Our First Year of Slow Travel as a Couple

We left San Diego on a foggy Tuesday in early March with two carry-on backpacks, a storage unit full of furniture we would later sell for almost nothing, and a shared spreadsheet titled “Year One (Optimistic).” Noah had negotiated remote work with his company. I had saved enough freelance design clients to cover my half. Our friends threw us a goodbye dinner and at least three of them asked, gently, whether we were sure the marriage would survive it.

Twelve months, seven countries and roughly forty beds later, we’re still married. Happily, even. But almost nothing about that year went the way the spreadsheet said it would, and most of the surprises were good ones.

This is the honest version: what slow travel did to our budget, our plans and the two of us, plus what we’d tell ourselves on day one if we could.

In this story8 sections

1. How the year actually unfolded
2. The money: what a year really cost
3. Our first year, in round numbers
4. Lisbon, where we finally slowed down
5. Lisbon
6. What it did to the two of us
7. What we’d tell ourselves on day one
8. Would we do it again?

How the year actually unfolded

The original plan was ambitious: twelve countries, roughly a month each, a neat line drawn across the map. We abandoned it by May. The version we actually lived looked more like this:

• Mexico, three months. Six weeks in Mexico City, then Oaxaca, then a lazy month on the Pacific coast. It was the perfect training ground: same time zones as home, easy flights, and a cost of living that let us make mistakes cheaply.
• Portugal, two and a half months. Lisbon, mostly, with a few weeks in Porto. This was the heart of the year, and we’ll come back to it.
• Albania and Turkey, two months. Partly because we loved them and partly because of a rule we should have studied earlier (more on that below).
• Japan and Bali, three months. Japan in autumn for six weeks, then Bali for a long, warm wind-down before flying home for the holidays.

Four regions instead of twelve countries. Fewer flights, fewer goodbyes, a lot more coffee with the same barista. Slow beats far, and it took us about ten weeks to believe it.

The money: what a year really cost

We budgeted $4,000 a month for two people, everything included except flights home. We came in at about $4,650 a month on average, and the overrun was almost entirely our own doing. Mexico and Albania were well under budget. Japan blew past it. Lisbon landed almost exactly on target, which still surprises us.

The biggest single line was accommodation. Monthly rentals cut our nightly cost by 30 to 50 percent compared with booking week by week, and a good desk and fast Wi-Fi turned out to matter more than a view. The second biggest was transport, mostly because of the reshuffle in the summer. Health insurance for long-term travelers, which we refused to skip, was about $280 a month for the two of us.

Lisbon, where we finally slowed down

Something shifted in Lisbon. Maybe it was the light, which really does turn the city gold in the late afternoon, or the fact that we rented a small apartment in Graça for two full months and stopped living out of our backpacks. We learned the grocery store. We found a neighborhood café where the owner started making Noah’s coffee when he walked in the door. We stopped treating every day like a sightseeing assignment.

Our weekday rhythm settled into something we still try to keep: work in the morning, a long walk in the afternoon, dinner late. Weekends were for day trips to Sintra, the beaches at Cascais, or simply climbing to a miradouro with a bottle of vinho verde and watching the yellow trams grind up the hills below. Our two-bedroom rental cost about $2,100 a month in the shoulder season, which felt steep until we compared it with a hotel.

What it did to the two of us

Here’s the part our friends were actually asking about. Spending every hour of every day together, in small apartments, in places where you are each other’s only familiar face, is a real test. We had two genuinely bad weeks, both in month four, both rooted in the same thing: we had stopped spending any time apart.

The fix sounds too simple. We scheduled alone time. Every week, each of us took at least one full afternoon to do something solo. Noah joined a running club in Mexico City and a climbing gym in Lisbon. I took a ceramics class in Oaxaca and spent long mornings drawing in cafés. Coming back to each other with something new to talk about turned out to matter more than any romantic dinner.

The best thing we did for our marriage on the road was spend an afternoon a week apart.

Ava Parker

We also changed how we handled decisions. Early on, we tried to agree on everything together, which meant endless negotiation over restaurants and bus times. Halfway through, we started taking turns as “trip lead” for each new place. The lead made the small calls, the other person got to relax and complain only once. It sounds silly. It saved us hours of low-grade friction.

What we’d tell ourselves on day one

If we could sit down with the two nervous people at the San Diego airport, this is the short list we’d hand over:

1. Book the first month, then stop. Everything after that will change. Leave room for it.
2. One shared budget, two personal allowances. We each got $250 a month that the other person was not allowed to question. Best rule of the year.
3. Pay for the good bed. A bad mattress for a month costs you more in mood than it saves in money.
4. Alone time is part of the plan. Put it on the calendar like a flight.
5. Travel slower than you think you want to. Our happiest months were the ones where we stayed put.
6. Keep a home base in the US. A mailing address, a bank that doesn’t charge foreign ATM fees, and a phone number that can still receive verification codes will save you from at least one crisis.

Would we do it again?

We already are. Year two started last month, with a different shape: fewer places, longer stays, and a rule that every rental needs a real desk and a window that opens. Lisbon is on the list again, for spring this time, and so is a long stretch somewhere neither of us has been.

If you’re sitting on the edge of a decision like ours, we won’t tell you it’s easy or cheap or always beautiful. But we came home with a better marriage than the one we left with, a list of places we would happily live, and a shared spreadsheet that we have finally renamed. It just says “Year Two.”