Novelty vs Familiarity - Maintaining Balance on the Road (Part I of II)

Five nights in Budapest was not enough, so we returned for a two week stay.

For most people, novelty is probably the greatest attraction of full-time travel. Each day offers opportunities to see new things, explore new places, and eat new foods. Beyond brushing our teeth before bed, there’s very little that is routine on the road, as we figure out where the closest grocery store is and how to make coffee every morning (the variety of French presses, espresso pots, and fancy espresso machines we encounter in Europe is mind-boggling!). Before we left the United States, we could go weeks on autopilot between home, work, Stop & Shop, and Bruce's volleyball leagues. Now we feel like Google Maps is permanently embedded in our left hands, guiding us to and from our temporary homes in foreign neighborhoods. Bruce wishes his Garmin watch could give a readout on how much he's exercising his (sometimes) flabby higher executive functioning.

Contemplating retirement, Barbara brightly looked forward to seeing the world outside a teacher's academic year vacation schedule. Bruce's vision was darker: The prospect of retiring in place in our lovely lakeside home in Rhode Island, idyllic as it was, seemed deadly to him, raising worries that our world would shrink into just a few places and old routines, with new experiences and interactions requiring more activation energy than he'd be able to muster for a sustained period. Shaking all that off, selling the house and our accumulated stuff, and hitting the road forced us out into the world in the most positive way. In just two years we have traveled from Bora Bora to Norway, calling nearly 30 countries our temporary home along the way.

The embrace of novelty, though, makes us recognize my own deep-seated need for familiarity. Familiarity is comfortable, safe, and warm. It relieves the decision fatigue Bruce feels when he's in a Polish market confronting a scary-looking, unfamiliar vegetable, wondering how to peel it, let alone cook it (Barbara, who doesn't cook, happily moves on, saying "Not my circus, not my monkey!"). For both of us, what we already know gives a point of reference for the new thing we are learning. One of our great everyday pleasures now is that moment, two or three days into a new city, when we recognize a street or a building and say, “Oh, now I know where we are.” That feels so good!

Clearly our systems need both the exotic and the ordinary, so how do we balance these two competing imperatives?

Our Home Base

We’ve spent about 10 of the last 24 months at our home base in Costa Rica, usually no more than 6-8 weeks at a time. Returning to Santa Ana after a few months of traveling, we both take comfort in knowing what to expect there. When we return to our cozy casa in Santa Ana, it still feels “new” to us, but we pick up our routine there pretty quickly. Bruce plays pickleball with an ever-changing group of expats and Ticos almost every day, and Barbara enjoys time with the community of friends we have made in our condominium complex. We have our electric car and know our way around well enough to no longer rely on Google Maps. And while our daily schedules may settle into a common pattern, we still marvel at the exotic location, the still-foreign language, and the always beautiful weather.

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We do love being back in Costa Rica Foreign Travel Double-dipping

We’ve now traveled enough that we can take advantage of some double-dipping to places we have really enjoyed. Our first month as fauxmads (long-term travelers maintaining a home base) was spent in Málaga, Spain. We’ve since been back twice on cruise port stops and loved the opportunity to see places we loved, and places that may have changed, all without a travel guide. We enjoyed five nights in Budapest so much last spring that we built a two-week stay into our Fall 2026 trip, along with a follow-up visit to Dubrovnik, Croatia. And, perhaps surprisingly to both of us, we’ve visited the Netherlands three times in the past two years. The sophomore journeys to these places are so much more relaxed because we already have our bearings with mundane but initially confusing things like currency and transportation. Having usually covered the big tourist attractions on our first visit, the follow-up trips let us soak the place in: a leisurely bath instead of a quick shower.

Perhaps the secret to full-time travel isn’t choosing between the exotic and the ordinary, but learning to alternate between them. Novelty keeps us curious and awake, while familiarity lets us rest and savor. Our home base in Costa Rica, and the second (and third) visits to places we’ve loved, give us just enough of the known to make the unknown feel like an adventure rather than a burden. For us, the sweet spot is a life that offers both the thrill of a scary-looking vegetable and the quiet satisfaction of saying, “Oh, now I know where we are.”