Breakfast with Lisa & Josh #19

Welcome back to Breakfast with Lisa & Josh!

The Azores is weird.

That’s where we’re at right now, by the way. After finishing the Camino, we spent a few days in Porto (beautiful!) and Lisbon (SUPER BUSY), and then took our first flight in 3 months to Ponta Delgada in the Azores.

For those of you not in the know (and honestly, the Azores is not on a lot of people’s radars) - The Azores is a small archipelago about 2 hours by plane directly west of Lisbon. It’s out in the middle of the Atlantic, and it also feels that way. Some people have called it the Hawaii of Europe. I’ve gotta say, I’m not sure that’s accurate.

The place most people fly into is PDL Airport, which is Ponta Delgada, on the island of Sao Miguel. There are many other islands, but this is the most common starting point. The Island is big, much bigger than you would expect upon first glance. We definitely were quite a bit bamboozled by the size, expecting that we would be able to get around easily, or that there would be public transportation, or that there would be any cars available at all. None of those things in the last sentence were true, it turns out.

It looks so approachable doesn’t it?

We got into Ponta Delgada at around midnight, took a 5 minute taxi ride for 2 euros per minute from the airport to our hostel, checked in, and fell asleep right away. All of the hotels right now are incredibly expensive, or already booked out. We’re talking $300 - $500 per night expensive. So, hostels are really the only way to see this place on a budget.

Then we found out why the Azores is so weird. The main city - the only real city with any accomodations - is at least a 45 minute drive away from any of the main attractions of the island. And, with how incredibly inconsistent the weather is, you need to get a car. However, unfortunately, during the last year as a result of COVID, the car rental companies on the island all sold off about 60% of their cars, so as of today all cars are on about a 1 month waiting list. We definitely didn’t plan that far ahead. That’s against our religion.

Simpler times. The Azores isn’t all bad. Just… get a car. Trust us.

So, instead of that, we decided to see how far we could get via bus. It turns out, you can get far, but you absolutely cannot get back to where you started. The buses run ~1 time per day, so if you miss your shot, you miss your shot. Also - the buses will only bring you to one destination along the way, so you can only really see 1 thing on the island per day if you take the bus.

So we decided to rent a scooter to get around. There were plenty of scooters on the island. Lots available to rent. I’m sure there’s not a good reason why cars have a 1 month waiting time, but scooters are immediately available and cheap right? Right??

We will tell that story soon :) Let’s just say, don’t rent a scooter in the Azores. It’s a terrifying, stupid, wet, awful experience.

So after that, I decided to run my long-overdue annual birthday half marathon. I run it every year as a benchmark of how well I’ve been treating my body over the past year, and this year was, in a word, a harrowing experience.

A full hour longer than it took me last year. It was the most depressed I’d been in a long time. The whole thing was hard, and I was slow. It was exactly the wake up call that I needed. I’m not ashamed to say that I cried after I finished, because of how disappointed I was.

I think this newsletter really reflects the mindset that we’re in right now. We’ve had a particularily rough week of travel, with plenty of things going very wrong, and I think we need a break. So, that’s exactly what we’re going to do - we’re going to take a break… during our break? We’re headed to Split Croatia in a few days to try to figure out why we’ve been in such a rut lately. We’re down in the dumps this week, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise - I’d rather be honest about where we’re at.

Sorry for the bummer of an email - I hope the honesty is coming through, and shows you that this lifestyle isn’t just all what it shows you on Instagram. There’s ups and downs. We’re in one of those downs today.

Videos this week

We ended up going to the Louvre, which was an amazing experience, and shared all of our hot tips on how to have the best possible time there.

We then tried to get our feet ready for the Camino by walking 15+ miles across Paris. This is a super fun video :) Happier times for sure. I’m so glad we’re doing this YouTube thing to remind me of these days.

What’s going on now?

We’re taking a bit of time in Split to think not only about the way we’re traveling, and also about this channel. I’ve been worried for a while that we’re starting to get too similar to other creators, and that we’re not quite making the content that is right for us. We need to stop for a minute to look around - the place that we’re at now is VERY different from where we were when we started this thing, and we haven’t really taken the time to consider what we want to make, how we want to make it, and how we can be as useful and entertaining to you as possible.

So, if you’re out there reading this, you’re one of our VIPs. If you have any ideas, feedback, or thoughts about our videos that you want to share - please just reply to this email and let us know. We would love to hear anything that you have to share.

So, that’s it for this week. More great videos coming soon!

See you next Sunday…ish :)

- josh (and lisa)

Oh, and if you want to learn how we afford to take all these trips after quitting our jobs last year, you’ll likely be interested in our Skillshare course on Travel Hacking and Frequent Flier Miles. It’s been really taking off lately, but we still have a few uses of this link left for those of you who want to see the class for free. It comes with a free month of Skillshare, which is more than enough to watch our class and any of the other great courses on there!

Check it out here: https://skl.sh/3wstHhf

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