Many Baby Boomers emerge into retirement with exciting plans for travel.  Destinations available on the internet and in the local travel agent’s office are boundless!  Leaving behind the obligation to go to work every day and learning to enjoy the freedom of a more leisurely life are attractive to us all.  There is more to traveling in retirement than going to your old high school reunion or visiting family and friends.  We’d like to share some unusual considerations as you begin to think about how you are going to spend your time enjoying retirement.

• How do you want to travel?  Your pre-retirement travel kept you in a box shared by millions of workers world-wide.  You traveled in your own vehicle or on public transportation or on an airline.  That’s it.  Now that you’re retired, you can look at more unusual forms of transportation.  How about a train trip, for example?  You’re on the ground, you get to see where you’re going, you are fed, and if you get a sleeping compartment, you experience the luxury of sleeping with the gentle swaying of the train car.  You can make arrangements for a ‘destination’ trip, or you can have a marvelous ride just seeing countryside you’ve never seen before.  Which leads us to the second question.
• Where do you want to go?  Is your travel going to be to a destination or is the destination your journey?  You have time to enjoy the journey now, and you might just want to plan your travel around that notion.  Whether you’re driving or riding or flying, you can plan the trip so that you experience the joyfulness of seeing new places and things, rather than being focused on getting somewhere specific.  The ‘somewhere’ you want to see is whatever is happening at the moment.  New concept?  Yeah, but one we highly recommend!  The internet and your local travel agent’s office is full of ideas for stop-over traveling.  Which leads us to the third question.
• What do you want to see?  A different country with people leading lives very different from yours?  Beautiful landscapes with breathtaking vistas?  Or maybe it’s a combination of seeing and doing:  taking a trip with a group focused on learning something new about people or places.  Or taking a trip in which you actually do something, like helping a medical group provide health care in a remote mission somewhere in the third world. 

There are more issues to be considered, but this is probably enough for now.  Just be aware that, as you peruse the internet, you will find all kinds of options—reputable and otherwise—for discount travel, cruises, (both ocean and river) group tours of all kinds, air travel, rail travel, recreation vacations (like golf or skiing trips).  The emphasis here is on reputable.  Be sure you know the company or group with whom you are doing business.  That will ensure the fulfillment of your travel dreams.