Nomad year 2021 – slow traveling in Europe
2021 was our fourth full year as digital nomads, and the second with the coronavirus pandemic causing suffering all around the globe, making traveling rather difficult (and for many nearly impossible). In the summary of nomad year 2020 we wrote about our expectations for 2021: “The year will begin house-sitting in Spain, and we expect that it will include several other house-sits. Most probably we’ll stay at least until the autumn in Europe, but we are hoping to be able to travel somewhere warm for the next winter.”
Table of Contents
Winter and spring in Andalusia, Spain
In February we moved to Torrox Costa in Malaga province, to house-sit for a Finnish couple during their three-weeks visit in Finland. We were happy to live in their lovely apartment right above a beach with palm trees, taking care of Pate the dog. When some of the travel restrictions between nearby municipalities were lifted in mid-Feb, we headed to explore popular Nerja by the coast and the beautiful white village of Frigiliana above Nerja.
For March we moved back to Velez-Rubio for another short house sit for Paul, after which we rented one of the three apartments of his house. According to our original plan, we were supposed to go to Finland to work in Oulu Music Festival as always in March, but this year it was organized as a short series of stream concerts instead of a busy festival with live audience. This meant that we were able to help location independently from Spain, building the stream platform, helping with brochures, translations and social media. Spring came to the mountains of Almeria with amazing blossom of almond trees, turning the landscape white and pink.
In April we stayed again in Torrox Costa near Malaga, in an apartment rented from our new Finnish friends for whom we did the house-sit in Feb. Traveling was still restricted, so we mostly focused on working, writing and running on the hills. In Good Friday we went hiking on the mountains above Nerja, conquering the peak of El Cielo mountain (1508 m).
In mid April the municipal border of Malaga opened, and we made a short holiday trip to the sunny provincial capital. It felt great to be able to travel, even if just visiting the nearby city, and we enjoyed our time in Malaga a lot! In the beginning of May it was finally possible to also travel to Granada, and we were happy to visit the stunning Alhambra Fortress!
Road trip through Europe in summer
Charming Ronda and astonishing Sevilla
On our way north from the coast of Andalusia, we wanted to visit Ronda, a white village built right above a stunning gorge, and Sevilla, a vibrant, historical city that everyone seems to fall in love with. Our stay in Ronda was more like a short sightseeing walk around the town, but in Sevilla we stopped for several days to be able to explore different parts of the city.
We visited the wonderful Royal Alcázar of Seville, admired the huge Plaza de España, the beautiful narrow alleys and the handsome palaces lining the streets of the city. Sevilla is one of those cities that are hard to leave behind, we’d love to go back some day to explore more and just to enjoy the atmosphere.
Through the secluded but beautiful Extremadura
From Seville we continued north, and drove through Extremadura region. This remote part of Spain is often overlooked by tourists, but is rich with historical landmarks from Roman era and medieval times. It’s also an important area for wildlife, with nature parks and the rocky Monfragüe National Park.
We stopped for a sightseeing walk in the regional capital Mérida, an ancient Roman city that is home to more Roman monuments than any other Spanish city, from an aqueduct to a Roman theater.
Another stop was in Cáceres, another city founded by ancient Romans. The walled Cáceres Old Town, Ciudad Monumental, is just astonishing, a maze of cobbled streets and Gothic and Renaissance architecture. We got to explore the Old Town almost alone, which made the experience even more spectacular. For the night we drove into small Galisteo, a cute, walled medieval village, where we stayed in a lovely hostel right next to the wall.
From Galisteo we explored the nearby Plasencia, another old town with high city walls and plenty of historical sights. We also headed to Monfragüe National Park for a trail run, and got to admire amazing views and spotted several big birds of prey.
Medieval towns and castles around Madrid
From Extremadura we continued east towards Madrid, through the northwestern parts of Castilla–La Mancha region. We first stopped in Talavera de la Reina, a town famous for Talavera ceramics, and then in Toledo, the regional capital also known as “the Imperial City”. Even after the stunning towns that we had seen so far, Toledo managed to take our breath away. It’s a majestic destination really, full of history.
In addition to historical towns, we also visited some impressive castles and palaces. One of the most impressive was the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, that we happened to visit on the international museum day, and got to explore the stunningly decorated rooms free of charge.
North of Madrid we visited Segovia, yet another wonderful historical city filled with amazing architecture, and the small medieval village of Pedraza. We had just recently watch a series called 30 Monedas (30 Coins), that was mostly filmed in Pedraza, and wanted to see the charming village with our own eyes.
Exploring the craft beer scene of Madrid
In Madrid our agenda was mostly related to craft beer as we visited several microbreweries and brewpubs, and interviewed the owners and brewers for an article about craft beer in Madrid. We also enjoyed walks around the city, that we had only very shortly visited before.
Parque Nacional de Los Picos de Europa
From the capital city we continued towards the north coast. On the way we wanted to explore Picos de Europa mountain range, that we had read a lot about. It was as beautiful as described in the articles, with snow-topped peaks and pristine nature. Picos de Europa National Park in the Cantabrian Mountains is home to some wonderful hiking trails, of which we chose the popular Cares Trail (Ruta del Cares) that runs in the Cares River gorge.
Drive along the north coast of Spain to France
On the north coast we first stayed for a few days in Santander in Cantabria and then in San Sebastian in the Basque Country. The coastal views in this part of Spain are lovely, with rolling green hills and beautiful bays. Also in Cantabria and the Basque Country we got to know the local craft beer scene and visited some interesting breweries like Dougalls and Basqueland.
Through France and Germany to Finland
From Spain our road trip continued north through France. Like in previous summers, we were welcome to stay for a couple of weeks in our friends’ house in small Gueberschwihr village in Alsace. Then we drove to the north coast of Germany, visited beautiful Lübeck and took a Finnlines ferry from Travemünde to Helsinki in Finland.
Visit to Finland in the summer
In the midsummer we stayed for several weeks in our home country, visiting friends and family. We traveled around the country, visiting for example the oldest city of Finland, the former capital Turku. We finally visited the handsome Turku Castle, and stayed in a shiny new Hotel Kakola, that has been built in a former, legendary prison.
We also explored the craft beer scene around the country, visiting for example the northernmost brewery of the EU in Lapland.
House-sitting in Berlin and Riga in the autumn
In late October we again drove through Poland, visiting charming Poznan, vibrant Lodz and smaller Bialystok. Our destination was in Latvia however, as we had agreed on two house-sitting periods in Riga, taking care of two cute bunnies. We stayed in Riga over the Christmas, and for the new Year we drove again to Finland, this time just for a very short visit before new adventures.
Travel statistics 2021
Visited countries: 9, no new countries
Ways of traveling: 0 flights, roughly 8 000 kilometers road tripping with our own car, 4 ferry trips.
Accommodation: During the year we stayed quite long periods in apartments rented from our friends (56 nights, in Spain). We also stayed in apartments and rooms rented via Airbnb, (35 nights), and in hostel rooms or apartments booked via booking.com (19 nights). In addition we stayed 15 nights camping in our new van, part of them in camping sites, and 5 nights free of charge as collaboration in exchange for marketing. We stayed all together 133 nights house-sitting and in total 99 nights with family or friends.
Costs and revenues 2021
Below is the summary graph of all the costs of our life during the year 2021. We traveled more than in 2020, but stayed in Europe the whole year. It was quite a budget-friendly year when it comes to costs of living, but on the other hand, we bough a car, which increased the total costs of the year a lot. All the costs are for two people.
Accommodation costs sum up to 1 762 €, which is on average 14,81 € per night (excluding all free-of-charge accommodation of course). As described above in the travel statistics, we stayed altogether over four months house-sitting (free of charge) and also quite a lot with family or friends, so the total accommodation costs of the year were pretty low.
Grocery costs, that include all the food and drinks (also wine and craft beer) bought from stores, sums up to 4 984 €, which is on average 13,66 € per day. Restaurant costs were quite low again this year, 1 685 €, as we didn’t eat out much. The sum in fact includes quite a lot of craft beer in pubs. Altogether we used 1 496 € for craft beer during the year (from shops and in pubs) – it’s a nice but rather expensive hobby!
Traveling costs, fuel for the car, ferry tickets, a couple of travel related corona tests and some occasional parking costs and metro tickets, sum up to 2 151 € (5,89 € per day). In other costs, altogether 2 276 €, the biggest single purchase is repairing costs of our car (new fuel pump), 860 €, and otherwise it includes some clothes, (running) shoes and accessories (484 €), healthcare costs (181 €) and all small purchases like housing goods, cosmetics, toiletries and presents, as well as entrance fees to sights and ATM withdrawal fees.
In addition to these costs of traveling and living abroad, there are the so called Yearly Costs, altogether 749 €. This sum consists of work related insurances (67 €), insurances and taxes of our car (436 €), phone bills (115 €) and the Trusted Housesitters member fee (67 €). Also, there is a yearly category called Equipment, that includes new laptops for both of us and some smaller equipment purchases, altogether 1 811 €.
This year we also have a new cost category in this summary: Campervan. We changed our old sedan to a 2017 Nissan NV200 van (12 000 €) and converted it to a simple camper (materials and equipment in total 1 288 €). This raises the total costs of year significantly of course, but it is supposed to be a purchase that lasts for several years.
Adding up everything together, the price tag of our nomad year was 28 705 €, and without the costs of campervan, the price tag of the year was 15 417 €, which is in average 1 285 € per month or 42,24 € per day for the 2 of us. For more detailed cost information, check out our monthly cost summaries and travel cost posts from different countries on the finances page.
On the revenue side, we paid ourselves some salaries through our company, for web-development, design and content creation that we did for Finnish companies and from working for the Oulu Music Festival. In addition, we also got rental income from our apartment in Finland, but we mostly used that to shorten our mortgage. In total the yearly revenues sum up to around 36 000 €, which means that we earned more than we consumed, and were able to increase our savings a bit, despite buying the car.
FinnsAway travel blog and our other blogs
2021 was a very quiet year in this travel blog, as we only published seven posts in FinnsAway blog during the whole year. Our social media channels in Facebook and Instagram were quite active though, as we shared a lot of pictures and stories from along the trips during the year. 2022 should be more about blogging again, lets see how that turn out. Like in previous years, most of the readers came to the blog via Google searches. Due to coronavirus situation, people of course have been traveling way less than normally, but as world is slowly opening, people seem again to be more eager to make travel plans and to read destination guides.
If 2021 was silent in FinnsAway blog, our Craft Beer Nomads blog was very active, as was the Elämää Nomadina blog, that tells our story and opens up the challenges of nomadic lifestyle to our Finnish readers. We also have a site dedicated to house-sitting, Nomad Housesitters.
Most read articles during 2021
Sports and activities 2021
2021 was another rather sporty year. We love to maintain sporty lifestyle also when on the road, and always travel with running shoes. When staying close to mountains or nature parks, we often head to longer hikes or short day treks, and also love trail running and sightseeing runs. In 2021 we hiked way less than usually, as we made only one actual day hike on the mountains in Spain (21 km).
For running we had set a monthly target of 150 km, including one half marathon each month. During the year we ran altogether 1 829 kilometers, which is a bit more than the monthly target, and we also ran 12 half marathons as planned. On the other hand, we didn’t go to gym, only did some weight training in outdoor gyms occasionally, and didn’t really focus on stretching or body balance. We did walk quite a lot, both when exploring new destinations and when house-sitting with dogs. For more sports statistics, check out our monthly activity summaries on the sports page.
How does 2022 look like?
As long as the Covid-19 pandemic is still around and restricting traveling, it’s quite hard to make any long term plans, especially regarding overseas traveling. Publishing this post in yearly January, the travel year 2022 has just begun with a flight to Spain. The first two months will be about house-sitting in southern Spain and exploring some new destinations. Like last year, in March we are planning to go back to Finland again, to work in the Oulu Music Festival, if the concerts can be arranged as planned.
In April, we are planning to make a long road trip with our van, through eastern Europe to Turkey and possible onward to Caucasus. During the road trip we are planning to work less than usually and focus more on nature adventures and exploring new destinations. We’ll also focus more on this blog and write about the new travels as well previous adventures.
Thank you for following our journey, we wish you a wonderful New Year 2022!
Read also the previous summaries:
Nomad year 2020
Nomad year 2019
Nomad year 2018
and Discounts
