Creepy cats and facemasks. 2020 has been a horrible year for everyone.
“How do you stay motivated?”
It’s a question Lissette has asked me a few times lately. A few fellow travel bloggers have asked me the same. Some have mentioned to me that they are themselves contemplating just letting their blogs go dormant. Why bother?
When I wrote my post on the state of travel blogging in 2019 I was on a high. That was last September. We were getting about 1500 unique visitors a day at that time.
The last 9 months has killed that traffic.
September 24th was the first hit. On that date Google introduced a major algorithm change. Suddenly, posts that had previously come up on page 1 of Google were on page 4. And it was all the large companies that benefited. My post on hiking Lion’s Head was the perfect example. Previously #1 on Google search results, it fell behind reviews/descriptions on Trip Advisor, Wikipedia and Afar.
Overnight my traffic dropped about 40% to about 900 unique visitors a day.
It wasn’t the end of the world. Despite the drop in volumes, with a few tweaks I made more money on the blog than I had made previously. But that wasn’t the point. I measure success by traffic and interaction.
Then the pandemic hit in March.
My traffic dropped almost 60% from 900 unique visitors/day to an average of 400/day in April (the worst month).
This time it did affect revenue on the blog. Affiliate sales and sponsored posts dried up overnight. Mediavine ad revenues were suddenly a quarter of what they were previously .
But the worst was that you could hear a pin drop on the blog. People weren’t reading or commenting. When you’ve blogged a while you can “feel” when things are dead. For any blogger there’s nothing worse than writing into the void.
From 1500 unique visitors/day to 400 unique visitors/day in 6 months. The last time I had 400 unique visitors/day on the blog was mid-2015 when the blog was a little over a year old. To be going backwards and not forwards is depressing. Enough to give it up.
I’m not the only one.
I was surprised to see both Matt from Nomadic Matt and Kate from Adventurous Kate mention their financial issues on their blogs. Matt mentioned his site would go bankrupt by January if the current situation stays the same. Kate had to get a PPP loan to “keep my business afloat”.
Both are among the best known travel bloggers and both live off their blogs. I’m a little surprised about either going bankrupt considering how long they’ve been around and how much they dominate blogging circles. But it shows you that if they’re struggling then many others are as well.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve met quite a few bloggers in the last 6 years who were travelling on their savings and who’s future depended on being successful bloggers. As one said to me, “there’s no Plan B”.
I’ve said it before: don’t leave a full-time job to travel full-time unless you’re financially prepared. There are too many variables. And the last 9 months have brought the absolute worst case scenario that any travel blogger (including I) could have ever imagined.
In our case, we didn’t start blogging to make money. It was a hobby that I started in 2013, the year before we decided to leave Canada to travel full-time. When Lissette lost her job last year I decided to monetize aspects of this blog. It’s been nice having the extra income. But if it ended tomorrow it wouldn’t significantly affect our lifestyles.
Why Bother Blogging?
As frustrating and depressing as the last 6 months have been as a travel blogger I’ve never seriously considered quitting. Sure I might say “Screw it” and just not look at anything blog-related for a few days. But then I always end up somehow writing and posting something again.
Why?
An outlet for creativity. When I retired (I was in my mid-40’s) I needed to fill my time. That’s when I started working hard on the blog. And the thing is I enjoy it. I enjoy writing and I like taking photos (although most of the photos on the blog these days are Lissette’s). Having a blog has allowed me to be creative. If I stopped blogging tomorrow I really don’t know what I’d do with my spare time.
Community. We’ve met so many people through the blog, it’s opened up a whole new world. Through the blog we met Norah, an Australian expat who’s helped us through the Spanish Visa process and who’s allowing us to use her address as an official address. We befriended Anita online, a dear blogger friend who helped my mom tremendously when she was sick a few years ago when visiting Portugal. We hope to see Anita and drink some wine with her when we get settled in Spain. There are many more. It’s reciprocal: we’ve also helped out a lot of people who write us for advice. It makes us feel good to be able to help other travellers. We’ve met so many people – bloggers and non-bloggers – that have enriched our lives. Blogging has given us a community. That would never have happened without the blog.
Things will get better. Things might not get back to how they were for a while, but things WILL get better. Some of my traffic has come back, I’m up to 600 visitors/day. This week I had the first affiliate sales I’ve had in 2 months, making $80. My Mediavine revenue has recovered somewhat, I’m now at half of what I was pre-covid. It’s not much. Americans have lots of other things to worry about and aren’t travelling yet – but they will one day soon and that’ll mean better times for the travel industry, including bloggers. I’m also seeing a bit of life on the blog: there’s more engagement, more comments. People are starting to be more interested in travel even if they can’t go anywhere yet.
On that note: If you enjoy this blog please consider using our affiliate links when booking your next hotel, flight, car rental or tour. You might not be planning a trip anytime soon but if you keep us in mind for the next time it would be greatly appreciated. It doesn’t cost you a cent, we get a small commission, and I don’t get crap from Lissette when I’m up late writing my posts.
Hopefully we all return to better times in the not-so-distant future…
Related: Reasons why I don’t visit your blog
Related: Why I’ve had it with Instagrammers (and some travel bloggers)
Ps. If you find our blog helpful, please consider using our links to book your flights, hotels, tours, and car rentals. Have a look at our Travel Resources page.
Hello Frank,
It’s my first comment ever here. Excellent recap of the situation. The timeline of your blog’s traffic drop is identical to mine (even though I’m just two years into blogging). The algorithm update of September hit my blog traffic as well, and the pandemic made me feel that everything is about to evaporate. Since March, traffic is more or less in a coma, with just a short spike during July-August. I think that keeping myself sane during this horrible period is the reason why I keep on blogging. Luckily enough, I don’t depend that much on blogging since I have a writing career in a small language, among other things.
Thanks for sharing your experiences; I think it’s important to read such texts when everything seems to be collapsing. Let’s hope for better days.
All the best,
George
Thank you for your comment George. I think everyone in the same boat, the difference is that many people have just decided to quit. I think I’m like you, it keeps me sane and motivated. I don’t know what I would do otherwise!
Keep writing! When people can travel again bloggers who’ve kept at it will get an explosion in their numbers.
Frank
yes! Please keep writing. I look forward to your posts on whatever you come up with to write about. Especially in these odd times.
Jan
Very kind of you Jan 🙂
My blog is my hobby not my livelihood but I too have had a dramatic decline in number of views and visitors. I don’t get SEO too, and my numbers were higher bc (not before corona, but before children lol) when I actually had the time to blog. hope your blog traffic picks up
Hi Frank!
I’m so glad that you have a reason other than the income to continue blogging. I found your blog very late but have been coming back pretty regularly in the last 6 months or so because it’s not a typical travel blog and I find your storytelling quite compelling. We also seem to have similar likes and dislikes in destinations :))
I know Google’s updates very well. I’ve been an affiliate marketer for 8 years after giving up the IT corporate lifestyle to save my sanity and try to enjoy a personal life. Affiliate marketing specifically relies on Google for targeted buying traffic. (I’m not going to let the hubby retire anytime soon, haha!) In the golden years I made a killing. Now not so much, although it’s still worth the effort and I still like the work for the most part. SEO fascinates me but that’s because I’m an engineer!
I too have been taken over by big brand media sites for certain kinds of articles. I used to have sites like The New York Times’ Wirecutter brand link to me. Now they outrank me unless it’s on super niche ideas.
I work on 3 separate niches on three wordpress sites that are in my wheelhouse and they’ve all been impacted by the pandemic. One is for travel-related products and it was dead in the water for about 5 months. I’ve recently started seeing some more life in it though, which is nice to see more for the hope of future travel.
Another site is in the cooking niche and that was doing rather well during the early days of lockdown. Dalgona coffee anyone? That high didn’t last too long now that most people are tiring of baking bread and trying out new and weird recipes and just prefer to order takeout! The third is home fitness and that also did well in early lockdown but has leveled out now. Gyms are closed so I should do something at home or I’ll turn into a mass of blubber. Trouble is, with many people out of work or taking huge pay cuts, expensive equipment is not something that everyone can buy.
I read a lot about people now going to opt for local travel over international and that depresses me a bit because local travel in India isn’t that easy or even worth it for independent travelers like us. Even in normal times finding a clean restroom or restaurant requires a lot of planning. Unlike in the west, you can’t just walk into any place and expect to get safe food or a decently clean and safe toilet unless you’re a trucker! Our roads look like the surface of the moon so road trips aren’t particularly pleasant. Our train system hasn’t been updated since the British Raj times. AirBnBs are few and quite sketchy here, so overpriced hotels for those who like a bit of comfort are the norm.
No, I must see international travel picking up soon or I’ll go into a real depression!
P.S. I subscribe to new posts using the “click to receive…” checkbox below but I never get an alert. I’ve checked my spam and trash folders too. Also don’t get a notification when you reply to my comments.
All very interesting Claudine. How did you end up in India? I read you comment to Lissette and the idea of pre-planning bathroom stops I have to say not very appealing. What to do in an emergency? Maybe I prefer not knowing…
You probably know SEO and blogging much more than I do, my background was finance. I’ve learned as I’ve gone along but I’ll never be an SEO guru. I wish I had your technical knowledge. Interesting your take on the different niches and how they’ll all fared. And interesting because I would have figured cooking and fitness would have continued to do well but I guess at a certain point people go back to old habits.
Thanks for mentioning on the comment box. I’m having my IT guy look at it. Always assumed it worked but maybe I have to do some setting up.
Thanks again for the comment Claudine 🙂
I got your latest post today, yay! This time I used the subscribe box above the comments section whereas I used the checkboxes and link surrounding the comment box the previous two times.
I keep forgetting that my name causes confusion to most people. We’re Indians, Frank :-)). Catholics by way of Portuguese invaders from centuries ago. Our ancestors come from the west coast of India and we’re a small minority that’s constantly shrinking as many of us flee to other lands for better opportunities and to escape growing nationalism. I was born and spent 10 years of my life in Kuwait where my parents lived almost all their working lives. So yeah, I’m a Catholic (kinda identify as agnostic) born in a Muslim country but a citizen and resident of a formerly secular Hindu country. Officially, my native tongue is Konkani, which is one of the least spoken languages in India because it comes from the local state language of Kannada but blended with the neighboring language of Marathi and a sprinkling of Portuguese. Unofficially, my first language is English. My parents have always communicated with each other in English so my siblings and I can’t imagine anything else. My good old convent school from British times here in Bangalore was adamant that their students excel in it and I’m eternally grateful for that. My opportunities have been better because of that. When I’m in a contemplative mood, I consider myself a true citizen of the world even if no other country would have me!
I was born very late, my parents retired in their 50s while my two siblings were already in college in India, so I continued schooling and college here. My parents were adventurers for their time and status. No other Indians I know of their generation traveled as much as they did so I get it from them. They stopped traveling internationally once we settled here in Bangalore. I started traveling a tiny bit as an adult for work. Then I got married to an Indian who traveled around India with his family and then left to work internationally and caught the travel bug that way. He spent 6 years in the US and a total of a year in France while exploring a few other places in Europe. We got married when he had 2 years left on his work visa so I moved to northern Virginia and then NYC for those 2 years. We never applied for a green card because we had responsibilities here. There is no retirement home/assisted living system to speak of here so at least one child of every generation has to settle here to take care of parents.
We came back to India after our US stint but didn’t feel ready to settle down or have kids yet. We wanted to travel some more first. After a year, the hubby got an opportunity through his company to spend some months in Sydney, Australia and then some months in Copenhagen and could take me along for both trips. I started to freelance at that time.
With the clock ticking we made the decision to come back permanently and soon had our daughter who’s now 12 and loves to travel just as much as we do. She’s the kind that’s quite happy in a museum with an audio guide of her own (the ones that have special ones for kids are fantastic), and will happily try out escargot, octopus, haggis, etc because she sees us doing it. I love to cook and I’m in the habit of trying out recipes from all over the world so she’s been used to it from the time she was a baby.
Up until a few years ago, we had accepted that India would be our permanent home because for all our third world problems the former secular government ensured that we never felt like we didn’t belong. That changed with the new Hindu nationalist government. Now we worry about ours and our daughter’s future and we live a more guarded life. Wearing masks and socially distancing is easy for us. It’s the growing loss of other freedoms that’s frightening. Journalists are being thrown in jail and peaceful protests and criticism of government is dangerous. Corruption and police brutality has always been a problem here but it seems to be getting worse.
Your blog has been most interesting to read because I semi-secretly wish to leave here and settle somewhere in Europe. However, in financial terms, permanent residence is more difficult for Indians unless we start living and earning abroad early – at least in your early to mid 30s. Our middle class taxes go towards subsidizing the very large non-tax paying poor population. We don’t get anything in return for it. No free or subsidized schooling for our kid, no subsidized health care, utilities, decent roads, clean environment or even garbage pickup. Everything is extra here. There’s no pension so we have to retire on our savings and hope our investments get us somewhere down the line.
Have you guys ever visited India Frank? I know I made it sound really unwelcoming but I do think it’s a worthwhile place to visit at least once in a lifetime. It’s chaotic and difficult to travel independently but we’d be happy to help if you ever decide. We often invite my hubby’s foreign colleagues home for a meal and take them around a little bit when they visit for work. We feel a bit sorry for them when we see their looks of bewilderment if it’s their first visit :-))
I really shouldn’t have gone on and on here. See what yours and Lissette’s ongoing story made me do?! Thanks for reading Frank 🙂
I got confused by the first and last name as well as the little red-haired lady gravatar 🙂
Very interesting background. Sounds like you’ve been everywhere. So from the Goa area?
I always enjoy your comments Claudine, you give me a sample of life in India. I’d actually be very interested in visiting one day, especially Rajasthan. Lissette and I have some cabinets made out of old doors from Rajasthan. Would love to see the old forts in the area. And we love Indian food. But we’re never crazy about highly populated places and crowds or tropical bugs. And every foreigner who goes to India has stories of getting sick. Those are the things that make us nervous 🙂 But one day!!
Haha, when I first picked my gravatar there wasn’t any brownish skinned lady I think, but there was this one with specs! My last name was anglicized by the British sometime in the 19th century from the actual Portuguese name, Louis 🙂 Love Goa but we’re from a little farther south – Mangalore in the state of Karnataka, although Bangalore has been our home for most of our lives. It’s the IT capital and most cosmopolitan city in India. Also the only big city you can spend a long time in with just English!
I can understand the fear of crowds, touts, etc. That’s why most non-backpacking foreigners choose to come with package tours. You also can’t expect to drive here. Rajasthan is good but the most touristy place in India. The getting sick part can be avoided if you follow the rules. Even us Indians who are known for highly developed immune systems know we shouldn’t drink water or eat salads just anywhere. Just take your own purified or bottled water everywhere and forego salads unless it’s in a well known high end place. If you do travel independently, planes are better than trains or buses just because of the food and toilet issues! For trips that can be done in a few hours, pre-arrange private taxis are very affordable.
Thanks for the tips Claudine. Sounds like the same tips I’d give for anyone planning to visit Mexico 🙂 We’ll make it to India one day and, as you say, most likely with a tour. Some countries are just better visited that way (like Georgia and Armenia. We did a tour last year and it was a great way to visit the highlights of both countries).
Thank you again for the insights!
Hi Frank,
I’ve been a reader of your blog for several years now, but I’ve never commented. Given your post here, I figured that now was finally a good time to do so. First, I really appreciate THAT you’ve continued blogging and done so in a way that actually acknowledges the pandemic and explains how it has affected your and Lissette’s lives and future. I love travel blogs, but since the pandemic I feel like I’ve been reading them in some alternate universe with what they’ve posted since March of this year. Yours has been a rare exception to that, and that gives me hope that we all will be able to move beyond this. Second, I really appreciate that you chose not to just go radio silent. I’ve seen that too in other travel blogs, and it drives me batty. As a reader, it’s the equivalent to having a TV crap out in the middle of a show you’ve been watching all season.
I started reading your blog because I appreciate the sense of humor and I love reading about where you go and your impressions of the people and the places. I was thrilled to hear about your aims to live as residents of Spain because that is the same dream my wife and I share (albeit for us it is a decade away)! For US citizens like my wife and me, reading your blog puts a bit of a promise of normalcy in a time of absolute insanity (both due to the virus and due to our frustration at our country’s leaders).
I’d urge you to keep writing and keep planning on your residency dream. I, for one, will keep reading.
All the best,
Tom
Very much appreciate the comment Tom, one of the most complimentary I’ve ever received. This wasn’t meant to be a pity post but I appreciate the nice comments. And I especially appreciate comments from people who read the blog but don’t usually comment as it gives me names and an idea of the people behind the numbers. Love knowing why people read the blog and what they are interested in.
We look forward to a sense of normalcy and exploring Spain. I’m actually thinking of doing a long-term lease on a car at some point, just to explore all the different corners of Spain. Just taking the train between cities we sometimes saw forts sitting on top of hills in the countryside and just thought it would really be fun to have our own wheels and to explore all these places.
So, all going well, I promise to have tons on Spain (as well as on the Visa process) so that by the time you and your wife are ready to do it they’ll be lots of resources on this blog 🙂
Thanks again Tom. And if you ever have any questions don’t be shy to write me personally.
Frank
i heard about this algorithm change. seems to have affected so many especially travel blogs. I genuinely dont understand the business and have been blogging since forever, since 2014 using a WordPress base and my blog just has never taken off. I would kill (ok no i wouldnt) for 400 visitors daily. i JUST started to get ads on my blog, the option just appeared one day around 2 weeks ago. i have been doing the opposite to most and really pushing my blog since the pandemic began. mum nearly passed away and it was touch and go back in march and i needed something to concentrate on. then lockdown came and i needed something to occupy time. its just work and blog at the moment. your blog is brilliant Frank and its one i never miss a post from. unfortunately in Australia we wont be allowed to travel overseas until at least next year. possibly second half. whilst most of the country has corona under control, in Victoria it is not. The numbers still dont reflect the places where the pandemic hit badly at all, but its enough to frighten most people and masks are mandatory now and we have lockdown. who knows Frank…. thanks for another thoughtful and worthwhile post
Very kind of you Andy.
I remember you mentioning your mom. How do you feel when idiots say it’s “a hoax”? There’s a post right there. I read something recently that about 30% of Americans still think it’s a hoax, that it’s been exaggerated by the media. Even when we came in from the airport here in Montreal, our taxi driver didn’t seem to believe it “I guess I just can’t believe something I don’t see with my own eyes…”. So I guess it’s universal.
Anyway, I’m happy your mom ok and I can totally understand how you came to focus so much on the blog during this time.
I also did TONS on the blog during the lockdown, mostly behind the scenes stuff like working in SEO. I don’t know if you have a Yoast on your site Andy? It really helps figure out if a post you’re writing is SEO friendly. It’s worth taking a bit of time just looking up stuff. Just some basic rules.
One thing I’ve learned is that it’s always a learning process. If you ever have a question I can help you with don’t be shy to write me.
hey Frank
so I’m going to migrate from wp.com to wp.org. In fact, I’ve begun the process I spent hours and hours earlier in the week on chat with Bluehost but it got a bit much for me so I’ve decided I’m going to do it over months probably and keep the .org site on silent until ready. i should say that actually the hard work ive done has certainly boosted my views quite a bit. but as for SEO I just dont … get it at all to be honest. and I went last year to add Yoast but because i’m on dot com i actually cant add plugins unless I spend hundreds more per year on a business plan. and the time getting my head around all these things… i mean i get computers, i think, I think i understand stuff. but with all the craziness in the world and work is really really heavy right now too, and thats doing less hours than normal. PLUS im trying to build my Youtube channel as well which is even harder (i find it so bizarre that most videos struggle to double figures and then a handful are in the thousands, it makes no sense to me at).
ultimately i have no goal to live off the blog and youtube, but at the same time if i could pull a small amount of income from them, a couple of hundred a month, then that could go a long to ensuring I can travel regularly and achieve things here at home.
anyways sorry, this isnt the place to rant!
your blog is awesome and has long been a standard benchmark for me and I’m always impressed. Oh I dont know if i ever mentioned, i get post notifications but not replies to my comments notified despite clicking the box… wonder if anyone else has that issue?
Hi Andy,
I never really understand the whole difference between wp.com and wp.org and didn’t know you couldn’t add plugins.
You know Andy, I use Chris (who’s done background stuff for Nomadic Matt) for my behind the scenes stuff. I pay $30/mo for that and it’s totally worth it because it’s TOO technical and I have no patience. I also shifted my hosting to him and it’s really speeded up the site.
Anyway, just so you know if things get too technical for you and you want someone to take care of that stuff.
Honestly Andy, I think youtube is a waste of time. I’ve read on it and very, very hard to success and my experience is that videos are 10 times the work of an ordinary post. There’s always too much to do and if you want to concentrate on the things that are essential to success then I think youtube is a big time and energy suck. I also don’t think most people have the time to sit through a 20 minute video (unless you look great in a bikini 🙂 )
Also, maybe your overall traffic isn’t great but you have a couple of posts that bring in consistently good numbers? You can stick affiliate links in there (booking.com does best for me). Start with those.
I was like you a bit over a year ago before monetizing and it was a learning curve. But then it gets easy.
Hmm, interesting about not getting notifications to comments. I’ll test that out, thanks for letting me know.
Hi Frank, when this all hit the fan, I just wrote the rest of the year off. Maybe I might do a post once every 3-4 months until then.
My personal blog, where everything that wasn’t really travel has been moved to, is getting more regular posts (I’ll link to that for now). I’ll re-assess in ’21 and see how things are then.
I’m not on Social Media or anything like that, but have noticed an increase of unique visitors since the lockdown, on both sites. No idea why?
Interesting Ted. No idea why that would be. But I notice you’ve been writing about model trains which is a good lockdown topic. If they’re coming from Google it might be because they were searching something along those lines.
Frank, really appreciate what you are doing and hope you decide to continue. Crisis and opportunity are the two sides of the coin and your posts during the pandemic have
really captured that feeling of being “Stuck” and not knowing how long this will last. The form of travel you do, renting a place and just living somewhere awhile, seems to be one that works now. Good luck to you and please keep writing! Diana
Thank you Diana. I will always continue – before having a “real” blog I had a blog on those hosted sites. Didn’t have traffic and didn’t get comments but I did it anyway for myself. So if I can do that for several years I’m sure I can persevere with only 600 people a day visiting the blog 🙂
Thank you very much for the kind words, very much appreciate! It’s also comments like this that keep me writing.
Interesting article Frank – and sobering stats on your traffic impact. It’s certainly disheartening when something you put so much effort into, and take great pride in gets demolished with such an arbitrary thing as an algorithm change!
Just so you know, we place a lot of credence in your reviews of places. Your no nonsense reviews that aren’t trying to be “PR friendly to hopefully one day snag a paid gig” are genuine reviews that we trust – so big thanks for the effort you put in – we appreciate it!
As you know, we only just started our blog, and had similar discussions – why should we do it, what’s the point etc. We eventually settled on giving it a try for a year and see how we feel about it then. If nothing else it’s a good travel diary for us to reflect on and bore people in the retirement home when we are in our ’90’s (got to love a captive audience).
But we had a funny experience just yesterday that made us feel good about our efforts so far, we were down at the water front at Hvar, Ying was having a swim and I wasn’t in the swimming mood so planned to read for a bit. Then a guy walked up to me and said “Are you the Jolly Hobos?” Needless to say I was bit surprised, but then went and had a good chat with this couple from England. Turns out all their holidays had been cancelled, but they found that they could get to Croatia but were unsure if there was any life and if it was worth the trip. They found our daily updates about Hvar on Twitter and the blog articles and booked some flights over based solely on that!
So I’m sure that many an adventure has taken place based on your posts and recommendations (eg us spending 3 months in SMA) – and most will go unknown, but what you do has an impact!
Keep up the great work and hopefully you guys will be back on the road again soon.
Thank you guys!
I was dejected by the pandemic…but angry about the Google change. Typical isn’t it? I always said that Google was your best friend as a blogger: keep writing and you’ll eventually be rewarded. But then they do something like this and you feel screwed over.
About your blog: exactly! That was my initial goal as well. Sometimes Lissette will ask me “where were we in the summer of 2016?”. I’ll refer to the blog to look it up.
Nice story about being recognized. Makes you realize the world is small and the internet far reaching.
Thanks for the nice comment and kind words 🙂
thanks for not giving up. I really appreciate your articles!
Thank you Jan!!
Gotta hang tough Frank,
But you already knew that. You have a great flair in your writing that people
are drawn to, but the fact that writing is a cathartic and creative release for you
makes the decision to keep writing an easy one.
The rest will all work itself out…
Take care,
Michael
Very kind of you Michael. Appreciate the words of support 🙂
Ha! I have a post in my draft file that speaks pretty much the same content. Great minds think alike and all of that.
You answered one of my unasked questions… “allowing us to use her address as an official address.” I wondered what you were planning to do about that.
How does it feel to be out and about, even with a mask? Must offer up a sense of freedom. Looking forward to following your visa process.
Yes, great minds think alike Patti!
We actually haven’t required an address as Canadians Patti. Really, the rules vary by country of residence: some countries require an address, some countries require an address and a lease…but Canadian residents don’t require even filling out the address section of the application form.
It IS nice to be out and about! We’ve been doing a lot of walking the last week and the first 2 days our legs actually hurt. Never realized the toll all that time in lockdown has taken on the body…