It’s become a running joke with our friends in Seattle who try to make plans with us — “you free this weekend or are you out of the country again?” It’s true we’ve been living on the go, spending more nights than not away and our suitcases never fully unpacked.
The Global Stumble is where we share the trips, itineraries, and guides behind all of it, from the easy beach days to the type 2 fun adventures. If you’re not sure where to start, try our 5 favorite hikes on Maui, why you should stay overnight in Yelapa, Mexico, or our 10-day Golden Triangle itinerary in India.
Here we’ll answer some of the questions we get asked most often:
Why do we travel so much?
Travel was a big topic on our very first date. Ridley grew up with dual citizenship in the UK and visited 21 countries before even graduating high school — largely thanks to a family sabbatical when he was 13. I also had the travel bug before we started dating — most notably sailing across the Atlantic with Sea|mester in college.
My family is split between a small town in Alaska and the island of Maui, Hawaii, so those are places I tend to go every year and now include Ridley in. With remote-flexible jobs, we make the most of these trips by staying for 2 weeks to a month at a time. While Ridley does work remotely, he does go to New York City at least once a quarter to work in the office with his team, and I often like to tag along to get some time in the big apple.
We’ve decided to prioritize travel in our relationship, especially at this point in our lives with relatively few commitments (no mortgage, no kids, etc) and with the remote flexibility we have at work.
Aside from having family in pretty neat places, in general, travel energizes us and gives us so much more perspective on the world. There’s something about landing at an airport you’ve never been to, in a country with a language you can hardly speak, and traffic patterns you don’t understand that stimulates the senses and shakes you out of the familiarity of home.
How do you afford to travel so much?
It’s no secret that the cost of living/renting in Seattle is high, so people often question how we afford to live in the city and still travel so much. In recent years, we made this work by living with roommates! This made it easier to justify traveling for long stretches of time, and it was so nice to have a home base and a built-in community with some of our best friends.
We now live in an apartment in downtown Seattle and candidly do spend a lot more on rent. We’ve both been hustling with jobs in tech since college, and we were able to save up when we had roommates, so we are very fortunate to afford our own apartment and still prioritize travel today.
We also do our best to travel hack with miles and credit card points. We’re big fans of the oneworld alliance and the Alaska Airlines credit card, which allows us to book multiple free flights every year.
Don’t you get tired of being on the go?
Depends which one of us you ask…Ridley is energized by being always on the go and loves the fast pace of life. I, on the other hand, tend to be a little more of a homebody and crave routine after being on back to back trips. In that sense, we balance each other out. If he doesn’t have a flight booked at least once a month, Rid goes a bit stir crazy… This works out because of how frequently he can travel for work, sometimes hopping on the plane last minute to an event in California or NYC.
More about us:
Lovers of alpine lakes, coffee, scuba, taylor swift, tiramisu, rainy day runs, and outdoor picnics over dinner dates
If you want to follow along as we figure this out in real time — TikTok is where we post most frequently: @theglobalstumble.
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