Sharing stories of nomads during the coronavirus pandemic (Vol. 7)

We’ve been reaching out to our nomadic friends to make sure they are safe, healthy and offered them to share their stories on our blog as everyone’s situation is very different, especially when you don’t have a fixed home. Since we’ve received a few of these stories, we decided to publish every Wednesday. (Make sure to sign-up to our newsletter to get these stories are soon as we publish them).

This week we are sharing the story of Stephanie & Gillian who are now back in Toronto after getting stranded in Italy for a while. Through their story, you will learn about when and where they were when things started to get real with #COVID-19, how they are currently handling this pandemic, and what’s next for them.

Stephanie & Gillian

Stephanie & Gillian
Current Location: Toronto (Canada)
Interview Date: Friday, April 10th, 2020

We’re a couple who saved and invested our way to financial independence and set off from Singapore with our two dogs six months ago to explore the world. We had planned in detail an exciting slow travel adventure that would take us across Europe in 2020. All of that came to a halt in March when we found ourselves stuck in Italy once the national quarantine hit and borders around the world closed.

When and where were you when you realized that things were getting real with COVID-19?

We were caught quite off guard by the border closures and flight cancellations. We were in the midst of a lovely stay in Florence over February when we first started to hear about the virus outbreak. We had a naive lack of concern about COVID-19 and how it might affect us or our plans. We even made our way down to Lecce in the south of Italy in early March, keeping with our itinerary.

It was only when the news of the national quarantine hit that we finally woke up to the fact that we needed to leave Italy as soon as possible. The news was suddenly filled with stories of countries closing their borders to travelers from Italy. Unfortunately, it was already too late and the last-minute flight that we booked to Hungary was canceled. As a last resort, we reached out to a friend with a holiday home at Lake Como, where we were able to find sanctuary for the past month.

The current situation

We are safe and comfortable at Lake Como but ultimately quite isolated here as we don’t speak the language, don’t have our own means of transportation and would have difficulty accessing medical services if the need arose. We are also in the Lombardy region, the epicentre of the virus outbreak, and hear ambulance sirens almost every day. Given those circumstances and the fact that our Schengen visas expire late April, we’ve decided to return to Canada where we are better positioned to take care of ourselves and our families. Despite the 14-day isolation period upon arrival, we feel that Canada is the best place for us to be right now.

Our future plans

We have every intention of getting back on the road once borders in Europe reopen and the global situation stabilizes. Slow travel is an important part of our lives. Additionally, travel in low cost of living countries is key to managing our finances during our early retirement. Our 2020 budget didn’t include two or three months in high-cost Toronto! That said, we feel well-positioned to handle any economic bumps because we are nomadic and flexible; we can easily shift to lower-cost places in Canada to wait out the pandemic. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to reconnecting with our families during this unexpected return to our home country.

Want to read other stories?

Check out the previous stories we published on our blog:

Volume 1: James & Emily (Cyprus) & Michelle (Australia)
Volume 2: Shoshannah (Arizona, USA) & Eric (Michigan, USA)
Volume 3: Ali & Alison (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico)
Volume 4: Eric & Katie (Da Nang, Vietnam)
Volume 5: Ryan & Emily (Cameron Highlands, Malaysia)
Volume 6: Danielle & Gonzalo (USA & Italy)

Do you want to share your story?

We are living in an unprecedented time and we would love to share your story with our audience and connect with our community. So if you are interested to share your story, please reach out to us. (We created a story outline template if you are looking for guidance about what to discuss).

Some resources to make your stay at home / quarantining easier

Staying at home and practicing social distancing is probably the best thing everyone can do right now and until things start getting better. Here are services that can make your lives easier as they reduce the interaction you have with the outside and are also really easy and convenient to use. They can help either with food or grocery delivery.

We are sharing some promo codes for you to use, that will make sure first order either free to damn cheap:

Uber Eats (sign-up then enter this discount code eats-0glcp on your mobile device to get $20 off your first order)
Postmates (sign-up with code XREGDD to get $100 in delivery fee credit)
Doordash (use this referral link to get $5 off on your first 4 orders for a total of $20)

2 Comments

Stephanie & Gillian · May 6, 2020 at 1:17 pm

It was great to be included in this round up of nomads whose travels were impacted by the pandemic. We’ve since made it back safe and sound to Toronto, where we are waiting out the lockdown and scanning the news for updates about global travel restrictions. Hopefully we will all be back on the road soon enough!