Would You Like to Travel with Me?

Hi, friends! This post today is different from any post I’ve ever shared, but I wanted to ask this question.

Would you be interested in traveling with me on an EF Go Ahead group tour?

I know that might sound strange, but if you love to travel (and I do!), it might be something that a group of us can do together. I think it sounds fun and I hope you do too. Mark and I are going to Italy in a little less than a month from now, in April. We paid for this trip and it’s not sponsored, but the tour is with EF Go Ahead (affiliate link), a leader in the travel industry. For over 55 years, EF Go Ahead tours has been committed to making safe, authentic and life changing travel experiences affordable for everyone. I’ve heard about their student tours that they’ve been doing for many years and now they are working with bloggers and influencers on group travel as well, so I thought this would be a fun opportunity to open up travel to my community, which means all of you out there who follow me. We’ll get back to this subject down below, but first let me tell you about my experience of visiting Italy for the first time.

I haven’t shared a lot about this time of my life, because this blog started when I was 50 and I had a whole lifetime of experiences before I started blogging. Back in 1990, I was married for the first time to an ex-professional baseball player (a pitcher) and he had the opportunity to go to Italy that year and play in the Italian baseball league. We had been married less than 2 years. At that time, each team had 2 American players that they hired for the upcoming baseball season to play for them. I’ve never told you all this part of my story, but that summer of 1990 was exciting and life-changing. I was 33 years old that summer and working for a real estate development company. I asked them if they would let me take a leave of absence for the months of June, July and August and I met up with my then husband who was already there. Someone picked me up at the Rome airport and I’ll never forget the culture shock of being in Italy for the first time. The drive to where we were going to be staying was an hour from Rome in a small town by the beach called Nettuno and wow, was the driving crazy. That’s the first thing I found out about Italy!

I had no idea what to expect, but what I found was warm, hospitable people not unlike Americans in their friendliness and passion for life and family. The Italian people know how to live, they know how to eat, and they slow down their pace of life so much more than we do. They are such warm people and I loved getting to know them, to be invited in their homes for meals, and to get to know the Italian way of life. How priceless was that experience?! I loved every minute of it, from the delicious food to almost daily consumption of gelato.  It was a life experience that I’ll always treasure, spending a summer in Italy!

Now, that was over 30 years ago, so it will be interesting to see how much has changed since then. This was pre cellphones, pre internet, so a different world than we live in now. That summer was one of the most enriching times of my life and I’ll never forget that experience. I got to travel around Italy as the baseball team played in tournaments all over Italy and even France. What fun it was! We traveled quite a bit that summer and then the next summer, he went back again and I went for 3 weeks that time and we traveled to Paris and Switzerland during those short weeks. What a memory it is! I never got over Italy and that country has been in my heart ever since. I’ve wanted to go back many times and never had or took the opportunity to go, plus I really didn’t have the extra money to travel to Europe during all these years.

So as these pictures show, I had a blast in Italy. We visited Rome of course several times and also Pisa, Florence, and Venice, as well as many other smaller towns around the country.

Italy will always hold a special place in my heart. The marriage didn’t work out, but I sure loved the experience of spending the summer of 1990 in Italy for the first time. So Mark and I are going together and I’m so excited for him to share in Italy with me. I know he’s going to enjoy it so much. I never made it to the Amalfi coast, so when I started planning this trip, that’s the place I wanted to go the most. On this 7 night trip we are taking, we’ll start in Naples, and then go to the Amalfi coast for 3 nights and then on to Rome to finish up our trip. Of course, I’ll share the trip with all of you when I return. As I mentioned, we are paying for the trip, but I wanted to take a trip with Go Ahead before I plan a group trip and I’m sure we will love going on this trip so much.

On another note, while I’m talking about travel, I’m very happy to say that we are also going on another Viking river cruise in September. We did a sponsored Viking river cruise with them 5 years ago and loved that trip so much, we had another one planned for 2020, but of course that all got screwed up for a couple of years, but we are now finally going to get to take that river cruise in France, on the Rhone River. It’s the Avignon to Lyon trip and we are SO EXCITED. I’ll share all of that again too. This has turned into quite the travel year for us but we are ready for it.

Back to the group travel with EF Go Ahead tours. They plan group trips all over the world and I would love to plan a trip for next year and invite all of you to go with me! I’ll be planning a trip for around 20 to 25 people, so we will see how this goes. If I don’t get enough signing up, then we won’t do it, but I think it would be so much fun to travel with a group of my readers and a girls’ trip is always fun.

So, my question for you is, would you be interested in going on a trip with me next year, 2025? This will probably be spring of 2025: Yes/ No /Maybe

If yes, would you be more likely to go Domestic or International? 

Would you want to bring a friend or solo? 

Would you be willing to pay more for a single room? 

Let’s talk about destinations. My first choice would probably be Italy again, but let’s open the conversation for other destinations as well, these would be a few of my favorites, but I’m also open to traveling in the US if more of you would be interested in that. If this one works out, who knows what the possibilities might be?! I love to travel!

• Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain)
• British Isles (Great Britain, Ireland)
• Western Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland)
• Other International destinations

Tours would more than likely be about 7 nights and the cost will vary depending on where we travel, but the range would be around $3K to $5K for this type tour if we go International, plus airfare. The more people that join the tour, the better the price will be so I’d shoot for 20 to 25 max. I think that would be good number to travel with and not too big. What I like about planning a trip like this is that Go Ahead does all the planning and we just have to show up. They get all the excursions set up for us as well as most of the meals. The tours don’t include all the meals, so be aware of that. There are also extra costs for upgraded excursions that are offered.

Here are all the Italytours. These are definitely the ones I would lean towards and you can get an idea of what all is included on the tours. You can see Go Ahead payment options for more information.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this idea and see how many of you might be interested in a trip like this. I figure there may be some of you who are single and would like to take a group trip, there may be some whose husbands don’t enjoy traveling as much and you might want to do an all women’s trip, so I’m throwing it out there to see what sort of response I get to this idea! I think it would be a lot of fun and I’d love to have you join me! You might even have a good friend you want to bring along. I know many of you feel like you know me already, so this wouldn’t be all that strange. Disclosure: I would earn commissions on any group trip I organize and put together. 

Let me know your thoughts below and feel free to add any thoughts, ideas or destinations you would enjoy taking part in. We will see how it all shapes up after this post and how many might be interested. I’ll do a poll on Instagram as well to see how many are interested from that group. Be sure and comment on this post if you would be interested in this travel group with me. The response here and Instagram will determine if we can move forward or not. 

Thanks so much for stopping by and I can’t wait to read what you all have to say about a possible group trip!