Glen is in his second week of his European road trip and the miles are clocking up fast! Keep reading to see where Glen is this week and what adventures he’s had…

It’s my second week as a digital nomad – we’ve had a bit of a resting period in our villa which I must add has a pool! It’s situated on the outskirts of Venice, in the middle of farms and cornfields so we’ve been waking up to the sounds of tractors and the smell of crops being cropped in the morning.

Staying in a villa in the middle of nowhere we’re living with lizards, locusts, turtles and not forgetting mosquito’s – I’ve never been attacked so much it my life! ARGH

The first night I arrived I was looking up at the stars and witnessed the red moon whilst silently my blood was being sapped away from me! Ever since then I’ve come to the realisation that I need to put myself on a curfew between dusk and dawn (if I do break this I have to ensure I have a good layer of insect repellent on) and thanks to Google I’ve also found out that Venice is a mosquito hotspot! Arghh! The other day I got bitten three times on my face, one of them was on my nose and all I could see was swelling! Not to mention the itching!

Travelling to venice

From Budapest to Venice – it took us around eight – 10 hours because of all the stops – I can’t actually remember it but it was a pretty pleasant drive!.. although we did have one issue.. generally what happens when you enter a toll road you pick up a ticket and when you reach the end or come off the toll road you give your ticket to a person or machine and then pay based upon the distance you’ve driven HOWEVER – the problem we faced is we kind of skipped the first part, drove through the automated section (where your car is registered, in this example on some Italian database) which reads your number plate and deducts or understands that you’ve already prepaid to go through the toll meaning you have a need for a ticket. 

But in this case we didn’t have the ticket and we weren’t registered the database – we started to panic and look for help – this was soon solved when we decided to take the first junction off and just sit in front of the barrier panicking and waiting for some customer service dude to help us, just hoping the Italians queuing behind us didn’t get too angry oh and not get a huge fine! To our relief this wasn’t the case, we told the guy the situation and he just charged us the distance we travelled. Phew!

The rest of the week

Most of this week has pretty much been work, going to the supermarket, swimming, sleeping and doing it all again with the odd trip to actual Venice (the amount of roads vastly reduces and the need to cross a small distance requires a gondola, water bus or water taxi – it’s just like what you see in the movies!) The buildings have so much history and the food is great – I’m not sure about the price though! The temperature has been a nice sweltering 36 degrees and the swimming pool is a perfect place to cool down at the end of a productive day. 

What I love about the nomad life

One thing I do love about the digital nomad lifestyle is the fact that I don’t have to travel to work, but instead I wake up to work and it’s just there, it normally takes me an hour one way,  two hours for both ways, five days a week – that’s 10 hours gone a week! 40 hours a month, 480 hours a year which equates to 20 days a year just traveling and that’s before the getting ready and preparing for the day ahead! That’s a lot of time wasted.

Budget

Trying to keep ourselves on a budget so we don’t become bankrupt while travelling and also trying to keep our budget to a minimum so that we can do things is a little bit difficult at times, and to going to restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner quickly eats into our play resources so I’ve literally been living off pot noodles for lunch and pasta and sauce for dinner – one day we did treat ourselves to a pizza which was about 20 inches and all purchased from a local Italian supermarket which doesn’t compare to the prises you’d pay at a delicious restaurant!

Work has been smooth and feels very productive whilst travelling and we’re really enjoying the lifestyle.

But to conclude, Venice has been a nice relaxing part of this journey, where I’ve focused on solely resting and working,  as-well as still being able to experience new cultures and have some fun!

Speak to you next week!

Glen