me in Spanish. I can’t even begin to describe how rewarding it was to realize I’d just had an hour-long, in-depth, philosophical conversation – in Spanish!

It was only at this stage of the game that I dared declare that I spoke Spanish fluently – and even so, I always follow that statement with the qualification that I can only demonstrate the true wit and intellect of something like a 10 year old. But still. (I know some smart 10 year olds).

You could be the fastest verb-conjugator on paper, and totally useless at understanding somebody when they speak. Likewise you might pick up the language quickly via immersion, but hit a plateau with grammar and reading.

Thus, I believe a multi-faceted approach is important to become fluent in another language. From classes to audio lessons, reading, watching movies, using language learning apps, and more – keep learning your target language in different ways to stay interested and awake. (Too much of one learning modality can become physically exhausting).

The Best Tool For Becoming Fluent in Spanish

In addition to the above language resources like Duolingo and audio lessons, here is the best tool for becoming fluent in Spanish (in my opinion). This, plus a combination of the techniques above will help you with questions of how to get fluent in Spanish…..and many other languages.

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links that pay me a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. This doesn’t affect your cost, but it does help me to run this site; so thank you, in advance.

What Does CEFR Mean?

First, a note about CEFR. It stands for Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and is used as a guideline for grading language proficiency. You can learn more about it here, but here are the basics:

• A1 & A2 – beginner
• B1 & B2 – intermediate
• C1 & C2 – advanced

I’ll be referencing these levels in some of the language learning tools below so you can gauge which tools you’ll need and create come expectations for what you’ll achieve with them.

LIVE LINGUA – The Best Way to Learn How to Speak Spanish Fluently

In my opinion, there’s no substitute for in-person (or online) language classes with a teacher. I watched my boyfriend spend a month learning French from scratch using the online course mentioned later in this article (French Uncovered), and he doesn’t have much to show for it. The discipline to sit down daily and do the work of an online course with no accountability doesn’t work for many people.

Working with a language teacher is a whole different ballgame. They can answer your questions, no matter how trivial or advanced. They meet you at your level and move you forward in a style that will help you learn quickly and effectively. In my opinion, if you’re remotely serious about learning a language, you must take classes.

Enter: Live Lingua. It’s an online language immersion school that offers Skype classes in a large collection of languages, including Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. Spanish is (by far) their most popular language, with 60% of the student body taking Spanish classes.

The Live Lingua faculty are all teachers with university degrees and a minimum of five years’ teaching experience.

For those who have targeted needs and not much time, there is a large collection of smaller themed courses available, including the following:

• Spanish for Tourists,
• Spanish for Business,
• Spanish for Medical,
• Spanish for Teachers,
• and even Spanish for Priests.

While the variety of specialized courses is largely limited to Spanish, they do offer classes geared towards preparation for language certification exams (eg: TOEFL, IELTS, DELE, DELF, etc) across all the languages they teach wherever applicable.

Specialized courses and language certification exams are effective, but not comprehensive. For example, if you take the Spanish for Tourists course, after about eight hours of study you’ll have the ability to understand and respond to some typical situations a tourist could find themselves in such as ordering food at a restaurant, asking for directions or negotiating in a market. But with no grammar of conjugation taught, you would be clueless in other scenarios – for example in paying an electric bill.

Live Lingua also offers plain and simple private language classes – which is the mainstay of the school’s activities. During your free trial class, your teacher fully evaluates where you’re at and customizes a curriculum for you. That’s right – no generalized textbooks here. Teachers utilize Live Lingua’s library of materials as well as their own resources and other online tools to customize a course that helps students achieve their language learning goals the quickest.

Here’s what a typical one-hour class with Live Lingua might look like:

• 5-10 minutes: Review what was studied in the previous class and answer any questions about homework (if applicable).
• 15-25 minutes: Presentation of the new concept – or adding on to the last concept. This can involve handouts, audio, or videos provided by the teacher as well as the lecture from the teacher.
• 15-25 minutes: Exercises to practice the new concept. The teacher will use the resources on Live Lingua, their own resources or free resources from the web to practice this.
• 5-10 minutes: Putting the concept into real-world use. In this part, the teacher will make sure the student understands the new concept by putting them in “real world” situations to make sure they can use it. This is usually a conversation or questions but can involve other multimedia.
• Homework is assigned.

You set the schedule for how many classes you want in a week, and you purchase classes on a pay-as-you-go basis in blocks of hours; the more you buy at once, the less you pay per hour, and the hours never expire.

Two things set Live Lingua apart from other online language schools:

1) They’re a bonafide school, not just a collection of online teachers. You’ll be matched up to the best teacher for you given your learning style and goals, and both you and your teacher have the ongoing support of the school administration along the way, just like a bricks-and-mortar school.

2) Live Lingua’s teachers tend to live in their home countries, and they’re paid a proper salary for where they live. Their Spanish teachers (who mostly live in Latin America), earn 2-3 times what they’d earn at a traditional language school in their home country. Still, the cost of living in Latin America is a fraction of the cost of living in France (for example). Thus, you tend to see a difference of hourly rates depending on the language you want to learn. Luckily, Spanish is cheap, starting at just $10.99USD per hour.

Click here to learn more about Live Lingua and get serious about learning a new language. What you get out of it depends on your dedication, but in terms of efficiency (of both time and money), I believe Live Lingua will get you the best results.

How Long Does it Take to Become Fluent in Spanish?

There’s no doubt, learning a new language is a process, and almost never an easy one. For me, the rewards of conversing in another language kept me going through months of practice and lots of frustration.

Ray Blakney, founder of Live Lingua, puts it well.

“The generic, industry answer is that it takes 100-200 hours of study to get from A1 to A2, and the same for successive levels. But we have found that to be so general that it is almost meaningless.

An anecdotal example is that according to the Peace Corps it took me about 180 hours over 3 months to go from no Spanish to B2. That would not at all follow the CEFR guidelines in hours it should take. The difference was probably due to the fact that I was in my 20’s, I already spoke multiple languages, and I was living in Mexico. There were older volunteers in my group who barely had a survival level of Spanish after their 2 years of service.

Live Lingua’s general guideline for students who want to make regular improvement in their language levels is two to three one-hour classes each week, with at least 30 minutes of practice on the off days.

I was on and off with Spanish for years before making a concerted commitment. Once I did that, I would say it was a good two years before I could call myself fluent, and another year before I could really mean it. But I also didn’t live in a place where I had to speak Spanish daily; most of my efforts to learn Spanish required a herculean amount of discipline and learning on my own.

It’s difficult to say in general how long it takes to become fluent in Spanish, because that depends on you, and how determined you are. The following are factors that you can control, and which will affect your outcome:

• Simultaneously using different modalities of learning (eg: classes, audio lessons, reading, online courses, Duolingo, etc)
• Practicing by yourself (drilling yourself on vocab, conjugations, numbers, etc)
• Practicing with others (attending classes, language exchange sessions, and practicing with locals if you’re on the road)

Lastly, setting a specific goal will help you focus and start speaking fluently much faster. Taking in-person or online classes (it doesn’t matter whether they’re group or private, though private language lessons are the most effective) is an easy way to create a goal, accountability, and ultimately, become fluent.

This post How to Become Fluent in Spanish (and Other Languages) appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

Redefining what home means (and looks like). 

Augmenting my career and related activities. 

Learning how much energy I have and how to manage it (as I continued to recover from a pretty catastrophic episode of burnout that started in late 2017, the effects of which have lasted much longer than I anticipated). 

And redefining how (and where, and why) I travel. 

In previous years, the titles of these annual summary posts have showcased the number of miles I traveled and countries I visited. But things have changed in the last year or so. I no longer consider the number of miles I’ve traveled or planes I’ve taken in a year to be a badge of honour; rather, I’m trying to reduce the number of times I get on planes as a way of being environmentally conscious, and to make the most of whatever flights I do take. 

All told, my country count for 2019 was a relatively unremarkable six; not as high as 13 (like in 2011) nor as low as five (2016). The U.S. and Canada feature prominently in this count, and include both familiar haunts (like Florida and Toronto), and new places (like Montana, Boston, and Newfoundland). 

Lastly, it’s worth noting that after 12 years of full-time travel, in September of 2018 I got an apartment in my hometown of Toronto (a place I never thought I’d live in again – and one that I’ll admit makes me a walking cliche….you know, travel the world to realize how cool “home” is after all…yeah. I did that). With this home base, the scope of my travels evolved in 2019; I no longer consider myself a full-time traveler, but I have the freedom to travel whenever I wish for however long I want. On the whole, my aim is to travel cumulatively for half of each year. 

So now, the scene is set for 2019. Here’s what actually happened. 

This post was originally published in 2020. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content. 

JANUARY: Florida, Guatemala

I rang in the New Year in a familiar spot: a friend’s home in south Florida. If you’ve followed my travels over the last five or so years, you’ll know this is a place I come and go from often. 

Early into January, I left Florida to spend three months in Guatemala. (At least, that was the plan). 

My first three weeks in Antigua were absolutely delightful, though I kept a wary eye on the neighbouring volcano that kept “tooting” columns of ash into the air. Active volcano aside, Antigua is a remarkably beautiful cobble-stoned town that surprised me with its variance (and quality) of restaurants. 

See also: Where to Eat in Antigua Guatemala, and More

FEBRUARY: Guatemala

From Antigua, I headed to Lake Atitlan, famous for its beauty, colourful indigenous culture, and chill vibes. Unfortunately, the town of Panajachel as a base was a poor choice, and my two-month commitment to an unseen AirBnB in Panajachel was definitely the wrong move. 

A few other things went wrong along the way. But the real problem was that I simply wasn’t up for a travel adventure at the time; this had become apparent in Antigua and was glaringly obvious by the time I reached Panajachel. My heart wasn’t in it, I had no energy, my curiosity was shot, and I was teetering on the edge of burnout; something that had plagued me on and off since late 2017. 

What I really needed was more healing time, and so I cut my trip to Guatemala short and retreated to Florida once again. 

See also: 7 Travel Mistakes I Made in Guatemala

MARCH: Florida

Sushi, Netflix, and comfy furniture. Oh yes, and warm weather. That’s what I needed in March, and that’s what I got. I don’t tend to get out much when I’m in Florida; I’ve been visiting on and off for 15 years and I’ve seen the sights. The main attraction is simply quality time with my friend, and lots of concentrated work time. I got plenty of both. 

APRIL-MAY: Toronto

April is a bit of a swing-month in Toronto weather-wise, but on the whole it’s spring-like, or at least it should be. Unfortunately Toronto had a historically decrepit spring, so I wasn’t spared the next two months of depressingly chilly and rainy weather. 

That said, I enjoyed plenty of time with family and friends, getting work projects done (check out my list of Top Posts of the Year below to get a sense of what kept me busy), and settling into my delightful digs that I’d only acquired the previous September and stayed in for a couple of months before leaving for the winter. 

JUNE: Boston

While I spent most of June in and around Toronto, I did make a trip to Boston, where I attended TravelCon; a travel media creator’s conference that I’m slated to speak at this year. Use the discount code SPEAKER50 for a $50 discount on your 2020 ticket!

It was like a high-school reunion for me; having been in the industry since 2006 (they call me one of the “OG travel bloggers”), I have forged many relationships with colleagues online but I’ve met very few in person. TravelCon was not only an educational and inspirational conference, but it was a way to convert online friendships into in-person ones, and to deepen relationships with friends I’d met once or twice before in various far-flung destinations. 

Boston was also a turning point for me, in realizing that I have something to offer the conference scene, which, in conjunction with my already extensive speaking experience from previous careers, could mean a new step in my travel career/business. 

JULY – AUGUST: Toronto

July and August are the best months of the year to be in Toronto in my opinion, with tons of events on and delightful weather to enjoy. So I took the summer to continue to “settle” back into my hometown and observe how it changed during my 12-year absence. 

SEPTEMBER: Montana

Inspired by TravelCon, I applied (and was accepted) to speak at TBEX (Travel Blog Exchange); the longest-standing travel blogging conference. It went extremely well, and inspired me to further develop my speaking career. 

Some of my friends asked me why on earth a travel conference would be held in Montana, but I was excited to visit a part of the U.S. that was new to my repertoire. And Montana didn’t disappoint; I visited Yellowstone National Park, went fly fishing, climbing, had some close encounters with wildlife, and an amazing road trip overall. 

See also: Best Things to do in Yellowstone Country, Montana

OCTOBER: Newfoundland

Guatemala was good. Boston was fun. Montana was adventurous. But the trip of the year was my expedition cruise around Newfoundland with Adventure Canada. This is bucket list stuff, and the experience far surpassed all my expectations. I hope to do one of their high arctic itineraries in the next year or two. 

In a sense I don’t have words for what happened on the trip, but in fact I have many, which you can read in the article below. I never thought a cruise could be as enlightening as it was on so many levels, and I think the resulting article is some of my best writing. 

See also: This is the Best Way to Visit Newfoundland

NOVEMBER: Poland, Latvia, Finland

Latvia wasn’t on my list of places to visit, which makes me very grateful that it was the site of the Women in Travel Summit (at which I spoke) because Latvia is awesome, and I hope to return and explore the place further. I went bobsledding on an Olympic track, experienced a traditional Latvian sauna, and hiked around in both Latvia’s beautiful wilderness and the scenic urban landscapes of Riga. 

See also: Why I Want to Return to Latvia 

I made the most of my trip to Europe by flying into Poland enroute and spending a few days in Warsaw, and spending a few days in Helsinki on the way back home. Poland, Latvia, and Finland were all new countries for me (as was Guatemala, earlier in the year). 

DECEMBER: Florida

I stayed in Toronto just long enough for a few minor snowfalls, which reminded me why I’ve been avoiding winter for more than a decade. Snow is fabulous – unless you’re in a city and trying to navigate your way through it. And in my opinion, cold weather has few redeeming qualities.

So, I hit the road for the winter. Until just a few days before my departure, Morocco was first on the itinerary, but the trip fell through (for personal reasons) at the last minute, which ironically brought me full-circle back to Florida. 

I already have plenty of travel plans for 2020, which should be a fun year of travel adventures, some cool career moves, and plenty of quality time with awesome people. 

How My Travels Changed in 2019

Beyond the obvious lifestyle change of having a home base and thus doing more “rubber band trips”, my travel style and choices have evolved as well. 

I was able to do trips like the expedition cruise to Newfoundland, which required a specific and somewhat extensive list of gear that would never have fit into my full-time travel packing list. In fact, my full-time travel lifestyle has in some ways prevented me from having certain travel experiences and adventures, for reasons that include not being able to bring my “house” along (even though my house was my luggage), or having nowhere to store my stuff, or not owning appropriate attire for the adventure at hand. 

With the ability to leave my stuff in Toronto and pack in a more targeted way, I was also able to re-embrace the delights of carry-on travel for my shorter trips, and in so doing, I rigorously tested a number of ingeniously-designed carry-on backpacks that allow you to travel with (literally) just one bag. I still take checked luggage for slow travel and/or on trips longer than two months (here’s why). 

I’ve noted before that the logistics of full-time travel require a monumental amount of time and energy. Regularly changing locations requires advance research/booking/travel time, and learning how to survive in each new place eats (significantly) into work time. It’s one of the reasons why my online business was a bit stagnant for so many years; with a travel lifestyle, there simply weren’t enough hours in a day to get the sort of work done that needed to be done. The ultimate cost ended up being my health, when I burned out. 

Not that I’m complaining! I made a successful go of financially sustainable full-time travel for 12 years, and that’s something to celebrate. Travel rocks. 

But as you’ll also read more about in my upcoming 2019 income report, having a home base with an ergonomically friendly workstation, and a few months with no major travel, I was able to tackle a ton of projects that had been on the back burner for too long, and my income almost doubled as a result. I also had the chance to get back into speaking, which is very rewarding for me and usually includes a cool travel experience too.

You can read more about the business end of things in my upcoming income report. In the meantime, here are some in-depth travel resources I kicked out by virtue of having a home base to work from: 

Top Posts of 2019

How to Create a Long-Term Travel Budget

Classic Travel Scams, and How to Avoid Them 

Mystery Shopping for Travel: Get 50% off Airfare and Free Hotels

Cell Phone Travel Basics: International Phone Plans, SIM Cards, and More

A Guide to Clean Drinking Water Around the World

My Zero Waste Kit – for Travel and Home 

The Ultimate Packing List for Long-Term Travel 

The Best Carry-On Backpack for One Bag Travel 

The Ultimate Guide to Frequent Flyer Miles and Travel Hacking

Lastly, 2019 was a year of nurturing. Of resting (really resting) and recuperating from the deep yet subtle corrosive tolls that traveling too fast for too long took on me. 

Even more important than the rest I got, was the reconnection with my small tribe of lifelong friends and family who were always supportive over the years, but because of distance we weren’t truly involved in one another’s lives. 

For many lifestyle travelers, we feel we’ve achieved a travel victory if we are accepted in a foreign land; if we attain a sense of belonging in an otherwise unfamiliar landscape. I traveled the world for many years in search of that feeling of belonging. But 2019 taught me that I always had that belonging in the hearts of my friends and family, and it was a year for nurturing and celebrating it. 

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