The Gift Of Time Together

Have you ever returned from a trip feeling completely worn out? Well, maybe we can help. Today we're talking to someone who can help you change the way you travel. [Music] Welcome to Wherever We May Roam, the new face of Travels with Jim and Rita. This podcast is about discovering your own travel style to explore the world. I'm Jim Santos and along with my wife Rita, we spent more than 16 years traveling. Sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes for a few months, and sometimes a whole lot longer. And what we've learned is this, there's no right or wrong way to travel. Some people take extended getaways, some roam part time, some work from the road, and some make travel a full-time lifestyle. This podcast is about helping you figure out what works for you and how to make it happen in the real world. So whether you're planning your next trip, or thinking about something bigger, we're glad you're here. Let's get started. Welcome everybody, I'm Jim Santos, joined by my wife and travel companion Rita, and this is Wherever We May Roam. Our guest today is Paul Partridge. Paul spent years as a financial advisor and retirement planner. He's also a travel writer and photographer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Forbes.com, and International Living. Somehow those two worlds collided, and today he runs a company called Travel Villa Guide, which helps families and close friends plan trips centered around what he calls "the gift of time together." We're going to talk about travel today, and about something bigger, about legacy, about inheritance, and why, for a lot of people, the most meaningful thing they can leave their family has nothing to do with money. Paul, welcome to Wherever We May Roam. Thanks Jim and Rita, I appreciate being here. Paul, you have a pretty unusual background, a financial advisor, and now a travel writer and photographer. How did those two worlds collide? Yes, you're right, it's pretty unusual. I guess I would explain it maybe around about way to say that, you know, the older we get, the harder it becomes to get the people we love together in the same place at the same time. It is. Kids grow up, they move away, parents get older, close friends get caught up in their own little world, and getting everyone together just becomes harder every year. Somewhere along the way I kind of realized the best trips aren't just where you go, but it's about bringing the people that you love close together. Right. That's why I started Travel Villa Guide, specifically to help families and close friends. And people like me, honestly, you know, to create extraordinary vacations that celebrate life's important moments, you know, family reunions or multi-generational trips, milestone birthdays and anniversaries, you know, those kind of things. Just believing that these kind of moments deserve more than ordinary vacation. They deserve more than, you know, going to the restaurant. You know, I used to go with, I have three older brothers and they were all married and had children when we used to rent big houses at ski resorts and spend every Christmas. And then it seemed like after our parents passed away, we've moved along to different things. But yes, those were very wonderful trips. Yeah, they kind of live on too, don't they, Rita? They do. Yes. There must have been a point along there where you're, you know, a financial advisor. Was there a particular trip that you took or you and your family took that made you kind of bend into this direction? You know, there were a couple. We've been doing it, to be honest, Jim, our family has been doing these kind of trips for about 25 years, maybe a little bit longer. But we try to do one family, extended family trip every year, at least one. I remember the first one that we did was with my parents and siblings and the kids, you know, a three-generation trip and we went to, you're not going to be surprised by this, but we went to Disney World. Yeah. And we rented a house. It was the first time that we had ever done that. And that was a revelation. But you know what? It was just having everybody together. And I remember when we still laugh about this, my daughter, my youngest daughter, my dad was holding her in, I think it was what he called, Frontier Land. And, you know, we just got there. We just kind of, you know, made our way through the park. We sat down. He put her on his lap and she immediately threw up on him. And then. Welcome to Pamhood. Exactly. And then my other daughter, who was a little bit over, she ran into Captain Hook about five minutes later and absolutely had a meltdown. Despite that, you know, it's still one of the trips that we laugh about and talk about. So that was like the first eye-opening thing was that trip. And then, like I said, we've been doing them for 25 years. And that's kind of what launched the thing because, you know, friends and people I would meet either through work or whatever, I would talk about the trip. And they'd say, "Oh man, can you do that for us?" Because that sounds amazing. Yeah. So that's kind of how the whole thing started. Well, let me see this. My first wife and I planned a trip once to France. And we rented a house and her brother and his wife and some kids came with us. So they were like eight of us all there in this house in France. But we really only saw each other when we were in that house. We went with the kids one place, he and his girlfriend went to another place. And his kids were older. They hopped on a train and went to Amsterdam so they could try out the hash bars. So. Not just a lot of kids. So how do you handle this when the same group of people may want completely different things and be in completely different places? Yeah, you know, that's a great question. And to be honest, it's a question that I kind of struggled with for years. You know, how do you do one trip that makes, well, we have a little bit bigger crowd than we go. So, you know, how do you plan one trip that makes 12 or 15 people happy, right? Right. And eventually over the years, I came up with something that we now call travel type matching. What we found is that people naturally lean toward one of four travel types. And I'll explain them to you. One we call the immersors. They're the type of folks they want to understand the place inside and out. They get up all the guides. You know, they read every museum plaque. They read every message in the, you know, in the laboratory. They have one more question while everybody else is wondering, hey, what's for lunch? They want to stick around and talk to the guide for another hour. Right. So we call them the immersors. And we have several of them in our family. My wife is one of them. And then the next kind of category is called the adventurers. Those folks come alive through activity. You know, if they're not biking or climbing or kayaking or trying to, you know, hike to the best view, they start to get restless. Yeah. So that's the adventurers. The next is the experiences. They rely more on their senses. You know, they want to see it, taste it, smell it, and experience it for themselves. And they're the ones who kind of wander off and then they come back later with a local fisherman who's been invited to dinner. Yeah. That's kind of us. Yeah. That is me. I'm glad to see that we're on the same boat. We are experiences. And that is me to it. The last one is called relaxers. You know, they find the perfect chair by the pool on day one. And you can find them in the exact same spot on day seven. Yeah. And they're completely happy. You know, they're completely happy. Yeah. You know, generally when I talk about these different types, people kind of say, oh, you know, that's dad or that's, that's not lowest or whatever, right? They can kind of, they recognize these things. But, you know, the reality is that in any group, you're going to probably have all four travel types. Right. And the way that we kind of work things is we try to find out who are those types before you leave. Mm-hmm. And then we try to give each type, you know, something they're excited about. You know, we let them have their space to do those things. And then we work about gathering everyone together for the moments that matter, you know. So that could be, you know, we're going to eat dinner together every day or we're going to eat breakfast together. Or just something that brings everybody together to remind us that, hey, we're on this thing together. The purpose of the trip is to be together. And we can all go do our things and be happy and find our happy place. But let's come back and share, right? So it sounds like a lot of work goes into this before you even get on the plane. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Jim. Quick confession. For years, I've been selling my books on Amazon and watching most of the money disappear into printing fees and their cut. About 20% to me, 80% to Amazon. So I open my own store. Now you can get PDF copies of 11 of my books and short stories directly from me at shop.gimSanto'sbooks.com for less than the paperback price. And they're in full colors. All those travel photos actually look like photos, not gray smudges. Pick your books, check out with a card or PayPal and you'll get a download link in minutes. read it in any PDF viewer or send it straight to your Kindle. That's shop.tumSantosBooks.com. Help a starving artist and save some money. Everybody wins. - Yeah, and even, honestly, Jim, even before we figure out what's the best destination. - Well, can you walk us through that? How do you go about as somebody approaches you and says, "Hey, we want to plan a get together for our family, say 12 people?" So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to say, who's coming? So we want to start with the people, not the place. Obviously, everybody has in mind an idea of where you want to go. So extremely important, I don't want to discount that. But we have to know who's coming and what's the purpose of the trip. Because a trip that's for, say, eight people who went to college together 20 years ago and now they're getting together is very different from where celebrating Graham is 85th birthday. We want to know the purpose of the trip and what's the vibe and what's the number one thing we want to get out of it? Who's coming? And then we can get around to, all right. Now, let's talk about the destination. We talk about what kind of place you're going to stay in. And then we figure out how do we put an experience against each of the different travel types that we mentioned. So that everybody has a good time. And a lot of times, I don't know about you, but my friends come home from vacation. I say, how was it? And the first thing they say is, oh my god, I need a vacation from my vacation. Yeah. I've been there a lot of times when I was working that it was a relief to get back to work. And I think when that happens-- and I kept hearing it more and more. So I've thought quite a lot about that. And what I've concluded is that it comes down to like, there's something off about the trip if you're coming home more exhausted when you left. I think trying to do too many things-- Yeah, it could be as simple as that. It could be as simple as that. Or it could be like, there's some misalignment. So to the adventurer, getting up and jumping on a bike before breakfast and you ride for 20 miles, that's exhilarating to somebody who is not an adventurer if they're the relaxer. And they're made to do that because, hey, we're all going to do this together. That's-- they find that extremely exhausting. Just like the same thing as if you-- if you're a type of person that wants to do three museums before 12 noon, somebody else likes to just get up gradually and scratch and have their coffee and if you put them on your schedule, one or the two of you is going to not be very happy and probably exhausted. So I think that's kind of how it gets to that. And that's what we try to figure out. How do best do we balance it so that people are going to be exhilarated by what they do? And they're going to come home refreshed. And we always say our goal is to have everybody come home closer than when they left. Now, the cost of renting those homes, larger places, has changed a lot since the time they read it was talking about. Oh, yeah, well, it was pretty expensive for the house. Is there a threshold of the number of travelers you need to make it economically feasible to rent a house or a villa and travel like this? Yeah, I think it varies by what people are comfortable spending. But I would say for us, kind of the minimum threshold is few at six. I think it's probably the smallest. But usually it's more than that. Usually it's eight or above. But I think six is the minimum. Because if you start to do the arithmetic, a lot of people have this notion of, oh my gosh, the villas in private homes are so expensive. But-- and they can be, but what I found to read is that when they're saying that, I always say, well, compared to what? So if you're staying, you like to stay in nice hotels, right? It doesn't have to be five star, super star hotel. But let's say you like to stay in a four star above hotel. And that's kind of what you used to. You have, let's say, 10 people going, right? Depending on how it breaks down with families and stuff, you could need five or more rooms. Exactly. You know, if you're, again, it all depends on where you're going. If you go, but if you're going a lot of our trips to Europe, so if you're going to go to a nice place and you're going to go in the summer time and you're in a four star hotel, you're going to be paying, I don't know, $5, $600 a night for the room. Yeah. And if you multiply that by five, if you do have five rooms, you know, you're looking at $2,500, $3,000 a night in just in accommodation costs. And boy, you can get a lot of nice villas for that. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. And the difference is that, you know, you have the space to be together when you want and to, you know, retreat when you want. As far as everybody has their own rooms and stuff. But you have, you have your own kitchen. You have your own pool. You don't have to fight for lounge chairs around the pool. You get to have coffee together in the morning. You get to have sit around the pool in the afternoon. You get to eat together at night. You know, it's a much more, I think space is very under, it's very underappreciated. I agree. Yeah. Yeah, we always, we usually get some kind of an apartment or a condo or wherever we go. It's even been a house sometimes. Yeah. Even in Ireland, it was lots of times houses. Because yeah, we enjoy that. Even though it's just a two of us. Yeah, the extra room really makes it, I mean, you just have an uncomfortable chair to sit in. Yes. Yes. A lot of the times in hotels, you may have one chair or two chairs and they're not very comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's a certain sort of, I mean, don't get me wrong, I love hotels. We do too. But, you know, not in a group. And to be that claustrophobic thing where you only have your, that little space where it's a bed and maybe a desk and that's it is vastly different than just having like, you know, a kitchen in a place to sit in a place to go outside and yeah, it's just a different experience. So I would say even if it was the same price, just the difference in experience, you know, to me makes it hands down. If you're in a group, you really, hotels kind of separate you. That's the other thing is, you know, you're on different floors. You're in different rooms, right? Yeah. You try to gather the group just to have dinner and it's, you know, you need a camp counselor. Yeah, it's a challenge. Yeah. Right? Everybody's on the phone and say, "Where's Jimmy? Where's Jimmy?" Yeah. Oh, God. Wait, where did it go? Hold on. Yeah, there's cost and then there's value. Yeah. And that's what we look at. How much is the value going to cost us? Yeah, remember you, one of your shows, I remember you were talking about, I guess in Ireland, you had a problem with the place. You showed up, it wasn't great. And you were saying, well, we're going to have to pay a lot more, but man, it's just worth it. Yeah, that was something I wanted to ask you about, because you know, as you know, we're no strangers to booking with Airbnb and booking.com, but like this place in Scotland, sometimes we found the description doesn't really match the location. But looking at your website, it seems like you've kind of like pre-screened or pre-selected the places that you're getting people into. Okay, tell us a little bit about that. How do you meet these people? How do you set this up? Our trips, we're trying to give people their own private world where, you know, for one week or two week, you know, the rest of the normal, hectic life fades into the background. - That's great. - And you're just, you know, you're just in sconce or sometimes I say cocooned in your own little private world. What we want to do is we want to protect that and we protect that in a couple of different ways. One is that we provide all the houses have concierge support. We can talk about that in a little bit. But to answer this question, you know, before we're not going to recommend a home, they've all been vetted and they've all been inspected. And certainly, I mean, I've rented my share of Airbnb and VRBL places as well. But it's always that sense of, you know, when you open the door, especially if you have other people that you're responsible for, you kind of open it with one eye open. - It's like a box of chocolate. - Right, yeah, I'm not sure what's here. I mean, I even read, you know, a few months ago, I remember I was reading Traveling Leisure and the CEO of Airbnb was being interviewed and they asked him what's the, you know, number one problem. He said the number one problem, I was surprised, he said this actually. But he said the number one problem is people saying, this isn't what I expected. So I feel that and, you know, if I'm going to send 15 people, you know, to Tuscany or something, I want to make sure that the place has been vetted and inspected before they get there. And that's so that's what we do. Like I say, we have local concierge support to, you know, also be there to make sure everything's great. And if anything comes up, look, you know, things do come up. And, you know, the difference between being happy and being unhappy is, do they get fixed right away? - Yeah, exactly. - If you're in Greece and you don't speak Greek and you show up at your place on a, you know, Friday afternoon and your phone all night and you get there exhausted and-- - No hot water. - Yeah, well, I was going to say, you know, these days, you know, it could be 105 degrees and whatever the air conditioning doesn't work. - Oh, no air. - Yeah, we have that. - We have that. So yeah, so if you don't, I mean, if you don't speak the language, it's even, it's even scarier because, you know, the owner of Airbnb, that person, he or she could live in Istanbul or London or New York, and they wrote it to that. She loved to try to find them, yeah, like, first you have to find them, and then, and then you have to tell them the problem, and then, okay, now they have to try to fix it from New York and in your in Santorini, they're not going to find somebody, well, first of all, you're not going to get anyone increased to come on a weekend, right, and, you know, you're going to be, it'll be Monday or Tuesday before anybody even shows up at the house, and now you've lived four days in 105 degrees, everybody's miserable. Oh, God. They're all looking at you saying why'd you pick this place, right, and so we just like it to have it where you can have someone to say, you know, Julie, the air conditioning doesn't seem to be working. Could you take care of that? We're going to the beach. Yeah. That's so much. That's a much nicer sentence than what are we going to do? We've actually only had two stinkers, I write, huh? Yeah, and with the air conditioning problem, we had to, we had to stay in the unit until somebody came out because we had to be there to let them in. Yeah. Oh, good God. And to be there while they were working. So it wasn't a, we'll go to the beach. Yeah. But we'll be here sweating. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's it. Yeah, no, that's what I was saying is that, you know, when you have the concierge support there, you can go to the beach, you don't have to wait for the, for the conditioning guide to show up, right? So that's, that's just one of the ways we, you know, we're trying to protect that, we're trying to create this little private world. And then we're trying to protect it to make sure that it, you know, it's, it's the way that you want it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, another source of anxiety for travelers, especially new travelers is when you first show up at the airport and you don't speak the language, getting transportation from the airport to your accommodations can sometimes be a little stressful. Do you help with that also? Yeah, we're going to make sure that that's all arranged beforehand. If that's what someone wants, you know, some people are in veteran travelers and they say, oh, no, no, we, we don't, we're doing well, good. Now the one thing we don't do, you know, is we don't handle the flights. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that'd be a nightmare. That's a nightmare. And, you know, people are coming from everywhere and their schedules change and stuff. So we just say, look, from the time you land on the ground, we got it from there. And then, you know, we'll get you to take care of everything and then we'll put you on a plane to go home. But the plane part isn't anything that we do, but everything else we do, yeah, we do. We make sure that that people don't have that panic moment of, oh my gosh, I don't even know where, I don't even know where we're supposed to meet somebody or where's the bus. Yeah. Where's the taxi? Say, some people just freak out about that. We just pivot. We just work it out. It's no biggie. Yeah. Well, part of it is, you know, Rita, I think it's partly like how long you have to be there too, right? I agree. Yeah. If you're going somewhere and you know you're going to be there for a month or too much, you're much more relaxed. So we can free this hell. Yeah. Yeah. We only have a week or you only have 10 days or so and it's like, hey, every minute counts, you know? Yeah. We're going to get to the house. Yeah. Do you typically work with just one group member or is the kind of thing where everybody gets a vote on what they're doing or gets at least a say on it? Generally, there's one point person, but we don't plan around one point person's vacation or trip. So we go out of our way, you know, with the travel type matching, we're enthusiastically asking about the other members because that's going to make or break it. Well, we want to, you know, we tend to deal with one person. It's not going to deal with 15 people, but we'll deal with one, but we encourage, you know, this is a group trip and they should have group input. I remember one was a destination wedding that gentleman had come to us and asked us to work out. It was in Italy and we had a couple conversations with him and we're starting the planning process. It seemed like every time I asked questions about, you know, what is the, what does mom think? What is the, what is the bride to be think? What is, what is your something? He was planning it for his son. You know, the answer was always, oh, it doesn't matter. I'm paying for it. So they're going to do it my way and that's a disaster. It's going to be a disaster. I actually, I said, you know what? I don't know that I'm the best for this trip. So I think, I think we're going to pass. Yeah. Yeah. That was going to be a disaster. Yeah. It only takes one customer to be dissatisfied and spread it all over the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, we plan group trips. We want the group to be happy. Yeah. It's not just one person, right? Yeah. Do you have a lot of difficulty with teenagers? I know we took our son to France once and he walked through the Louvre with his head down looking at his feet the whole time. Yeah. You know, kids get to this certain age where they're rebelling against everything. Oh, yeah. Has that ever come up on your trips? Fortunately, I've been on the planet long enough Jim to kind of have seen all these things. Yeah. Yeah. Right? So that's why, you know, I spend the whole first conversation trying to find out who the folks are that are coming. And I, you know, because I've seen this, I get to explore it. But you know, if you do, again, if you set it up correctly, we're trying to set, you know, have those things that, okay, this young man is maybe not going to be interested in the Louvre. So do you intend to drag him or her around or are you open to them doing something else? So depending on the answer to that, you know, we can make, make the proper arrangement. But we're trying to, we're trying to nip that in the bud because, you know, the whole, again, the whole purpose of this is like, we want you coming home closer than when you left. Right. You know, it's not to put up fences or have anybody be, you know, exgoed a resentful, you know, if they had to go here or there. And also, you know, the other part of it is like, you know, the Louvre, like, well, maybe you don't want to see, you know, this painting of that painting, but there are a lot of things in the Louvre that might be interesting to a 13-year-old. Mm-hmm. Well, he's since grown up and took his daughter to France and she was a major pain in the ass. Yeah. That's true. So I feel vindicated by that. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes, fair play. It may be petty, but I feel, I feel good about it. That's good. That's good. Now, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they're planning a family or a friends reunion or, or especially a multi-generational trip? I think the first one is, you know, kind of one that we spoke about already, which is like everybody starts with the destination, right? The role, the role focus, hyper-focused on where they're going. You know, before the destination, it's all these other questions, you know, is this, you know, is this the first time the family's been together in years, right? Are you celebrating a birthday? Is this the trip where the grandkids are, you know, meeting their first cousins for the first time or so it's to get that stuff down first. I think that's the first mistake is starting with the destination as opposed to the people in the, in the purpose. I think, you know, another one is not getting everyone on the same page early schedule wise. I just, this one's on top of mine because we were planning a trip for a family, you know, we had asked all the questions and we were narrowing in on the destinations and we started to go down to the point where we're, you know, starting to pick out homes and stuff. It turned out that, you know, two of the kids actually couldn't come. Oh gosh. That's something that I would say, you know, make sure everyone's on the same page, you know, schedule wise. Yeah. That's one of the biggest problems. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you have adult children. In those ducks in a row, if first is really, is really paramount, otherwise, I mean, you can go around and around on these things, you know, and, you know, that's why we like to have a one person who has a little bit of authority where they can kind of push the conversation along. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We have a list, like a checklist of things. All right. Can we check off these boxes before we move to the next step? Yeah. Yeah. Rita and I had families of our own when we met and when we went to get married, we decided it would be great to do a Disney cruise or a destination where everybody along and they could come on the cruise and, you know, the kids and the grandkids and because they all had little ones and everybody had a conflict with this or that and we finally just got married in the justice of peace. Yeah. Yeah. And went to Ecuador and bought a condo. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Come see us when you want. Yeah. So I can see where your service would be really valuable to people who are trying to put something together like that. So on your website, you mentioned three aha moments in your life about travel. Is there one that you'd like our listeners to take away from this conversation? There's a couple things to say. It goes back to my financial advisor days. You know, I spent a lot of our time answering the big questions, you know, like, you know, what's important and what are the assets, right, and what's the, what's the legacy and what are we going to pass on? I think that there's a lot of a lot of that thinking can be brought over to traveling. You know, there's another kind of, I guess. Yes, to keep it in terms of the financial planning, there's another kind of wealth, really. To me, what I've discovered to me is beyond money, beyond tangible things. What is it? It's having adult children who still want to take vacations together. It's having grandchildren who actually know their grandparents. It's friends who you've shared decades of life with that you still want to make time for. Those things don't just happen. They have to be invested in and traveling together is an investment in the people that you love. This is that gift of time together. Exactly. Over time, those investments become, we call them heirlooms because people think of heirlooms as things, like a watch or a piece of jewelry or something tucked away in an attic or safe deposit box or something, but something you lead to someone you love. But to me, the best heirlooms are different, they're not tucked away. They're carefully protected, a watch or a piece of jewelry, they're not brought to life. They're kept in a box somewhere, but a travel heirloom is different because it comes back to life, every Thanksgiving or every Christmas whenever somebody says, "Remember what we did this? Remember when we went here? There's another detail that somebody forgot and everybody's laughing about it. Maybe the grandkids are hearing about the story for the first time and maybe it's something that years later they're going to pass on to their kids. I think these living we call them living heirlooms, they become your travel legacy. The trip itself might last a week or two, but that story can last for generations." I think that's one kind of aha in sort of in the same vein. I asked the question, "What's luxury?" I think luxury, certainly what it means to me today is different than what it meant to me 20 years ago, 30 years ago. For a long time, luxury was defined, I think, as having more, more amenities, more services, more extravagance, more stars on the hotel, right? But to me, today, the greatest luxury is having less, and what do I mean by that? Well, less noise and less interruption and less hassle, which leaves more time with the people that you came to be with, right? That's why we're not just planning a vacation, we're creating this private world. We are favorite people and reunite and reconnect and be together in a way that ordinary life really allows these days, you know? You know, I think you're on a good track there in terms of inheritance, was something we've learned, you know, combining households and moving from place to place is our kids don't want our crap. They don't. You know, kids today are not interested in grandma's fine china. No. But the kind of memories that you're talking about, the life connections, that is something that does last. Yeah. It does. Yeah. And, you know, my father-in-law, you know, we were talking about earlier, like, what were the things that launched me on this journey? I remember my father-in-law, we were celebrating, I think it was his 80th birthday. And he said, I have one request, I just want us all to be under one roof, so that, you know, we were going into Lee and he said, I don't know, this might be my last trip to Lee or I just want us all to be under one roof. You know, that was just, it was such a, it was a different trip for us together with that, with that family. And it was just so amazing. And what he had said, you know, before we left, he said that I believe passing on experiences and memories is better than passing on money or things. And so that was his, you know, part of his gift that he wanted to share. And I think it goes to what you were just saying, Jim, about, you know, would you rather have a piece of China, would you rather have, you know, this memory that just keeps coming back and you can relive and re-experience when you all get together again. Yeah. We have this other thing, you know, I talk about travel type matching. We're always coming up with different ways to talk about what we do and how the points are different that we have and believe in. And again, because of my financial background, I kind of talk about return on investment. You know, we have this thing we call it the five year test. It's very simple, it says, you know, five years after the trip, A, you're still talking about it and B, if you are, what are you talking about? Right. You know, I ask clients, I always ask clients when they come back, you know, what's your favorite moment from the trip? You know, no one ever tells me that people that go to Paris never say, well, it's the Eiffel Tower or, you know, people that go to, you know, people that go to Rome, they don't tell me, oh, it's the Colosseum, right? What do they say, right? They say it's, you know, the surprises are it's the things that made them feel something. And, you know, I remember one client who was in Rome, he said his favorite memory was, was running from gelato shop, shop to gelato shop with his kids in the rain. He said, you know, he said, I'll never forget that. Another said it was arriving in Italy for the first time and, and being welcomed into the neighborhood restaurants like they were long lost relatives. They thought that was amazing, you know, if, if you asked me, if you asked me about, you know, going to Ecuador or going to the Galapagos, I'm not going to tell you, you know, I saw, you know, a, a, a tourist, I'm going to, I'm going to tell you about swimming with sea lions. Right. And I remember this thing I'll never forget is we were snorkeling, we were with a group and this little sea lion swam right up to me underwater. And I had the goggles on and stuff, you know, and he looked at me in the eye and then he darted over to my wife and he jumped clean over like something out of a flipper move, which is like, to this amazing, like, he was sort of like saying, hey, watch this. And then he did that. And I, you know, stood up in the, in the water and everyone on the beach just burst into a plow. Five years later, you know, I'm still telling that story. Right. You know, to me, it's like, well, that's my return on investment. And, you know, honestly, that's what I want for the families, you know, we serve, I want, so, you know, I call the moments of pure joy, where you're, you know, fully present and fully alive and you're with the people you love, you know, you're just just like a snapshot and you say to yourself, oh, I don't ever want to forget this. Well, if someone's interested in planning a trip or exploring the possibilities is the best way to reach you then from your website, the travelbillaguys.com. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's absolutely the best way to do it. I would say an even simpler, you know, an even simpler thing is, and I'd love to share something we have a guide. We kind of mentioned it before. It's called the gift of time together kind of explains some of the things that, you know, our philosophy and what I've been talking about and how to put together family reunions and multi-generational trips. I'd love to offer that to any of the listeners together. It's a, you can download it for free at gift.travelvillaguid.com. So it's our name, but the word gift in front of it. So gift.travelvillaguid.com, you know, if it helps your family create memories, you'll still be talking about five years from now, then it's done exactly what I hope it would. We've been chatting with Paul Partridge, travel writer, photographer, and so much more. You can find out more and start planning your own aha moment on his website at travelvillaguid.com. And don't forget to visit gift.travelvillaguid.com for your free copy of his three steps to creating unforgettable trips. And of course, you'll find links to those sites in the show notes. Paul, thanks for joining us on "Wherever We May Room." Thanks Jim and Rita. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for spending some time together today. Next week we'll be taking you all the way to Australia to meet the travelistor herself, the king, who'll be sharing money-saving tips on travel. So until then, remember we travel not to escape life, but so that life does not escape us. If you've been thinking about traveling longer or just traveling better, we hope this episode gave you a few more ideas. Remember, there's no right or wrong way to explore the world, only the way that works for you. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow the podcast, and if you have a moment, leave a quick review. It really helps more people find us. And if you want to go deeper, you can check out my book "Wherever We May Room," "Finding Your Travel Style," where I walk through all of this in more detail. You can search for it on Amazon, in Kindle, Paperback, and AudioBook, or just use the link on our podcast page. If you have any questions, a topic you would like to discuss, or would like to be on our show, email us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, and as always, safe travels, wherever you may roam. (upbeat music)