I don’t want to wear pants!

Or socks for that matter. I have dreamed that our retirement would be traveling with the good weather and spend my life in shorts and sandals. I hate socks. I hate having to wear jeans to stay warm.

But I wasn’t always this way. I remember when I was younger getting upset when people complained about the Pacific Northwest weather. I didn’t see that the rain affected our lives that much and didn’t know why people wanted to leave. A lot of our fun times in the winter was indoors, but we did a lot of stuff outdoors no matter what the weather was. We camped, hiked, snowshoed, kayaked, and biked even if the weather wasn’t perfect. I remembered a lot of the good times and conveniently forgot all the times that our camping trips that ended up with us huddled under blue tarps.

As I got older, I gradually started to make decisions to reduce the amount of time we spent in the elements. We were still outdoor people, but we began to make decisions to have fun indoors during the gray months of Western Washington. Camping was reduced to mostly summers, except for the years I was a boy scout leader and we were expected to camp once a month. Biking is affected by 3 problems- wind, cold and rain. I choose to bike with only 1 of those issues at a time. A lot of the other outdoor activities got pushed to the summer. When the dreary gray months of December and January got too much, we would try to break it up with a week in Hawaii or Mexico.

I started riding my bike to work years ago and it really improved my attitude about going to work. A job didn’t seem to bad if I could start my day on my bike and look forward to riding home in the afternoon. When the rain started in October, I would start car commuting until March or April and it started to affect my mental wellbeing. I started dreaming about the day when I didn’t have to work anymore. When that happens, we can live anywhere, I thought. There is always a place in the world where it is warm and sunny. I could ride a bike every day. I could be in shorts and sandals all the time. So that became my goal.

So it has happened! We are retired. We spend most of our time traveling and following the warmth all over the world. But is isn’t so easy to plan months in advance, and still end up with good weather. We are traveling for months at a time with just carry-ons, so I don’t want to be carrying “warm” clothes just for emergencies. We need to stay under 10kg (22 pounds) on many airlines now. That makes planning even more important.

We still love Seattle, and really love summer in the Northwest, so we are still spending June through August back home. We think this is the best place in the world to be during the summer. But our bucket list is filled with places in Europe which also has it’s best weather in the summer. We are beginning to see that we will have a hard time seeing all those places on our fall trips before it starts cooling off. Last year, we ended up wearing jackets and pants in Southern Italy during November. This year, we were in Southern Spain in early November but it wasn’t really swimming weather the last couple of weeks.

So where do we go during the winter and early Spring? We actually have lots of options. Mexico, Central America, South America, South East Asia, South Africa, India or Australia/New Zealand to name a few. We have locations in all of those places that are still on our bucket lists. Last year it was Thailand and Malaysia in the Winter, and then we transitioned to Mexico in the Spring. This year it is Central America, and the South America before heading back to Mexico.

But warm weather locations aren’t always perfect. Right now, I am writing this inside on November 17th in Costa Rica because it has been raining HARD all afternoon. Rainy season doesn’t really end until late November apparently… It is still warm, but also really wet. It is hard to find my Costa Rica birds when they are huddled up because of the rain. The same can be true in South East Asia with the rainy seasons sometimes lasting through November in Vietnam and the Philippines. It takes a lot of research to get our plans just right and my toes to stay dry AND warm with sandals.

Besides rainfall, we also need to look at high temperatures. Just because I don’t want to wear socks and pants, doesn’t mean I will enjoy 90 degree plus temperatures with high humidity. We have learned that Mexico can really start heating up in late-April in many places. This Spring we will start heading up to some cooler Mexican higher elevations in May before heading back to Seattle in June. Asia has many places where high temperatures can make a beautiful sunny day seem miserable.

So what are we going to do next year? So far, our only booked plan is a flight to Paris on September 1st. We hope to do some hiking trips in France and Germany in September, but after that we are a bit stuck. We have never been to Berlin and have heard a lot about some great places to check out in Poland. But those places might not be sandal and shorts weather in October. Southern/Eastern Europe also has a lot of places on our bucket list. We have looked at Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia and Albania. But those places are also not that great in October/November We planned a route through all these places before we looked at the climate charts. Stuck again. Now we are are looking at Corsica, Sardinia and then Greece. We have seen Athens and a couple of the islands but there is so much that we still need to see. The Peloponnese peninsula looks fantastic and there are so many islands in Greece that it is going to take a lot of research to find the ones that will work best for us. We want to see as much as possible before the weather starts turning bad even in Greece and we head for Southeast Asia.

So, I could use some help with suggestions for those of you that are experienced late fall Europe travelers. Where are the best places that will allow us to stay in Europe as long as possible in the fall and still stay warm? Or should I be planning my Europe travels in late Spring? Or should I not waste my summer in Seattle and go to Europe? Or should I give up on my silly no pants rule? Let me know in Facebook comments or comments below. Thanks!