I spent forty years saving for a postcard.

Not the cardboard kind—though I’ve sent my share—but the big glossy fantasy I kept in my head during late nights and early mornings: retired-me with a light backpack, boarding a train in a country whose vowels I can’t pronounce, smiling like I’d finally arrived in the life I promised myself.

I clipped coupons, took the steady jobs over the sexy ones, fixed my own leaky sink, and stashed the “raise” into a travel fund with a nickname: Later.

Later became a password I used to unlock patience. One day, I told myself, I’d trade timecards for train cards. I’d wake up to bells I didn’t recognize and eat soup in a plaza that didn’t know my name. I’d be free.

Then I retired. I booked the flights.

I stood at my own front door with a new suitcase and Lottie—the dog who believes I revolve around her—staring at me like a betrayed planet.

I promised her I’d be back. She sneezed, which in dog language might mean “We’ll see.”

I’m in my sixties now, and I can tell you the truth: traveling the world after retirement wasn’t what I expected.

It was better in some ways, harder in others, and truer than the postcard.

Here’s what I learned when Later finally turned into Now.

The freedom I wanted came with asterisks

On the first morning of the first trip, I woke up in a tiny hotel with a crooked headboard and the bravest shower I’ve ever used.

I swung the faucet toward “warm” and the pipes argued in a language my plumber never taught me. Outside: scooters; inside: a kettle that looked like it had fought a war. I loved it instantly. Then jet lag punched me in the teeth.

Postcard Farley never accounted for the kind of tired that makes your passport feel like it weighs six pounds. Or the sudden 3 a.m. panic that sneaks into an unfamiliar room and announces you’ve made a terrible mistake leaving your own bed.

I boiled water for tea, sat on the edge of that brave shower’s toilet seat, and breathed the slow, counted breaths I’d practiced since my first grandchild’s colicky nights. It passed. Freedom, I learned, shows up beside humility. You don’t conquer a city. You make friends with it, starting with the kettle.

My body had opinions

Decades of office chairs, garage projects, and weekend warrior habits leave a mark. My knees write me letters when I climb too many museum stairs; my back prefers trains over buses.

I thought I’d want to sprint: three cities a week, a new language by Friday. I discovered I’m a two-neighborhoods-in-seven-days kind of man. Slow travel isn’t a philosophy; it’s an orthopedic compromise that turns out to be beautiful.

In Rome, I spent an entire afternoon on one block. Same café, same short table with the wobble I fixed by sliding a folded napkin under a leg (muscle memory from the community tool library).

I watched a street musician change songs when a toddler clapped off-beat. I learned that, given time, a city will perform for you without being asked.

The checklist made me lonely

I had a list. Of course I did. It lived on my phone in a folder named “Later” I never bothered to rename. Monuments, markets, bakeries, bridges. The first week, I chased it.

I arrived at the famous steps out of breath and a little proud of myself—then realized I was standing in the middle of a human stampede all trying to recreate a movie scene. I left with a photo of the back of somebody’s hat.

The second week, I forgot the list at the hotel and refused to go back for it. I followed a trash collector who whistled a melody I didn’t recognize and found a public garden where two grandfathers argued passionately about pigeons.

I wrote my three-line diary that night—something I did, something I learned, one detail worth saving—and felt the loneliness thaw. “Sat in a garden with two men who knew the names of birds. Learned ‘grazie’ lands better when you mean it.

The sky smelled like oranges and exhaust.” The list was a map. It wasn’t the territory.

I missed home in surprising ways

I expected to miss Lottie. I didn’t expect to miss my own coffee mug, the one that fits my hand like a handshake. I missed my grocery store where I know which aisle holds the good apples.

I missed the exact squeak my back gate makes, the sound that tells me I’ve closed it almost all the way. It isn’t romantic to say you miss your gate in Lisbon, but there it is.

Oddly, those homesick aches made the world bigger, not smaller. In a French supermarket I found myself studying laundry detergent for ten minutes like it was a museum exhibit.

Different bottle, same promise. I picked one, washed my shirts in the sink, and suddenly I wasn’t a tourist—I was a person doing a normal chore in a different place. I slept better that night. A small piece of home had followed me into Now.

People were kinder than headlines suggested

You don’t see that on cable news.

What you see in real life is a hardware store clerk stepping out on the sidewalk to point you toward the bakery with both hands, as if directing a plane.

You see a grandmother on a train press a wrapped candy into your palm and nod at the book you’re reading, approval translated without verbs.

You see a waiter slide a small cookie onto your saucer like a secret handshake because you tried to say “please” in his language and tripped over it, then laughed at yourself.

I’m the first to admit I don’t know everything, but I know this: if you make eye contact, say “hello,” and carry a pen to draw a little map when words fail, the world tends to soften.

A travel tip I learned too late: pack patience at the top of your bag. You’ll need it more often than the third pair of socks.

Money is a mood

Saving for decades gave me the privilege of not counting every coin. But spending is a mindset.

My first week, I clutched euros as if they were endangered. I chose the cheapest options like I was winning a game no one else was playing.

Then I realized stinginess was costing me more than cash—it was costing me joy. I shifted my rule: frugal with objects, generous with experiences.

I still ate picnic dinners, but when a small theater had two seats left for a play I couldn’t fully understand, I bought them. I let a violinist on a bridge earn my coins and my attention. I tipped fairly. Money, used kindly, purchases stories.

On the flip side, I learned to walk away from tourist traps without feeling like I’d failed a test. I don’t need to climb a tower to appreciate a city if my knees are already writing me letters.

I can sit under the tower and watch a couple decide to get engaged because she cried and he exhaled like a man who’d been holding his breath for miles.

That was free. It was also priceless.

The best days had a small mission

“Wander” sounds poetic. It’s also paralyzing if you’re someone who thrives on a gentle trellis of structure.

I started giving each day a tiny mission: find a park bench with a name plaque; learn three new words; locate the quietest church; buy one piece of fruit I’ve never tried and eat it where I can see water.

The mission sharpened my attention and gave the day a plot. It kept me from scrolling reviews while the city scrolled past.

In Seville, my mission was “orange.” I found them painted on tiles, growing in courtyards, sliced into salads, perfuming the air.

By evening, my notebook smelled like citrus and my feet hurt in that good, honest way that earns sleep.

Being a beginner at 65 is clarifying

Travel makes a student out of you whether you intend it or not.

You don’t know the bus system; you mess up the trash-sorting rules; you stand in the wrong line long enough to memorize the ceiling. I’ve spent years being competent.

Competence is comfortable. It can also make you stiff.

In a small Spanish town I walked into a bakery and asked for bread using the word for arm. The baker’s laughter was gentle, the kind that invites you to laugh too.

I mimed slicing; she pointed to her forearm, raised an eyebrow, and sold me a loaf with a grin so wide I felt like I’d passed a test. I left with bread and a lesson: dignity survives confusion if you don’t armor yourself against it.

Home got better because I left it

Unexpected plot twist: travel improved my Tuesdays back home.

I brought habits with me—taking the long way to the grocery store because I might see a hawk, ordering the unfamiliar dish at our local diner, saying hello to the neighbor in a language we both barely share and standing there long enough to teach each other one new word.

I keep my “three-line diary” beside the kettle. On dull days it rescues me.

The biggest change: I stopped treating joy like a rare bird that requires a reservation. I use the “good” mug on Mondays. I sit on the bench in our park without pretending I’m headed somewhere else.

I cook one slow thing a week with spices I learned by scent, and the house smells like a place someone traveled far to arrive.

Two scenes that rewired my expectations

The clinic with the yellow chairs.

Halfway through a trip, my ankle went on strike.

Not dramatic—just a stubborn ache with a limp attached. I found a small clinic with yellow chairs that looked like lemon candies and a doctor who treated my “international charades” with respect.

He prescribed rest, ice, and a pharmacy gel with a label that made me laugh. Outside, a stranger noticed my limp and offered the seat on a tram. I took it. The world didn’t end. My pride took a tiny step down from its pedestal and learned to sit, too.

I spent two days on a balcony watching the street repair itself after a storm. The postcard doesn’t advertise “resting,” but those days were among the richest—reading, writing, waving at the same dog that paraded by at 10 a.m. sharp.

The tool library of Lisbon.

I can find a hardware store the way some people can find churches. In Lisbon, I wandered into a communal workshop tucked behind a café.

A young woman was teaching an older man how to use a sander; an older man was teaching a younger woman how to square a corner. I spoke three words of Portuguese; they spoke three words of English.

We built a shelf together and laughed at the universal language of mis-measurement. I walked out lighter than I walked in.

Travel didn’t have to be seeing; it could be helping. My hands remembered home.

What I would tell my younger saver-self

Save, yes. Not for escape, but for capacity.

Save for the unglamorous parts: a last-minute train when a strike hits, a clinic with yellow chairs, an extra night when you need to stop.

Pack less. Leave space for the sweater you’ll buy because the wind insisted.

Learn two phrases in every language: “please” and “this is delicious.” Carry a pen and a card with the address of wherever you’re sleeping; hand it to a taxi driver when the map in your head dissolves.

Take a photo of your passport and email it to yourself. Put your shoes by the door each night so 3 a.m. you can find them without waking fear.

Make a small mission each day. Keep a three-line diary. Ask for help sooner than you want to. Tip fairly. Sit still. Walk slow. Repair quickly—things, plans, moods.

If you travel with someone you love, protect your patience and your appetite for getting lost.

If you travel alone, remember that “alone” is not a verdict; it’s a vantage point. You can always turn to a stranger and ask where they buy their bread.

Most of all, expect your expectations to be wrong in helpful ways. The postcard is pretty, but it’s flat.

The real thing is lumpy and kind and occasionally smells like fish at 6 a.m. You will miss your dog, your mug, your gate.

You will also find a temporary dog at a market stall, a mug you return to every morning of your stay, and a gate that squeaks in a key you didn’t know you loved until it closed behind you.

When I came home after that first long trip, Lottie forgave me in stages—sniff, circle, sigh, nap on my foot. I made coffee in my own mug and stood at the window like a man reading a caption only he could see. My wife asked, “So? Worth it?”

I didn’t have a postcard answer. I had a kettle, a diary, a suitcase with sand at the bottom, and a heart that felt a size larger in the ways that matter: softer, more alert, less certain and more at home everywhere.

Was it what I expected? No. It was slower, kinder, stranger, and somehow closer to the life I wanted than the fantasy ever was. Later, it turns out, is just a word for “now, with practice.”

And I’m still practicing—packing patience at the top of the bag, saving for capacity, and leaving room in the day for the city to surprise me with a bench, a bread loaf, a yellow chair, or a dog who believes, against all evidence, that we belong exactly where our feet are.