Senior Travel Advice

So, you’re retired – and the free time to travel you’ve been dreaming about stretches ahead. You can’t wait to get on the road, in the air, off to sea and out into the world. And you’re looking for travel advice.

The first travel advice to consider is to ask yourself, how concrete are those dreams? How well planned? Fun, rewarding travel takes as much goal-setting and planning as a good career move. The first question, as with building a career, is how well your personal interests and strengths match your goal. A week or two on the beach sounds relaxing, but will you get bored of sun and sand after day two? That European museums tour sounds fascinating, but is art really an ongoing personal interest? Before investing in a big itinerary, good travel advice is to try the trip on for size – spend a couple days at home doing nothing but wearing shorts and drinking margaritas, or invest in some art books and see how long they hold your interest.

Another important piece of travel advice is that your strengths are as important to consider as your interests, especially as you get older. Think about how much time you’ll be spending in lines, or carrying around your luggage, and do a practice run to test your stamina. Make sure you, or your tour group, have planned out a pace you can keep up with – or take a break from. Visit our section on senior transportation for some great ideas on getting around without the hassle.

Brainstorm, make lists, make plans, spend time researching online and try things out. If you set yourself realistic goals, your journey, whether it parks you in a hammock by the beach, or whirls you from museum to museum through Europe, will be much more satisfying.

Senior Tours and Cruises

Tours and cruises offer a lot of advantages for senior travelers – take a look at our discussions of senior tours and senior trips. The right tour or cruise is one that engages your interests without wearing you out or breaking your budget. Many tour and cruise operators offer senior discounts, as well as special accommodation to senior needs. You can find a lot of travel advice about particular operators in online rating and discussion sites – see what travel advice other travelers have to offer before making your choice.

Senior Destinations

The best travel advice about destinations, as with tour and cruise operators, is from people who’ve been there. A good guide book, or online rating site, can give you direct insight into whether a beach town is still tranquil or is now hopping, whether a hotel lives up to its advertising, or whether cheaper off peak visits can be as satisfying as the high season.

An even more personal source of travel advice is people’s blogs – the ease of publishing a travel journal and photos means you can get a glimpse of the destination you’re considering which is even more intimate than the one offered by rating sites and guide books. If you’re looking for travel advice about destinations, it’s worth spending some time searching online.

Foreign Travel Advice

The range of topics under foreign travel advice could fill a book – and there are many books out there – but there are a few traveling advice topics that are essential, especially for seniors. Foreign travel means being confronted with two key challenges: different languages and different rules.

Even if you’re traveling with a tour, make sure you have a card or phrase book with you that covers language essential to your safety and health – words that can, say, get you directions back to your hotel, or, more importantly, that might be necessary during a personal health crisis.

You’ll also want to make sure that the safety nets you’re used to having at home will be there if you need them abroad. Look into the rules around foreign debit card withdrawals, make sure that your cell phone rates won’t skyrocket and, most of all, that you have, or can buy, health insurance that will cover you while you’re on the road.

Day to day financial and health essentials should also be safely accessible. It’s worth investing in comfortable neck and waist pouches that allow you to carry your financial cards and papers with you and keep your medications close at hand. It may feel inconvenient at first to become a walking bank and pharmacy, but that small inconvenience will protect you from the crisis of being in a foreign city without money or medication.

In all situations, the best traveling advice comes from other travelers – so do your research, whether among friends, through guidebooks, or by researching online. The best travel advice of all is to set goals, do your research and make plans – the more you put into them, the more fun and rewarding your travels will be.