This is part of a collection of stories celebrating the many shapes retirement travel can take. Read more here. This story has been updated since its original publish date.
Picture this: you’re blowing out the candles at your retirement party. It’s the end of an era and the first day of a new chapter in life. No more alarm clock, no more commute—time for that long-planned getaway to a faraway land.
According to an AARP survey, nearly two-thirds of Americans over 50 plan to travel in 2026. But traveling in retirement can come with challenges, including health considerations, finances, and family responsibilities. So, we asked some of the best-traveled retirees we could find for their best travel tips to help make your next journey unforgettable.
A couple of years ago, we turned to a smattering of retirees with feet in all types of worlds and asked them to tell us the things they wished they’d known when they first started traveling in retirement. Now, we’re back with more. We gathered itinerary ideas, must-haves for your suitcase, and things to avoid. But above all, everyone we spoke to had the same piece of advice: don’t wait.
Use it before you lose it
Renée Lanam, 63, loves action-packed, adventurous trips with her wife, friends, and children. Her favorite thing is hiking, but she knows that might not be possible forever. “Once you hit the sixties,” she says, “your timeline is different than when you’re younger.”
To plan ahead, Renée and her wife keep a shared list of destinations that’s organized into three phases. Phase one includes the most active experiences, like hiking in the Dolomites. Phase two is still active but less demanding, such as a visit to Copenhagen with lots of walking. Phase three trips are ones they can do later in life: a cruise to Alaska or a long ride on the Orient Express. “I got maybe 10 years of active travel left in me that I can count on,” Lanam says, “so let’s go knock those out while we can.”
Enjoy the off season…
While working or parenting school-age kids, your choice of vacation times is extremely limited. The freedom to hit the road outside those busy times is one of the best advantages of retirement travel. That’s why Paul and Lynn Zelevansky (77 and 76, respectively), visit the Venice Biennale in autumn, rather than at the May opening, to avoid the worst of the crowds. It also helps with “avoiding tourist traps, the most sweltering hours at fairs, or not putting yourself in danger by flagging a taxi when it’s unsafe,” they say. (Lynn’s wallet was stolen on a crowded vaporetto ferry in 2022.)
…and the off-hours
Nobody wants to see the Mona Lisa through a thicket of selfie sticks. So artist Simma Liebman, 76, plans her museum visits to minimize crowds (particularly because she’s immunocompromised.) Now Liebman hits the galleries “as early in the day as possible” and masks up while taking in the art “unless there are very few people inside.” That way, she’s seen all the best stuff before the spring breakers even wake up.
Treat travel like it’s your new job
Richard Stewart, 58, a retired business valuer from Sydney, Australia, takes his travel seriously. He’s motorcycling around Australia soon, and debating between the Annapurna Circuit and Mount Everest base camp next. When he was working, he built his trips around work. Now it’s the other way around. “I blocked out the times I wanted to travel to different places, and then was able to slot my other meetings around that, which was a fantastic change,” he says.
Go slow
Packed-to-the-brim itineraries used to be J. Patrice Marandel’s MO, but these days, the former chief curator at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is more keen on scheduling “plenty of time for the unexpected,” he says. Travel-blogging couple Gillian Batt, 43, and Stephanie Myers, 51, concur. When you cram too much into a single trip, “the whole experience just kind of becomes a blur,” they say. They recommend traveling to just one place per trip to avoid burnout and keep costs low.
