Reid & Robie

How did it get so late so soon?

– Dr. Seuss

Welcome to the first in a new series of posts, one that will provide an overview of what we did the past month. Inside these articles Robie and I will relate recent travels, provide glimpses into destinations we plan to cover in later posts, discuss how we passed the time and give a snapshot of our health and finances as well as anything else noteworthy. Most importantly, we hope to give anyone interested in following our footsteps insights into a roving retirement lifestyle.

Our plan is to write a post for this series every first Tuesday of the month, but since we’re already late (having only thought of the idea yesterday!), our first article will be short yet filled with details about what we did in January and February so that by the end of the year we’ll have a twelve-month picture of what happened in 2026.

Travels

We kicked January off in Essaouira where we had been staying since early November 2025, enjoying the mostly warm and sunny days in western Morocco. Three weeks later we packed our suitcases and moved to Marrakech for a final week in the country. For seven days we wandered the narrow alleys of the souk, watched the endless entertainment at the Jemaa el Fna Square, marveled at Moorish architecture, relaxed in the oases of green gardens and attempted to eat our fill of Moroccan cuisine.

We left Morocco in the last few days of January and flew to London for five nights to provide a buffer between our 90-day Moroccan tourist visa and our 90-day-out-of-180 Schengen access. Staying in London’s Bloomsbury district, Robie and I spent the overcast, rainy days visiting The National Gallery, British Library and British Museum. We ate mostly pub fare and enjoyed a wonderful all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch at Mestizo Mexican Restaurant and Tequila Bar because we never pass up Mexican food!

We were in London on the first of February but by the third we were back at Gatwick Airport to fly south again – this time to Sicily. Landing in Catania, we caught a train to Syracuse an hour away then set about getting to know our new “hometown.”

Basing ourselves in Ortigia, a small island connected to the mainland by bridges and the historical heart and soul of Syracuse, we explored the narrow streets and stopped to check out restaurant menus. We visited the outdoor market to discover what seasonal produce and fresh fish were available, picked up necessities at a local convenience store and shopped for pantry staples at the large megamart in town. While many people following a nomadic life often move each month, for us every new long-term stay takes us half that time to learn a destination and find our favorite café. In Ortigia, that’s Gran Caffe del Duomo, a lovely cafeteria (coffee bar with simple foods like panini and ice cream) on the main piazza across the street from the cathedral, a former temple to Athena complete with 5^th century BC doric columns.

In mid-February we took a daytrip to Acireale. Arriving by train to this suburb of Catania, we got to experience the third largest Carnevale celebration in Italy which for Catholics is the festive period before Lent. A week later Robie and I welcomed our first guests on this roving retirement when our niece and her husband came for a long weekend. Though we had saved several tourist sites we thought they might like to explore in town, the four of us mostly spent our time shopping and eating great seafood. Thanks to our nephew, we took a boat tour around Ortigia, ate lots of cannoli and discovered the freshest oysters in the market.

Other places we visited in Syracuse included the Castello Maniace, the Archaeological Park with its Greek and Roman theaters, the Catacombs of San Giovanni, the Basilica of our Lady of Tears and the vastly overstuffed Regional Archaeological Museum.

Trip Planning

In addition to our travels, January and February were spent planning trips during the rest of the year.

We finalized our jaunt to Malta for March getting train tickets to the port of Pozzallo in Sicily, reserving seats on the ferry to Valletta and finding accommodations in town. We also booked our train for the move from Syracuse to Palermo in March, found accommodations in Naples and Rome for a two-week trip at the end of April, booked airfare to Istanbul for our move to Türkiye as well as flights to Edinburgh for our migration north for the last half of summer. We’ve learned that airfare is cheap in Europe if it’s booked well in advance.

We also booked roundtrip transatlantic flights for a visit to the States in September/October but have yet to finalize the details in between like where to store our bags in London as well as hotels, rental cars and flights to get us from Florida to Arkansas then Texas since we hope to see as many friends and family as we can during the three-week trip.

Robie did a lot of research and found us a lovely apartment in Nimes, France so after we return to London, we’re now booked on a Eurostar train to Paris and will spend a few days in the City of Light before heading to Lyon where we’ll embark on a five-night Rhone River cruise with A-Rosa, a German cruise company. Then it’s on to Nimes for the holidays.

Cooking and Eating

After travel, our favorite topic is food so here’s where we’ll share what we’ve been eating and cooking in our rental apartment.

In Syracuse we ate our first arancini, the pear-shaped, orange-colored, stuffed, fried rice balls unique to Sicily. We’ve also had more than a few cannoli thanks to our recent guests! At our favorite cannoli shop we get to choose the scorza or shell. There’s plain or with the edges dipped in vanilla, chocolate or pistachio icing as well as a choice of filling (sweet vanilla cream, ricotta, chocolate or pistachio) and toppings like chocolate chunks, crushed pistachios or hazelnuts.

We’ve mostly been enjoying fish and pasta when we dine out. Some of the pastas we’ve tried include pasta Siciliana with sundried tomatoes, capers, olives, anchovies and breadcrumbs, a powerful umami bomb. Robie has fallen in love with cacio e pepe, the simple Roman dish of pasta, cheese and black pepper and a new favorite second only to his love for spaghetti carbonara made with guanciale, eggs and cheese.

I’ve become obsessed with pistachio pesto, a blend of parmesan and pecorino Romano cheeses, olive oil and roasted pistachios. It’s subtle, mildly sweet and delicious. So far, I’ve eaten it smothered over potato gnocchi, as a sauce on pizza and atop ricotta ravioli because there’s no wrong way to eat pistachio pesto.

In the kitchen we recreated a few of our favorite Moroccan dishes we couldn’t make in Essaouira without an oven. These included the roasted eggplant dip zaalouk and b’stilla, Moroccan pigeon pie.

Local recipes we’re making so we can take them with us when we leave Italy include pasta with pistachio pesto (from a jar), burst tomatoes and fresh ricotta, pasta Siciliana and pea risotto. After six months without an oven, we’re back to our routine of making Friday night pizzas at home thanks to the fabulous dough from da Carmelo. Plus, since we had no access to pork in Muslim Morocco, we’ve been cooking our fill of bacon, sausage and pork chops.

Books and Entertainment

With so much happening, we’ve barely had time to read.

In January I finished a two-book series on Britain entitled The Plantagenets, A Captivating Guide to the Normans and the Invasion of England by William the Conqueror, Including Event Such as the Battle of Stamford Bridge and the Battle of Hastings. While the title was unnecessarily long, the book is comprised of short, often high-level overviews of three centuries of British history. Currently, I’m engrossed in James Holland’s Sicily ’43, an in-depth look at Operation HUSKY, the Allied invasion of Sicily from Malta and North Africa and the first assault on Fortress Europe. Plus, on the two plane rides I carried a copy of Max Danger, The Adventures of an Expat in Tokyo by Robert J. Collins because the side-splitting, short excerpts about life as an American expatriate in 1980s Japan are endlessly amusing.

Robie read In Too Deep, a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child before we left Morocco. In February he picked up Steve Berry’s Malta Exchange again to reread the adventurous romp and prepare for our upcoming trip to the island next month.

Following Robie’s December post about finding movies and TV shows around the world, we received advice from folks who are also into free TV options. Thanks to TVPass.org we now have access to 176 different US channels and can finally watch EPL soccer games at home. (Go Gunners!)

We watched the first season of SWAT thanks to a previous guest at the apartment in Marrakech who left us his Netflix account and continued to make Tuesdays Star Trek night thanks to the Roku Channel. For cooking shows, we finished another season of The Great British Bake Off and found Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend.

With TVPass.org we also got to watch the Winter Olympics hosted by our host country in nearby Milano-Cortina. After seeing the opening ceremonies, we mostly saw bobsled and curling since the time difference back home meant we were watching before noon on the East Coast. Fortunately, however, we got to see the US Men’s Hockey team win gold in overtime thanks to a timely heads up from a friend back home. (Thanks, Ed!)

Projects

In January Robie started a new project when he created the Reid and Robie YouTube channel. While still in its infancy, Robie’s already put up some great videos featuring a year in review for 2025 as well as a look at the extraordinary floats we saw during Carnevale.

I started transcribing my Camino journal so that when we return to Dallas in the fall, I can add the hardcopy to the storage unit with our other collectibles.

Other Events

The mention of our storage unit triggered something else that happened recently and might be worth noting. When we were in London, we got a message from our storage facility saying our unit had been broken into by someone with bolt cutters.

A friend who lives nearby and has access to our unit confirmed nothing was taken. Ours was one of five units broken into and the perpetrator seemed to cut the lock simply because he could. Fortunately, since we have little stored worth anything save sentimental value, there was nothing worth taking, and this was clear since everything we have is packed neatly away in tubs.

The silver lining was that the storage company reduced our monthly rent and threw in a new lock that’s impervious to bolt cutters. But the moral of the story is to save only what’s sentimental, pack it neatly in stacks to make it hard to access, and get a good lock.

Health and Wellness

We seemed to have missed flu season this year and have no complaints about it.

While we have yet to find a consistent, DIY workout routine, Robie and I walk an average of 5-7 miles a day five times a week. In Marrakech and London our mileage increased to 8+ miles a day while in Syracuse each excursion seems to be getting longer and farther.

With our loft apartment in Ortigia, I’m constantly running up and down the stairs which accounted for the brief relapse of Achilles fatigue. Having injured it during the last week on the Camino de Santiago, I bought a boot in southern Spain and spent a month limping around. In Essaouira, I ditched the boot (and donated it to a pharmacy) since I’d been pain-free for three months. But the tendon reared its ugly head again not long after we arrived in Ortigia which led Robie to buy athletic tape to help provide support when needed, and once more my Achilles seems to be on the mend.

Budget

In January our spending budget was $5,090 to cover what we anticipated would be costly trips to Marrakech and London. During our week in Marrakech, our expenditures came to $1,124.75 while the first two days in London alone cost $938.37 (including airfare) because Britian is anything but cheap. By the end of the month, we’d spent $4,229.70, and this meant we had $860.30 to put toward future months this year. Not bad! 😊

If February 2025 was any indication, February should have been our most cost-effective month this year but wasn’t. For starters, moving always creates a dent in our grocery budget since every new long-term stay means restocking the apartment pantry from scratch. Plus, it’s hard to resist the temptation of a new cuisine leading to more dinners out during the first few weeks than normally happen near the end of our stay.

While we didn’t have a trip planned in February, we still incurred expenses from two more days in London ($228.82) and a daytrip to Acireale for Carnevale which came to $157.55. Since we knew we had family visiting, we also added extra funds to cover excursions and more dinners out hoping our niece and her husband will meet us somewhere again down the road. So, while we started with a budget of $5,021, we only spent $4,820.38 and saved $200.62. But if you read the Travel Planning section above, you’ll understand why that amount has already been applied elsewhere 😉!

Conclusion

So that’s what we were up to for the first two months of the year. As you can see, 2026 is already busy, and we look forward to sharing regular updates the first Tuesday of each month!