AROUND THE WORLD
West Palm couple take their kids on a journey across the globe
A West Palm Beach couple and their two small children are spending the holidays in Australia — as part of their roundtrip tour.
On a sun-filled morning in late December 2015, my wife Gosia and I took our normal stroll along Flagler Drive from our Norton Park Place apartment to the Saturday Green Market.
We had just had our second child, Mila, in October, and our son Leo was 3 and would soon begin preschool.
We began to reflect on the past year and think about our personal goals for 2016. We always shared a passion for travel, seeking new adventure and looking for new challenges.
During that casual stroll, we looked at each other and said: “Oh, how awesome would it be to just go on a travel journey around the world?” After a few seconds of silence, we both said: “LET’S DO IT!”
Fast forward to today: We’re seven months into our world journey and recently finished hiking the base trail around World UNESCO Heritage site Uluru-Ayers Rock in the Australian Outback.
We’re spending the holidays in Sydney, writing about it all on our blog, www.travelerstateofmind.com, and our Facebook page, Traveler State of Mind
We’re living our dream. We set a goal, planned accordingly — and made it happen.
We began our journey in May and have already visited 10 countries across three continents, with plans to spend three months in Australia, three months in New Zealand and potentially go to South America.
We’ve stayed in the French countryside while exploring historic landmarks Le Mont St. Michele and Pont Du Gard, visited the lavender fields of Provence, sunbathed on some of Corsica’s finest beaches, tasted wine in Tuscany, hiked to 13,000 feet up in the Swiss Alps, and explored the waterfalls and jungles of Thailand and Bali.
Leo is now 5 and Mila just turned 2, and the kids are hav-
ing as much fun as we are.
We want our kids to explore, be active and creative, and appreciate different cultures and cuisine. There is no better time than while they’re young to teach them these characteristics.
They love traveling, and we make a game out of it for them. Whether it’s train spotting in Switzerland or Tuk-tuk rides in Thailand, they’re all in.
Leo has become quite the hiker, recently completing 14 miles over two days in the Outback, while Mila gets a free ride on dad’s back in her child carrier.
How does a 36-year-old banker and his 34-year-old wife prepare for this type of year-long adventure? How does a single-income family of four cut ties and afford a trip around the world?
We didn’t have any magic wand or pot of gold, it was simple savings 101.
I left my job as a bank manager, and we planned — taking advantage of Florida living.
Our lifestyle in West Palm Beach played a contributing factor in making the trip possible.
We lived in downtown West Palm Beach, which is such a fantastic place to live for young families. We rented a small two-bedroom apartment in town, allowing us to walk everywhere. We only had one car which was one of our biggest savings. And we enjoyed everything that is free in West Palm Beach: the weather, beaches, Clematis by Night, city library and all of the city playgrounds.
We spent all of 2016 planning the trip, drafting a budget of how much money we’d need to save, creating a timeline and list of countries that we wanted to visit — and changing it seven times.
We sold everything we owned, and gave away what we didn’t sell, including our kids’ toys.
The kids don’t care about toys — now that we use sticks, rocks and twigs to build houses, we build sand castles at the beach, and we play on playgrounds all across the world.
We created travelerstateofmind.com, a family travel blog dedicated to sharing our story of how a middle-class, single-income family of four managed to budget for a yearlong, worldwide journey.
Our goal is to inspire other families with kids to get out of their comfort zone, travel and change the way we view parenthood. You can spend two weeks in France for less than a couple of weeks at Disney World. Why not travel?
Our most enjoyable experience of our world journey so far? The people!
We’ve been lucky to meet some fantastic people on this trip, and we’ve had amazing hosts.
Our French and Italian need some work, but people have gone out of their way to make us feel right at home. By staying in AirBnBs, we can cook like the locals do, too.
The ability to make pasta in an Italian villa or grill out in France really is part of the experience for us. We’re living like locals and meeting real people who call these towns their home.
Will we end up back in West Palm Beach after our year-long adventure? Maybe. After all, West Palm Beach is where our family was created. We know we can always come back and enjoy a great lifestyle. But our home now is where we are, and the chance to travel the world is priceless.
Follow our journey at www.travelerstateofmind.com or on Facebook at Traveler State of Mind.