128 - Where we've been the past 8 weeks

Annnnnnd we’re back! Thanks for bearing with us as we took a much-needed break from the podcast (and really just any additional work). Let’s get you caught up on 8ish weeks of travel!

Show Notes

In this episode, we catch you up on our time moving from Croatia to France and then spending Jason’s 40th birthday in Greece.

Hope you enjoy reliving some of the highs and lows of our full-time travel adventures this year in Europe. We’re excited to be back and recording new weekly podcast eps for you!

Watch our Split vlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_hUrSDe7vg

Watch our Hvar vlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYvZ7j5GlAY

Watch our France vlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDRt49YwB98

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What is Growing Steady | Intentional Creative Business Podcast?

We’re Jason and Caroline Zook, a husband and wife team running two businesses together and trying to live out our version of a good life in the process. In this business podcast, we share with you our lessons learned about how to run a calm, sustainable business—one that is predictable, profitable AND peaceful. Join us every Thursday if you’re an online creator who wants to reach your goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process.

Caroline: Welcome to What Is It All For? A podcast designed to help you grow your online business and pursue a spacious, satisfying life at the same time. We are your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an un-boring business coaching program. Every week we bring you advice and conversations to return you to your most intentional self and to help you examine every aspect of your life and business by asking, What is it all for? Thanks for listening. And now let's get into the show.

Jason: And I'm here too.

Jason: Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. It has been many weeks, but we're still here.

Caroline: Oh, my gosh, we missed you all so much.

Jason: And by here I mean in your ears, because...

Caroline: Exactly.

Jason: Physically we're not where we were when we last spoke to you.

Caroline: We have been so many places.

Jason: We got a bunch of stamps in the passport. We're still in Europe. We're still traveling.

Caroline: Yes.

Jason: We're still doing it.

Caroline: We're still happy.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: We're still glad we made this decision. Actually, I kind of feel like we're entering a new era, which is that like, "Oh, we've been doing this for--it's almost six months now."

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: And I feel that we kind of know what to expect. We know what challenges are ahead of us. So that feels kind of good to feel like less uncertainty and more just like we're in it. We're on the journey.

Jason: Yeah. And I think just to kind of like, where we last left you, it was, "Hey, we're feeling a bit overwhelmed. We've got to cut some things." And I think that that feeling of overwhelm really is not ever going to go away throughout the rest of this year, because as we've talked to friends and other people, it is just a lot. It would be so much just to be traveling because of all the planning and the thinking and all the decisions you have to make. And every new place has all these different things, which is amazing and great. But then we're also working and we're running two businesses while doing this. And then we're also trying to create content. So it's just to share with you the reality of--we'll probably end up taking another break from the podcast at some point this year, but we're trying to get back into the swing of things and give you a recap of essentially what is two to three months of travel.

Caroline: I think it's like eight weeks, maybe? Like what we've been up to the past eight weeks.

Jason: All right. So you want to give them the rundown on what we're going to cover?

Caroline: I do. We're going to cover, I think, three different countries, like all kinds of Airbnbs. And yes, our intention with this episode is just to kind of give you where we last left off, where we are now. So you can hear all of the fun travels and journeys. And we're going to share with you the amazing, fun stuff that we did and the hard stuff, too.

Jason: Also, if you for some reason hear us be like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." It's because we have the windows and doors open in the Airbnb where we're currently staying, because it has no air conditioning, which is totally fine. But we've had a couple of larger flying insects that have come in that we've had to be like, "Oh, Jeez!"

Caroline: Yeah.

Jason: So if that happens, we'll just keep it in. It will be fun for everybody. But it's all very magical.

Caroline: It's very nature-y what we're doing right now.

Jason: And if, like, a rabbit comes by, Caroline will get very distracted because...

Caroline: I love the rabbits.

Jason: Okay, where are we picking back up?

Caroline: Okay, so where we last left you off. So we're going to catch you up. I think the last travel update that we actually did was we were in Split, Croatia.

Jason: Okay.

Caroline: I had just had COVID, which is hard to believe because that feels like forever go. But it wasn't. And luckily when that happened, we were one of the very few moments where we were in Split for, I think, two weeks or so, which the timing worked out perfectly, but we moved to a different Airbnb, which is still one of our favorite Airbnbs called Villa Pauletta.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: In Old Town Split. And Jason, what was your favorite thing about Villa Pauletta to share with them?

Jason: Oh, well, it was 100% the indoor cave pool.

Caroline: It was the indoor cave pool.

Jason: This basically was the part of the home that had existed from the 1800's or whatever that they kind of kept. And then they rebuilt the whole guest house next to it. But it's like this little cave that you walk in. It has these LED lights on the ceiling. I mean, I couldn't even stand up fully in the thing the whole time. But it's this tiny little pool, and it just was like this magical part of an Airbnb. And I think that for me is one thing that we've continued to talk about is like, just one of our favorite things in this trip. Airbnbs, new Airbnbs, it's like opening Christmas presents. You don't know what you're going to get. Some of your presents kind of suck, but some of them are magical and amazing. And listen, they all come with their challenges and things, which we'll... I'm sure we'll talk about.

Caroline: Yeah. No place is perfect. Something that we've learned.

Jason: But Villa Pauletta, out of this tiny pool and the layout of the place wasn't the most functional for being there for a week. However, it totally worked. It's a good memory.

Caroline: And I'm so glad that I wanted to explore more of Split. But obviously because of COVID, I was inside.

Jason: I was inside with you.

Caroline: Yeah, exactly. We all isolated, but it was a nice place to be. The way that the timing worked out, just because it was comfortable and having that pool that made you so happy, there was a beautiful little garden space. I could tell that our Airbnb host was very bummed that they couldn't come over and interact with us. We disclosed them, of course, that I had COVID. And so they were very lovely about it. She even brought over some local bee honey and she was like, "Have this" because apparently it's like the healing remedy of--anyway, I did take a scoop of it.

Jason: I took a couple of scoops of myself just to try it.

Caroline: Honey is a loose term. This was like very--just came out of a bee's butt.

Jason: It came out of a bee's butt. Or it's like someone dumped a jar of honey on the ground, stirred up the ground and picked that up and put it in a bottle.

Caroline: But, hey, I haven't had any lingering issues. So maybe that's... maybe it worked.

Jason: I think one of the my fun things is right as your COVID isolation period ended, I was able to then go back out as well. And I did my cinnamon roll adventure of Split, which was very fun for me because for those of you who have been keeping track--the Cinnamon Rollers--you know that I'm trying to eat a cinnamon roll in every single country just to see how they do them. In some countries, it's not necessarily their thing, but I'm just trying to sort it out. And I have to say, all the way up until now, Split has had my favorite cinnamon rolls of this trip.

Caroline: Wow.

Jason: So there were two bakeries that I loved. One was called Kruscic Bakery and the other one was called, like, Traditional Bakery, but it had a Croatian name. But I basically went on this adventure. I found the place. I stood in line. I went inside. The place was no bigger than a closet in a bedroom. It was so tiny. And the ordering was hilarious because I just pointed at things. I don't speak any of the language, really. And then they asked to pay. And before I even had my money out of my wallet, she had moved on to somebody else. Just wasn't even interested in me anymore. We passed along. But the cinnamon roll was moist. It was fluffy. It had an interior moment that was not my favorite...

Caroline: You don't like a... jelly interior moment.

Jason: It wasn't jelly. It was like if you took some of the cream cheese icing and balled it together and put it in the middle, I just wasn't interested in that part. But the rest of it was really great. So anyway, this is a very fun adventure-y day for me because then I also got to go to my favorite coffee shop, Kava2. And if you want to relive some of these adventures, we obviously have our videos up on YouTube from all these different places. And I do kind of relive some of that in that video so you can see it visually.

Caroline: Definitely. So loved Villa Pauletta. Then we had planned this trip to take a ferry from Split over to the island of Hvar.

Jason: Try again, try again.

Caroline: The island of H-var.

Jason: Okay, that's a little harsh.

Caroline: It's H-V-A-R but there's a very particular pronunciation. Hvar.

Jason: Yeah. It's almost like you sneeze a little bit, "ahh, H-far."

Caroline: I just have never been able to get it quite right. But my favorite part is that our Airbnb host asked if we would like a golf cart escort to the ferry the next day with all of our luggage. And we were like... I was a little...

Jason: Things you didn't know you wanted.

Caroline: What did I say, I have transportation anxiety. I was a little apprehensive about being whisked through the streets of Old Town Split in a golf cart. But I'm glad that we said, "Yes" to it because it was one of my favorite memories... is zipping through these streets that are only big enough for a golf cart to go down.

Jason: We've been walking through the streets. We're like, "A golf cart is not going to go in here." Certainly enough, that's where we went.

Caroline: And then you see these pylons coming out of the street and you're like, "Certainly we can't make it through that." And it's just like, "Everybody, suck your arms in!" We had a great time. And then the most embarrassing part is he's like, "I'll drop you off at the ferry." I think he's going to drop us off at the desk where we show our tickets.

Jason: Where you arrive at the port.

Caroline: He drives us out onto the dock directly in front of the ramp to get onto the ferry. And everyone's like, looking at us. I'm like, "Okay. Cool."

Jason: But also great because we didn't have to tow our bags in.

Caroline: Also great. Embarassing but awesome. The total moment of like, "Dad, I said, dropped me off like a block around school."

Jason: In case you were wondering, it cost €10. What a great spend of $10 actually.

Caroline: Worth it. The ferry was a little...

Jason: A little bumpy.

Caroline: I actually got terribly seasick and had to take a Dramamine. And we thought it was going to be Jason because he's been seasick before.

Jason: Hold on.

Caroline: What's up?

Jason: You're not allowed to say terribly seasick. Do you know what terribly seasick is?

Caroline: Okay, you're right.

Jason: What's terribly seasick?

Caroline: You go on a whale watching tour and you stay in...

Jason: Where?

Caroline: Where were we?

Jason: Hawaii.

Caroline: In Hawaii. And you end up in the bathroom of the...

Jason: I did a toilet bowl watching tour for 2 hours. That is terribly seasick.

Caroline: Yeah. I watched the whales and you watched the toilet bowls. Okay, so I wasn't terribly seasick because I was fine. But I felt gnarly, so I took a Dramamine even though it makes me drowsy and once we got past--it's like an hour ferry ride. But then you arrive in Hvar.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: And it's just so stunningly beautiful. Again, like Jason said, if you have nothing that's coming up in your brain of what an island off the coast of Croatia looks like, go watch our YouTube video. Our channel is just out at Wandering Aimfully. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It's this cute little town, this island, and we stayed at a hotel, actually.

Jason: Yeah. And we were there in the off season. So when we got off the ferry, it felt like a good amount of people were there, but it's just because it was the one ferry for the day and you start to walk around. So the longer we were there, we were like, "Oh, no, there's really not anybody here," which we also found out when we tried to go get lunch one day. And, like, four places on Google Maps said they were open. They were not open. We arrived. No one was there.

Caroline: Yeah, there were pros and cons. I would say the pro was just it was not crowded, which was fantastic. The con was like not a lot of restaurants open. And also there were quite a bit of the excursions that you could book through our hotel, but only one of them was available. However, the one that was available was an incredible experience. I will never forget. It was a winery tour hosted by a friend of ours.

Jason: Yes, our friend Belmin.

Caroline: Our friend named Belmin, who basically drives you around in this old Jeep kind of Land Cruiser thing. And he took us to--it was supposed to be for a half day, but he took us to these two amazing local wineries. Apparently, Croatia has this incredible wine culture.

Jason: Dates back. I mean, some would argue all the way back to the beginning of wine's creation.

Caroline: So he's driving us all over the island, and it reminds me so much of California and, like the wine country in California. And so I just couldn't believe my eyes of how beautiful this place is and the sun and the water. If you Google "Croatia" and you see the color of the ocean is like this deep sea.

Jason: Excuse you.

Caroline: This deep bluish teal color that I just couldn't believe. And it's even more magnificent in person. But our favorite part of the excursion...

Jason: Well, yeah, if you want to watch the YouTube video, you can relive the two wineries that we went to and explore more of those. But really the best part was the one that we had no idea was coming, which was we finished the two wine tastings, and Belmin is just driving us back and we think we're just heading back to the hotel, and all of a sudden he just pulls off to the side of the road and he was like, "Hey, come look at this!" And we're like, "Okay, what's going on?" But we're all kind of filled up on wine at this point. So, "Sure, whatever you want, Belmin." And by that point, we were good friends with him. We chatted, and so he takes us across this highway and he just starts picking up things off the ground, like little shrubs and things.

Caroline: And he's like, "Smell this."

Jason: And just, like, shoves it in our noses. Yeah. So we got to smell fennel and we got to smell rosemary.

Caroline: And wild onions growing, like on the side of a mountain.

Jason: And he showed us this little inlet. There was nobody there, and I don't even know how you would find it. He was like, "Oh, this is where we used to go as kids, and this was our place." And then from there, we get back in the car, like, "Okay, we're going back to the hotel. Thank you so much, Belmin, for the foraging adventure." No, no, Belmin goes, "Can I take you to my favorite spot in Hvar?"

Caroline: And we're like, "Yes."

Jason: "Yeah, sure." So he takes us from the main road, get on this dirt road. Belmin does not slow down. We're going, like, 30 miles an hour up these switchback turns. And at that point, thank you to the wine, we were comfortable because I would've been miserable for you.

Caroline: I can't believe I... Oh, my gosh. I just was like, "Oh, it's not happening. Not happening."

Jason: But we got up to the top, and we were able to see the highest point in Hvar and overlooked the entire town, the harbor, the hotel, all the surrounding islands and Belmin basically just, like, pointed out every single thing. It was so magical. It made us love our time in Hvar even though there wasn't many things to do because most things were closed.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jason: But it really was great. The hotel was fantastic. Wish there would have been more restaurants to explore. But honestly...

Caroline: Of course, I know I was thinking about it, and I was like, we stayed there for about five days and definitely that was plenty of time, especially in the off season. But it's just really hard because as you'll hear moving on from Hvar, we just never were in a place for very long. So that's partially why we had to kind of pause on the podcast, because, again, we're going to keep moving through this timeline here, but no place could we kind of like, sit and get comfortable. And this is why, right? Because you want to see Hvar but then you go, two weeks in Hvar would be total, like, boredom, especially in the off season. So that's just a note on planning. And you're like, "Well, you guys did this to yourselves. Why did you make it so hectic?" And it's like, well, these are some of the decisions you have to make, right? So from Hvar, we take the ferry back, we get on a plane in Split, and we go to Paris.

Jason: Talk about quite a difference of two places. Like you're in the off-season island of Hvar, where everyone's just chill and relax to, like, the hustle and bustle of one of the busiest cities in the world.

Caroline: Right. Now this was a really tricky travel couple of days for us, because when we were planning this--we didn't want to stay in Paris.

Jason: Right.

Caroline: Because I was meeting up with my girlfriend and doing Paris for three days, but it was going to be a week from then, and I didn't want to spend a full week in Paris because, as you know, if you're Cinnamon Rollers, we're not city people.

Jason: You called them Cinnamon Rollers. That's so cute. You're so out of practice.

Caroline: No, the LOLers know that they're the real ones.

Jason: Uh-huh. Sure.

Caroline: There was a poll.

Jason: And you lost the Roll poll.

Caroline: We're going to repoll. We knew we wanted to stay at a smaller town, but the problem is you would then have to train from Paris to the smaller town, which ended up being a place called Colmar.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: Okay. But if you recall, we had just done a ferry from Hvar to the airport, a flight, which I'm not a flyer.

Jason: Well, first, a taxi from the ferry place.

Caroline: A taxi. So a ferry to a taxi to a flight. And then I was like, "We're not going to then get on a train. It's just not going to happen."

Jason: Exactly.

Caroline: So what we decided to do was spend a night in Paris and...

Jason: Near the train station.

Caroline: This was the hotel that we stayed in. I'm thinking to myself, "I'll recharge my batteries. I'll kind of get centered again."

Jason: You get to have, like, a nice shower.

Caroline: I'll have a nice shower.

Jason: Luxurious shower. Not that there wasn't that in Hvar at the lovely hotel.

Caroline: Rinse off the flight for me. Okay. This fancy schmancy hotel in Paris decided that they wanted to have a tub. Tub, but an open air shower with not an ounce of glass, not an ounce of a curtain. And so it had a handheld squirter with all those...

Jason: A handheld squirter? Yeah, that's what they call them. When you look at the box, it's like, "Do you want this handheld squirter?" And the next one's like, "Or this one?"

Caroline: Even as it came out of my mouth, I was like, "No, no, no."

Jason: That's not right.

Caroline: A handheld shower head squirter. And so I get into this shower, and water just sprang across the room and I was so mad.

Jason: You were so angry. I'm the one who doesn't like things to get messy. And you were so angry at this.

Caroline: I'm taking this shower. I can't even enjoy it. I'm watching the entire bathroom just covered in water. All I wanted was to refresh. Anyway, that's a low. We're going to share with you the highs and the lows. Belmin's foraging adventure-wine tour was a high. The Paris bathroom that squirted all over the bathroom is low. I don't know why I keep saying squirting.

Jason: I don't know either. So anyway, we spent that night in Paris. It was totally fine, and it did what it needed to do. We needed to break up the travel day...

Caroline: We were correct in not going straight to the train.

Jason: So then--and this is where you're not going to find a video because we were so tired by this point of, like, the hustle and bustle to get to this destination. We took the train from Paris to Colmar the next day, which is our first train experience.

Caroline: That was our first train, yes.

Jason: Which is hard to think about because now we've done, like, six trains.

Caroline: I know, but it was a little anxiety inducing. You ended up having to sit backwards.

Jason: Yeah, we were trying not to sit backwards because I've sat backwards before on a train and I didn't feel great. It wasn't terrible, but just didn't make me feel good. Anyway, we ended up sitting backwards. But I will say the one thing to mention about Europe travel, specifically via train, is, wow, is it easy? It's amazing. You just walk into the train station with your pre-purchased tickets that you already have on your phone, you have your bags with you. No one checks a single thing. You look up at a screen, your gate, quote, unquote, it's called where your train station or your train is going to arrive. You walk to that place, you get on the train, you sit in your assigned seats and you're good to go.

Caroline: Yeah. Especially being from the States where you're flying everywhere or you're driving. Train travel is so amazing. And of course people told us it would be, but once we got past that first initial discomfort of we've never done this before. It's been years since we did this. Now we ended up taking, I think, four or five trains. And we would love to take some more.

Jason: The difference is... we would love to take more trains. The problem is that not all of them go where we want to go easily.

Caroline: Totally. And actually the biggest problem is that we're trying to do the visa thing where with the tourist visa rules we have to go in and out of the Schengen region. So you're always pretty much going to have to fly in that case.

Jason: Yeah. It's just that you're not going to get out of it. We ended up in Colmar. And for those of you who have not heard this before, there's a rumor that Beauty and the Beast, the town in Beauty and the Beast was modeled after Colmar or neighboring town Strasbourg.

Caroline: We're not sure, but you could see very much why we won't tell you too much about Colmar just because it very much was a stopover between trying to kind of like recalibrate after Hvar before my girls trip. And when I say girls trip, this is my two girlfriends that I've known since I was like three years old and they decided that they would fly over...

Jason: I'm sorry, are you ending Colmar right there?

Caroline: No.

Jason: Ooh, there's something that we have to talk about in Colmar, which I thought you were going to...

Caroline: No, of course. They decided they would fly over, we would do a girls trip. We haven't done one in like five years. And of course after COVID, no travel years. And so they said let's do Paris. And I said I don't love Paris, but I'll do it for three days and then we'll do a smaller town, Avignon, to kind of break up the week. And so Colmar was like three or four days or maybe it was like four or five days where we were just supposed to kind of like get our bearings, kind of recalibrate and all of that. Now it ended up not being really bad just because we just didn't love it. It didn't suit us. It was very tourist-y. It was also Easter week. There were tons of people. We just could never feel very relaxed there. And it felt very, like, tourist-y and commercialized to me.

Jason: Yes. I think that's the thing we realized is...

Caroline: At least the part of it. If you're from Colmar, the outskirts were absolutely lovely.

Jason: I don't think anybody from this--whose listening is from Colmar, but if you are, let us know. But, yeah, it's just you walk around and you just could not get away from people. Whereas in, like, even in Paris, you can get away from people by going in different areas and neighborhoods. In Colmar, it felt like everything that you wanted to be around, you could not get around people.

Caroline: Because it's so much smaller.

Jason: The Airbnb ended up ended up not being that great either. It was super creaky. Like, everywhere you stepped, it just felt like this place was about to fall apart, which is fine. Some of them are going to be like that, and that's some of the charm to them, too. But we did have an amazing part of Colmar that we will not forget, because as of right now, it is the best meal we've had since doing this trip.

Caroline: It's the top restaurant that we've eaten at.

Jason: Yeah. So this restaurant is called l'Arpege. And if you watch our South of France video that actually just went up on YouTube, we have a little shout out to it. You can see some of the photos of the food if you just want to really get your eyes on it.

Caroline: So I know, we know Colmar is not in the South of France. We just didn't have a video from Colmar, so we had to include it in the video.

Jason: We threw it in there. But this restaurant you found, actually, you got your hair done in Colmar...

Caroline: Got my hair done. Best haircut of my life.

Jason: So Colmar brought us some good things as well.

Caroline: My hairdresser was like, "You have to go to this restaurant. We happen to get in a reservation," and it was just this little, like, off the beaten path, but it had 4.9 stars on Google.

Jason: Which is rare.

Caroline: I honestly don't think I've ever seen it.

Jason: Also, with hundreds of reviews, you can have a 4.9 with, like, 16 reviews. And you're like, "I don't know."

Caroline: We get there. We're the first people there. He takes us to this like, he being the manager.

Jason: Gregor.

Caroline: Gregor takes us to this little secret garden in the back. He brings us the chalkboard, which a lot of the French restaurants do. They give you the daily menu on this chalkboard. And he was so patient in talking us through every menu item. That was another thing that we didn't mention. But the second we got to France, it was a real shock for us, even though we knew. But it was the first place we've been where really there was a language barrier. Because at least in other places, a fair amount of the people spoke English. And so it was lovely. We love the French language, but we just don't speak very much of it. So it just was one added complexity for these, like, three weeks where we were in France. But anyway, the food, unbelievable.

Jason: It was just amazing. I can tell you exactly how good it was. We came back the next day again.

Caroline: We came back the next day before our train out of town because we were just like, "Why would we go anywhere?"

Jason: Yeah, this is an unbelievable meal.

Caroline: And we saw things on the menu that we wanted to have so if you're ever in the area...

Jason: Look up l'Arpege in Colmar, different than L'arpège, which is another French restaurant, somewhere else.

Caroline: All right, we got to move along. So then we take the train from Colmar, we go back to Paris. I meet up with my girlfriend.

Jason: We split up.

Caroline: We split up.

Jason: Don't bury the lead. We separated for... well, it was a week in total, but three days when we met back up. But, yeah, I ended up staying at a hotel near where you were staying, where your Airbnb was, because I wanted to go to a different country and just have my own travel adventures. But I got that idea poo-poo'ed, which is fine, because it actually was probably better off that I didn't go off somewhere else. And then, who knows?

Caroline: Again. Now, knowing what I know now, I would have totally been like, "Go anywhere you want." But when we had to plan all this, we were like three weeks into traveling this year, and I was still just like a Nervous Nelly. And I was like, "Don't leave me!"

Jason: But, yeah, so I just stayed at a hotel. Basically, I was going to go and try a bunch of restaurants and do things. And I said, "You know what? I'm just going to make it easy on myself." Like, I'm going to order Uber Eats...

Caroline: Which I think was super smart, because you actually got a little bit of recharge time.

Jason: Which I usually don't get. And a lot of times you're not getting recharged, and I'm not feeling recharged no matter what. So anyway, my whole time in Paris, I did get some cinnamon rolls. They were decent. They were fine. But, yeah, I just basically spent in a hotel room. I was editing videos. I was catching up, watching Netflix, doing that thing. But you had a whole other adventure. I did do some sightseeing, by the way. Saw some stuff. A triangle. A French triangle. It was nice.

Caroline: My time in Paris was honestly better than I could have even wanted it to be, mainly because I had such low expectations since I'm not a city person. But three days in Paris, even if you're not a city person, was lovely. And it all gelled. The three of us, like my two girlfriends, we were very upfront about what everyone wanted out of the trip. You know, sometimes friend trips are hard because everyone wants a different thing. And I don't know, it just really worked out to where everyone got what they wanted out of that trip. We ate at some fantastic restaurants. We didn't force ourselves to try to see the whole city or didn't force ourselves to try to go to the Eiffel Tower. We walked by it, but we didn't try to do all the really tourist-y things. Instead we just like ate at a couple of really good restaurants. We went to this organic market on Sunday and had a picnic in the park. The girls got to do a little bit of shopping. We hung out at the Airbnb and chatted and talked and caught up. And it was just like lovely. And I think we just kept saying it was exactly what we would have wanted, like a girl's trip in Paris to be. And so that was wonderful. And then we met back up with you at the train station.

Jason: Almost didn't.

Caroline: Almost didn't. I was being very much like the mom of that week because I didn't have Jason with me so I was trying to take charge.

Jason: I'm typically the mom.

Caroline: Exactly. And so for the girls, I was like, "Okay, here are the train tickets and whatever." So I bought the tickets. And right as we're about to head out the door to grab the Uber to go to the train station. There's more than one train station in Paris, as you can imagine. I think to myself, "I better check those tickets" because I think Jason thinks, well, I thought as well that it was the train station where we had come in from the train from Colmar. I'm like, "Oh, I think it's not." And so I looked it up and it's a totally different train station. And I call him at the last second and I'm like, "Hey, yeah, so it's not that train station. It's a totally different one." Thank goodness you had not left...

Jason: Well. And also this morning, I was ready for 2 hours. I had gotten up, I get up early. We were leaving 09:00 a.m. Our train was, I think at ten. And I forced myself to stay in the hotel room and not get to the train station an hour and a half early. And just by chance, I was just waiting patiently. And then you called and I was like, "Why is she calling me? What's going on?" And you're like, "Hope you're not in an Uber yet." And it all worked out. It was totally fine, but it was a good exercise in for me, like testing my own patience, not having to be somewhere hours in advance and just kind of rolling with, "Okay, well, now this is a little curveball, but it'll be fine." Like, we'll figure it out. And we did. So we met up at the train station.

Caroline: Took the train to Avignon.

Jason: Took the train to Avignon together. So we were all together. So I got to experience some other humans after being by myself.

Caroline: And then we checked into our Airbnb. You checked into your Airbnb, and we ended up, like, crossing paths several times, because by that time... So the whole point of not being with Jason, I would have loved for him to join us on so many things. I didn't want to be that girl in the girls trip that we haven't taken in five years to be like, "Hey, here's my husband." I know we wanted girl time, but by three or four days of spending time together, they were like, "Does Jason want to come with us to dinner?" They love you.

Jason: Who doesn't? You know what I mean? Everyone who listens to this show, I can tell you that much. Maybe not. I don't know.

Caroline: I don't know. But that was really nice of them. A couple of times you joined up with us.

Jason Yes, and it was very enjoyable for me because I got to Avignon, and I was trying to stretch my legs a little bit. I didn't want to just eat Uber Eats all the time. There were also a couple of really good restaurants that I wanted to try, one of which was my Michelin star restaurant in France. Those of you who have not heard this was like, my goal for this year was to eat in a Michelin star restaurant in every country that we go to. Come on, where are my Cinnamon Rollers?

Caroline: This is like you living out the Chef's Table dream.

Jason: Absolutely. For sure.

Caroline: If any of you have seen Chef's Table on Netflix, Jason, from the second it came out, he was obsessed with it. And so this is one of your hobbies is, like, culinary adventures.

Jason: Absolutely. Actually, your friend Emily found this restaurant, and so I went two nights before you all went, and so I got to experience it. And also just eating at a very nice restaurant by yourself, it's a little bit of a bizarre experience because, A, no one else is eating there by themselves, so that kind of feels odd. But B, the whole point of eating at restaurants is to share it with somebody else, to experience the food and talk about the food and just pine over it and all these different things. So that kind of, like, reduced the in-the-moment enjoyment of it. But looking back, it was definitely one of the best meals that we've had, which is at a restaurant called Pollen in Avignon.

Caroline: We also talked about--it just made us both appreciate how much we like to do that together.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: Because even, like, I had a great time with my girlfriends, but it was a totally different experience doing it with them than it was even with you. And it just made me really realize, like, "Oh, this is something that we really enjoy together." We're going to a--I don't even want to say nice meal because it doesn't even have to be, like, fancy. It's more about the creativity of the food that we love, and we love talking about the flavors, and we love just... It's just our favorite thing.

Jason: The experience of it. Yeah. You had a food tour that you did.

Caroline: Yeah. The food tour definitely made me love Avignon even more. There are certain parts of it where I'm like, "Oh, this is a bigger city than I thought," which isn't my favorite. And then there are other parts of it that are extremely picturesque and very South of France of what you'd imagine.

Jason: It's a walled city as well. You get around the edges, and it's a walled city. So you have these high, like, fortress style walls, and there's even a bridge that's like a famous bridge that you can walk out that only three quarters of it is left, which is very fun. And the big Papal Palace is there, which is really huge.

Caroline: That was about the point where I started, really, to start to fall in love with the South of France and understanding why people love it there. And just I think the seasons were turning, too. So it was just becoming spring, and everything was in bloom, and it was so beautiful. And I very much became intoxicated with the food, the language, everything.

Jason: So that basically wrapped up your time with your friends.

Caroline: So then I wrapped up that with our friends. And then I'm just going to be honest with you guys at this point, I was pooped.

Jason: Yeah. You we're pooped.

Caroline: Because it had been COVID. Then it had been five days in Hvar. Then it had been Colmar, which was not very comfortable and not great. Then it had been lots of trains and planes and everything. And then it was like a week of being with other people, which, as an introvert, it can be very draining, even if those are your best friends in the whole world. And so by this point, we meet up together, and I'm like, I need to just relax. Okay? This was our whole week to reset before Greece. And I'm ready to just like. I'm like, this is going to be the week where I experience relief.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: We pick up a rental car.

Jason: Yes.

Caroline: We drive to a little tiniest, tiniest village.

Jason: And how did we find this village?

Caroline: We found this village specifically because we found this Airbnb that looked unbelievable. It was out in the middle of nowhere in a little village, and it just had so many cool features. It had this outdoor pool. It looked like an old chateau, very much not our style, not modern in any regard, but it looked and it had incredible reviews, and we just thought, "Oh, great!"

Jason: I remember when we looked at the photos, it had so many photos of all the different rooms and things. There wasn't even a photo of the kitchen. That's how many things there were to look at. We call it the Tateau, which is the tiny French chateau. The Tateau. And I just remember us being so excited about this Airbnb because we're like, no one would ever think we would pick this place.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: But we just wanted to pick this unique spot in the middle of nowhere in the South of France.

Caroline: To relax and to just chill. So I'm just setting that up for you because literally, let's first say, within the first 24 hours, it is magical. The place we arrive, we get there. The drive there was just unbelievably stunning.

Jason: Beautiful.

Caroline: Again, everything in bloom.

Jason: You're driving past wineries, you're driving through rolling hills, little roads. It's just very charming.

Caroline: We get to this village. There's only, like, 13 homes in the entire village around the church. And we're like, "Oh, my God." And we get in the Airbnb and we're like, "What? This is so wild." Like, it's got three different levels, and it's built in this structure, which is, I'm sure, hundreds of years old.

Jason: I mean, yeah, maybe teetering on 1000 years old.

Caroline: But first, then we're like, there's quite a bit of antique furniture in this place, and that was part of the charm. We just thought, "Okay, this is like the whole thing of French decor." It's very French country, as you would imagine. And after about 24 hours, the magic of staying at the Tateau starts to wear off, and we start to recognize it for all of its discomfort. And this is just about us being transparent. We go into detail more in the YouTube video.

Jason: Yes, which is up now.

Caroline: Where you can see it with visuals of this place. But this is one of those places that we could very easily have made it sound like it was a dream and a half because it's just so unique and so different.

Jason: Picturesque, for sure.

Caroline: Picturesque. And it comes across and photographs so unbelievably... But the reality of a week where we were trying to recharge after so much travel and nothing was comfortable about this place.

Jason: Yeah, I think that's the thing that was the most difficult thing about the Tateau is that it was so uncomfortable everywhere. The only couch was in the basement, essentially, and it was like a damp cellar room, which you never wanted to spend time in because it was also dark.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: And then if you watch the YouTube video, we say this multiple times, like, its lack of natural light. You look at the video, you're like, "Guys, you're dumb. There's so much natural light." No, the iPhone is just playing tricks because we would be in rooms, and you're just like, "It's just like, turn up the brightness slightly in here."

Caroline: And that is the week that really made me realize how much natural light has an impact on my mood.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: Because I was starting to get in a very negative head space, because not only the lack of natural light. Also, the second day I'm there, I start to realize a familiar pain in my shoulder. And I'm like, "Please don't be shingles. Please don't be shingles." And by the third day, I'm like, "It's shingles."

Jason: Fourth time in four years.

Caroline: Fourth time in four years having shingles. And you might be like, "I've never heard of that before." And you'd be right, because it's very rare. But the way that my body responds to certain types of stress is just this is how it responds. And so I think also my guess is that my immune system was also lower just from fighting off COVID. I have another friend who got shingles, like about a month after they had COVID. And so it seems like maybe that has something to do with it. But it just was such a bummer because I was so ready. I was just at my bottom of my bucket energy wise and travel wise, and then to be at the bottom of my bucket health wise at the same time, it just really sucked.

Jason: Yeah. And the eight days here in this tiny village, there's no grocery store in the village. I mean, there's nothing. There's no easy things to get to. It just made it so difficult. And I think that this is probably--I know I'm speaking for you here, but I would say this is the lowest point of this journey.

Caroline: Yeah, I would definitely say it was definitely one of--I would say maybe getting COVID was another low point.

Jason: But yeah, I'm just saying the lowest. Like, I think when you felt like, "I don't know if I could keep doing this."

Caroline: Also, come to find out--so long story short, I won't bore you with how we got the medicine. Thankfully, I had an ailment that I knew the remedy for because I've taken the medication before.

Jason: The antivirals.

Caroline: The antivirals. So we're in a country where we don't speak the language, but thankfully, through many hoops and different scavenger hunt items, through a pharmacist who found me a doctor who she swore spoke English. He's Canadian. Turns out he's French Canadian. He speaks zero English.

Jason: Yeah. She was like, "He's Canadian." We're like, "Oh, great!" Then we find out he's French Canadian.

Caroline: But that's okay. Through our language barrier, we figured out what he needed to get me. He wrote me the script, we got the prescription. It all worked out fine. But this particular medication, some of the side effects have not affected me this negatively before.

Jason: No, not at all.

Caroline: Maybe it's because I'm not in a comfortable environment. Maybe it's because my immune system is lower. I have no idea. But I got to, like, a really sad place...

Jason: A lot of discouragement, I would say.

Caroline: I was like, Jason, I do not feel like myself. I don't know. Is it just because of this point in travel? What is it? Am I just so tired? I also just picked a fight with you about something.

Jason: We were on a walk and I was like, "Whoa, what just happened?"

Caroline: And I really never have that type of like, I'm irritable sometimes but that level of explosive irritability. So I go back and I Google this medication and the first three side effects are, like discouragement, a general feeling of deep sadness, irritability. And I'm like, "Holy shit. Like, what?" So I've just never had medication affect me that way before. But I feel pretty certain that altered state was due to that.

Jason: And I think just this time in the Tateau, we had such different expectations, and the reality did not even come close to matching. And also the WiFi. It worked for three minutes, and then it would stop.

Caroline: Right. So it's this perfect storm of the point in our trip where we were the most tired, the most everything, and then not being in a place that was comfortable. So there were some highlights. I will say the village that we were in was beautiful. And whenever I would be sad, I would just go outside and go for a walk, and we would stumble upon, like, a centuries old windmill and be like, "What?" Or there was this bouldering trail behind our Airbnb.

Jason: Literally right behind it.

Caroline: And we would go for a hike, and I would look out over this stunning landscape, and it would fill up my bucket again. So that was the saving Grace. There was a pizza truck that came once a week that even when it was the day that it was raining and we thought he might not come...

Jason: Chez Roberto showed up.

Caroline: Chez Roberto showed up. Rain or shine.

Jason: Was the pizza great? No, not really. Was it a fun adventure and gave us joy? Absolutely.

Caroline: It really was. And then the day that we had to go in and get my medication, we went to this town called Uzès, and it was just, I think, one of our favorite cities we visited so far.

Jason: Yeah. Beautiful little city. We spent the full day. We had a nice little lunch...

Caroline: A great walking city. You can walk it in a day.

Jason: We went to a medieval garden. We'll save that for the YouTube video if you want to go relive the medieval garden, because we have some stories about getting... not stuck in a staircase. But it wasn't great. But you can watch the YouTube video for that. But yeah. So from Uzès. And actually, the town that we stayed was La Capelle-et-Masmolène. It was so small that the town of La Capelle and the neighboring town of Masmolène combined because they were so tiny to make one town.

Caroline: Which I love.

Jason: Which is just great.

Caroline: So by the time we hit the end of that week, we were ready to go, and we were off to another country.

Jason: Yeah. So we returned the rental car--I'm just going to pick up because you were just telling all kinds of stories over here... so we can go back and forth. It's like a thing that we do.

Caroline: That's so sweet of you.

Jason: So we returned the rental car. Rental car situation was easy and great. We had a train to take from there to the city of Lyon because we found a direct flight from Lyon to Crete. The island of Crete in Greece. And the reason why we picked that island in Greece and not any of the other more famous, more well known islands is because...

Caroline Well, Crete's pretty famous, but...

Jason: Yeah. But I mean, for travel, people don't think, "I'm going to Crete."

Caroline: Sure, sure. Mikonos...

Jason: Exactly. Santorini. All those... was we had done some research when we realized it was going to be my 40th birthday this year.

Caroline: Can you believe?

Jason: I can. Because we just, we celebrated it. Yeah.

Caroline: Also our next podcast episode is going to be a little bit of a birthday celebration episode so...

Jason: Oh, okay. Bring out the twirlers and the swirlers and the squirters.

Caroline: I knew you were going to say squirters.

Jason: So we did some credit card points... I say we, I did some credit card points hacking to get us a bunch of Hilton honors points last year in which we could use for a hotel that we would figure would be my birthday hotel. Because staying in a hotel just would make things easier. Wouldn't have to think through all these different logistics. Anyway, we stumbled upon this Royal Senses Spa and Resort Hotel in Crete. And so we found this flight from Lyon to Crete. So we return the rental car, we get on the train, we stay one night in an airport hotel. The nicest airport hotel we've ever stayed at.

Caroline: Fantastic.

Jason: NH Airport Hotel, Lyon. Some of the best food we've ever had. Seriously.

Caroline: I had the best burger I've had of any place all year.

Jason: I can't say enough good things about an airport hotel. How ridiculous is that? Really great. All of it was fantastic. So then we took the flight from Lyon to Crete, which had its own fun adventure and that we booked a business class ticket which was not that much more expensive. We get on the plane, we're sitting in business class. There--I think, there were three rows, two sides of the plane each, not another person in business class.

Caroline: We're the only ones.

Jason: And it was just kind of weird. And then like, the...

Caroline: These are the moments where I'm like, I think because it's not that much more expensive, people are like, "Oh, it's not worth it."

Jason: And it's not that much different. The seats are a little bit more room. But for me it makes a huge difference because I can't fit a normal European seat row. I just physically can't.

Caroline: My flight anxiety, usually if it's within our budget, we don't tell you guys that we fly business to be like, "Oh, we're trying to be like..."

Jason: No, the difference is...

Caroline: It's because pay for the things that are going to make your life--pay for the things that are worth it to you, to make your life and your peace easier. And so for my flight anxiety, for your size of human, it just works.

Jason: Yeah. And literally we're talking about on some of these flights, 100 Euro difference per ticket. Some of them are double.

Caroline: Of course, that's not nothing, but that gives you an idea. It's not thousands of dollars.

Jason: Anyway, we sat on this... in the business class section of this flight, the plane starts to leave. We're the only people in this. We get up in the air, they close the curtain to separate... And also it's like a half curtain, so I can still see everybody's legs, which is just always the best.

Caroline: You just feel so awkward. You're like, "Okay."

Jason: And then we just have this lovely personal flight experience, and you're like, "Oh, okay. It's surely like, it's not going to get any better than this." And not to say that it got better, but it got weirder. So we landed. The flight attendant...

Caroline: Also one of the best in-flight meals we've ever had. Do you remember that?

Jason: For sure. This was on a Aegean Airlines, by the way, in case you're just like, I don't know, going to book things that we're talking about just to share.

Caroline: Going straight to Crete on Aegean. Via Lyon.

Jason: Yeah. So we land, we're on the runway, because this is what happens in most European airports. You don't pull up to a gate bridge, which is what we're so used to.

Caroline: Right. They bus you.

Jason: A jet bridge where you walk off. So we are sitting there, the plane has stopped. We're getting our bags out of the overhead bin, and the flights are kind of shimmies behind us. We're like, "Oh, that's weird. They don't usually do that." And they're like standing where the other group of people were.

Caroline: We're like, "Why are you doing that?"

Jason: He's, like, asking us about our backpacks. We're, like, having a great little moment.

Caroline: Kind of distracting us, to be honest. We're like, "What are you doing?"

Jason: So we get off the plane. It's 10:00 p.m. at night, by the way, which is not our favorite thing, but it's just the only way that this worked out. We see a shuttle bus, and we're just like, okay. We assume... no one said anything.

Caroline: Well, we came down the stairs, and there's nobody pointing us to go anywhere, but probably 10ft in front of the end of the stairs is a bus with the doors open up the back. And so we assume, "Oh, we're going to go in this bus." Everyone's going to file in behind us, and then they're going to bus us to the main. Like, that seemed like normal, but it wasn't that obvious. And so we get on, and I'm like, "Well, I guess this is what we're supposed to do." And the doors close behind us.

Jason: No, we get on, we turn back to look at the plane to watch other people get off the plane.

Caroline: Right.

Jason: We see our flight attendant go, "Bye!"

Caroline: I forgot the "Bye!"

Jason: And we're like, "Okay." And then the doors close for the bus, and it moves away, and we're like, "Hold on a second. We just got, like, a private bus, which is so inefficient and so wasteful..."

Caroline: See, my first instinct was like, "Oh, we did the wrong thing. And we're going to, like, a maintenance area." Like, actually my first instinct. And then Jason was like, "Wait, I think this is a business class thing. I think they just give you a private bus." I'm like, "Okay, this feels really wasteful and dumb."

Jason: The ultimate irony is we get dropped off at the baggage claim, we're standing in baggage claim at the baggage claim thing. All the other people from the plane get bused over, and before a single bag comes out, we're now all in the terminal together.

Caroline: So I don't know what the benefit of that is, except for you just get a cool experience of getting, like, a personal bus.

Jason: That's true. So then Georgios took us from the airport at 10:00 P.M. at night to the hotel, which is an hour drive.

Caroline: That was a huge anxiety of mine was this idea of being around these very high island-ey roads late at night. But I made it okay.

Jason: And I'll say that drive was not easy. And also, when we returned in the daylight, on the drive back to the airport, I mean, you did a pretty great job. Those were some windy roads, up and downs, a lot of elevation changes. I think some business class wine probably helped take the edge off a little bit thankfully.

Caroline: No, because I had my medication so I was...

Jason: So you just did a great job, actually.

Caroline: I was wineless, actually.

Jason: Okay, so we arrived at the hotel.

Caroline: And so the biggest thing I want to say is we could not have needed this week more at this point in our trip. Based on everything that I just told you, we're coming off of, like, Uzès or La Capelle and everything and where we were... And we had low expectations because we were sort of like we looked some stuff up online. There were mixed reviews. The photos, of course, make it look unbelievable, right? Like a dream. But then you see some of the YouTube videos of people actually there. And I'm like, "I don't know. I just can't get a gauge on what it's going to be." And so... people have mixed reviews. And so I'm like, "Okay, let's just keep our expectations low." Regardless, it's going to be an amazing week of relaxation for us because we talked about this before. I think doing Airbnbs versus hotels, sometimes we really want a hotel because you don't want to have to think of every meal. It's just a different level of decision fatigue, staying at an Airbnb. And so breaking it up with hotels is kind of nice sometimes, but it's not always, like, cost effective and whatever.

Jason: Yeah.

Caroline: And so we were like, at the very least, it'll be a week where we're in a hotel, we don't have to think about anything. We get there. And this place just exceeded all of my expectations.

Jason: Yeah, it was really lovely. I mean, we arrived super late at night, so you don't really get to see the property that much. We got taken to our room. We got dropped off. We were so tired. We basically just got in bed and went to bed.

Caroline: I will say it is not what you think of what most people probably think of when they think of a Greece resort. So if this is not like the Greek Isles.

Jason: All white.

Caroline: This is not the white with the blue. This is more--Crete is much more like rugged landscape.

Jason: Natural.

Caroline: Natural, almost desert-y at times but butting up right up against the sea. And it's stunningly beautiful water and color. And even this resort, when you kind of get there, you're quite a bit far back from the ocean. So you're kind of like, oh, and you can see desert area and you can even see other hotels on the water. But once you are in your room, especially ours, because it was higher up, you have this almost more than 180 deg, like, corner to corner water view. And it just took my breath away. It was just so peaceful for my eye to look at the horizon and to kind of take a deep breath, exhale after what was like six weeks of hectic travel and COVID and shingles and all of that, and to just be able to be like, [breathing deeply]...

Jason: What about your other eye? You said it was peaceful for my eye. Did one eye not have a peaceful adventure?

Caroline: You don't know which one.

Jason: Okay.

Caroline: And then also to celebrate you, of course.

Jason: Yeah, for sure. And I think we'll save a lot of the stories for the YouTube video that will go up pretty shortly after this podcast episode going up of our time at the hotel, the Royal Senses Hotel, and none of it was sponsored. We paid for this out of our pocket. We paid for an upgrade on the room. We paid for all of our meals, even our private meal at Potamos. I think there were three restaurants at the hotel and one that was closer to our room, not in the main area, opened like the second night we were there. And I love this about hotels these days is that they're just like, you just get on a WhatsApp with somebody and you can just make reservations or ask some questions or whatever. It's such a great system. And I get it. You can just call down to a front desk, but it's just easier in text when you know someone speaks English and you don't have to worry about it. But, yeah, we had this lovely private dinner that would just like--it felt so special and... Sorry, accidentally private dinner.

Caroline: Yeah.

Jason: It was not booked as a private dinner.

Caroline: It's just nobody else showed up at the restaurant because I think word had not gotten out that the restaurant opened yet. And so we had an entire restaurant to ourselves accidentally. And it was amazing.

Jason: Yeah. So the 40th birthday that week was just so much fun. There was a little water park. We got to go on slides by water park. Also accidentally private water park because everyone just stayed at the main pools, apparently because it was kind of far away to go to the little water park.

Caroline: And it was just shoulder season enough. I think a lot of the staff we talked to there and they said, "Oh, you'll see it next week, it'll start." So literally we got in the week before it started to really pick up. And so we had all of these very unexpected private moments that we couldn't have planned for.

Jason: So, yeah, Crete was great. We have another week. We'll talk about that next week. We'll get caught up on that. But that basically catches you up from leaving Croatia, getting to Greece for my birthday. And then next week, as we resume normal weekly podcast episodes, talking a little bit about business, talking a little bit about travel.

Caroline: But you can probably tell based on everything we just shared with you, why it was necessary to kind of take a step back from the podcast because all of those places that we mentioned to you, we were not in a place longer than a week.

Jason: Yes.

Caroline: Which is just not our favorite thing. But it just was the way that it all worked out with the schedule. And so Greece was really the reset kind of more of a vacation vibe.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. And we got this advice from many people who do full time travel before. They said as much as full time travel feels like a vacation itself, because you're doing this amazing thing, if there's so much that you're having to do. So build in some time when you just can relax.

Caroline: Turn it off and just...

Jason: I don't even know if we have this planned for the fall, but we should like, we should figure out another week where we're just going to do nothing and just have a relaxing... and maybe pick another hotel because it just made it so much easier to--there's no, like you said, decision fatigue. Just oh, we breakfast here, we lunch here. We dinner here. I don't care if I'm in the same thing for a couple of days. I can do it just to not have to think about something.

Caroline: Definitely.

Jason: All right.

Caroline: We are excited to take you along on the journey. Thank you for bearing with us while we needed to take a step back. And like Jason said, we'll probably have to maybe do that again at some point because the fall is going to be a little bit hectic again. But when it's all said and done, just this journey is incredible. And I feel like as a person, I'm changing in the best way possible. I just think for the past couple of years, there was just like a sort of stagnant energy, not in a bad way, but just some years are for kind of staying in place and kind of hunkering down and being in a cocoon. And I think for a lot of people...

Jason: I mean, there was no option.

Caroline: Exactly. But this year has been such rapid growth and challenges and it's kind of like I'm learning so much about how do I handle it mentally when I'm in a challenging place, how do I get myself through that? I'm learning a lot about that and I'm really grateful for it. I'm grateful to do it with you. I love...

Jason: The people listening to the podcast.

Caroline: You, listeners of the podcast, and also you, my husband, Jason.

Jason: Yeah, no, it's great. And I do feel like certain times I wish we could make more content about our travels and share all these stories and, like these amazing adventures and especially, like, Instagram stories are made for these things but we just don't have the energy or the time.

Caroline: I know and it sucks because it's like we only get to tell you all one or two stories of a place, a memorable meal here, an Airbnb there, a friendly local. But this trip is like tenfold of those memories.

Jason: It really is.

Caroline: And so I just...

Jason: We should have hired someone just to come with us because we're so rich, just like a full time videographer and then off camera they can always ask us questions. That would have been fun.

Caroline: A full documentary of our year. People are like, "Who is that?"

Jason: "What's going on?" All right, that's it for this episode. We're glad to be back in your ears. We will be back next week and then hopefully we'll continue our weekly uploads for a while until we need another break. But hope you're enjoying it and that's it. That's all we got. Okay.

Caroline: Have a good day.

Jason: All right.

Caroline: Okay.

Jason: Bye.

Caroline: Bye.