London – NorthAmericanDarrell Podcast

15 Countries visited in 2025📍🌎😎

12/31/2025

by Darrell All you can fly Asia Austria Bangkok Barcelona Countries Europe Freedom 50 Frontier - AYCF!Greece HCMC / Saigon Italy Koh Phi Phi London Madrid Mexico North American Personal History Philippines Rocky Point Rome Singapore Slow travel Spain Thailand Travel bucket list Travels Stories United Kingdom United States Vietnam Volaris - AYCF!Wizz - AYCF!

2025: My first full year taking a run at retirement!

2025 turned out to be my most traveled year ever—and somehow, I feel that I’m just getting started.

January – Vietnam
(HCMC, Nha Trang, Da Nang, Hoi An, Hue, Phu Quoc)

February – Cambodia & Thailand
(Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, Koh Tao)

March – UK & Europe
(London, Greece, Iceland, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Italy)

April – October–US & Mexico

(Mesa and Rocky Point—two incredible home bases)

November & December – SE Asia
(Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Bali)

Every trip felt different. Every move resets my brain. And somehow, it all worked out absolutely perfect!

2026: Already Booked (Of Course It Is!)

January to mid-April
Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Philippines

May to October (Homebases in Mesa/Mexico)

Volaris + Frontier all-you-can-fly chaos—route TBD, cheap is guaranteed

Nov and Dec– Europe by Rail-pass

Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Southern Spain/Portugal…
Eastern Europe is still being self-negotiated with my grade-three attention span.

Hitting the reset button, again …

08/06/2025

by Darrell Asia Buy me a beer Europe Freedom 50 London Mexico North American Philippines Thailand Travel bucket list

Freedom is great… but it turns out accountability pairs nicely with vegetables.

Traveling solo and being single is a great way to learn just how little supervision I actually need—and how badly I sometimes need it anyway.

Balanced meals become a suggestion, vegetables go missing in action, and there’s no one around to question why dinner is beer with a side of “I’ll fix this tomorrow.”

The upside is total freedom. The downside is realizing I am not, in fact, the responsible adult I thought I was, and carbs are my enemy!

I’ve been both versions of that guy more times than I can count. I buckle down, lose the weight, feel great… then get comfortable and slowly put it back on—sometimes a little, sometimes impressively.

Every time, I confidently declare, “This time will be different.”

And look—I know the track record. I’m fully aware of the evidence.

But still… THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT.

THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT!

There’s a saying: “You can’t outwork a bad diet.”
For me, that couldn’t be more true.

I’ve walked, run, hiked, biked, paddleboarded…
Paid for gym memberships most of my adult life when I wasn’t traveling…
Bought treadmills, steppers, rowing machines, weights…

I’ve also thrown away—or quietly watched expire—more supplements than I will ever admit to owning.

Thousands of dollars.
Endless effort.
All expertly undone by travel, convenience, beer, and the magical thinking that calories don’t count when you’re moving.

I didn’t lack discipline.
I lacked consistency… and apparently vegetables.

And yet—here I am again, staring down the same cycle, saying it with full confidence and zero shame:

THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT.

(History suggests otherwise.
Optimism insists otherwise.
We ride at dawn.)

In the summer of 2025, I finally put myself in a timeout and decided to combine everything I’d learned over the years—plus one major change.

I quit drinking and traveling.

Well… I switched to non-alcoholic beer and still went to Mexico—but that version doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic, so we’re going with the first one.

Still, the intent was real. Fewer excuses. Fewer resets. More structure. Turns out removing just one bad habit makes all the other “this time will be different” promises slightly less fictional.

Progress, not perfection. Even if I had to negotiate the terms.

Check out the non-alcoholic beer blog by clicking HERE!

(I review and list all of the best NA beers; take a look if you would like to see them.)

Here was my daily schedule for almost three months:

Wake up at sunrise and blog and YouTube until 9 AM.

One homemade latte to kind of break my fast.

Stationary bike and row for one hour at home.

Spend 2-3 hours at the gym/spa.

Get home, make a protein shake, and take my supplements.

Eat my only meal between 3 PM and 5 PM as part of intermittent fasting.

Drink non-alcoholic beer in the evening and watch a ball game a few times a week.

I did have a few couch days, but kept track of my gym progress diligently, which is key for me!

(I followed the above to a “T” on gym days shown below)

London, England pubs!🍻🐟🍟😎

08/03/2025

by Darrell All you can fly Freedom 50 London Travel bucket list Travels Stories United Kingdom Wizz - AYCF!

Getting to London from home in Phoenix is shockingly inexpensive on Norse Atlantic Airways.

And cheap flights change everything.

They turn vague ideas into actual plans.
Plans into movement.
Movement into blog posts…

…and, inevitably, into mildly annoying social media updates you didn’t ask for—but are definitely going to see anyway.

I wrote a full blog post about Norse that you can read by clicking HERE, because yes—cheap transatlantic flights are real, and no, it’s not a scam (I checked).

To get to LA cheaply, I use Google Travel, which I also blogged about HERE, because step one of international travel is not overpaying just to leave your own country.

And once you land? A proper plate of fish and chips with a cold beer at a London pub is way cheaper than you’ve been led to believe—especially if your reference point is North America, where you apparently need a small loan to eat out.

I was able to visit London twice in 2024 and I’m headed back again in September 2025. I’d been to London a few times before that, and it’s always been a great experience—familiar, lively, and endlessly walkable.

That said, it felt a little different this time. Landing without Queen Elizabeth II around gave the city a subtle but noticeable shift. London was still London, but the sense of continuity she represented was quietly gone.

On my last visit, I was just passing through on a layover. I took the train from Gatwick Airport into the city and hopped off at London Bridge station. Even with limited time, stepping into central London felt like reconnecting with an old friend—familiar streets, constant motion, and that unmistakable energy that never really shuts off.

London changes, but it somehow stays the same. That’s part of what keeps pulling me back with the inexpensive flights.

You can catch the Gatwick Express from the luggage area after clearing customs. 🛃

It is a hassle-free way to get to the action and back to the airport. Tickets are available online or on the platform for about $24 USD one way.

Just like everything else in London, Uber is very expensive!

After I got off the tube, I walked over to Tower Bridge, which was neat to see again—one of those sights that never really gets old, no matter how many times you’ve been to London.

And yes, London Bridge is right there too. I checked. I can confirm it was not falling down, falling down… despite what the song would have you believe 😄

These are a few shots I took of typical London pubs, which seem to exist on just about every corner. No matter the neighborhood, there’s always a local pub tucked into the streetscape—part gathering place, part landmark, part living room for the city.

One thing that always trips up visitors to London is traffic flowing in the opposite direction. It sounds obvious, but muscle memory is powerful. You’ll notice “LOOK RIGHT” painted at crosswalks for a reason—and I very nearly learned that lesson the hard way on my first visit.

London does its best to warn you. You just have to remember to listen… before stepping off the curb.

I was only in London overnight, with an early morning flight out to Istanbul. With an early bus ride back to the airport, there wasn’t much point in pretending it was a proper stay.

So I did what seasoned travelers do—I grabbed a short nap at the airport, watched the place slowly wake up, and had a quiet morning beer before settling in for the long flight to Turkey.

Not glamorous.
Not rushed.
Just one of those in-between travel moments that somehow stick with you.

If you want, I can also share maps or pub-crawl routes (historic, classic London, best for beer, etc.) to pair with your travels!

https://chatgpt.com/share/69477321-9558-800b-90da-9f39a9b228f9

Three months looking out windows!

04/13/2025

by Darrell Accommodations AirBnb Asia Barcelona Europe HCMC / Saigon Italy London Madrid Rome Singapore Spain Thailand Travel bucket list Travels Deals Travels Stories Vietnam Wizz - AYCF!

I left Arizona on January 12th and didn’t return until April 7th, 2025, heading first to Vietnam and then bouncing across the globe. In order, I visited:

Vietnam → Cambodia → Thailand → London (twice) → Singapore → Greece → Turkey → Egypt → Italy → Spain

Eight of those ten countries were brand-new pins on my map, which made the whole thing feel even more unreal.

I spent the first three months slowly moving through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. After that, I flipped the switch and went full chaos mode with my all-you-can-fly pass—whizzing (Wizz Air style) through London, Singapore, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Italy, and Spain.

Here’s the actual chain of planes, trains, ferries, and buses that somehow all worked:

Phoenix → Los Angeles
Los Angeles → Singapore
Singapore → Saigon (HCMC)

Saigon → Nha Trang
Nha Trang → Huế
Huế → Da Nang
Da Nang → Hoi An
Da Nang → Saigon
Saigon → Phú Quốc
Phú Quốc → Saigon

Saigon → Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh → Siem Reap
Siem Reap → Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat → Bangkok
Bangkok → Koh Tao
Koh Tao → Koh Phangan
Koh Phangan → Koh Samui

Koh Samui → Bangkok
Bangkok → Singapore
Singapore → Athens

Athens → Istanbul
Istanbul → Princess Islands (day trip)
Istanbul → London
London → Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
Sharm El Sheikh → London
London → Naples
Naples → Rome

Rome → Madrid
Madrid → Barcelona
Barcelona → Madrid
Madrid → Rome
Rome → Los Angeles
LAX → Phoenix

(That doesn’t even include all the local buses, metros, tuk-tuks, and 25+ ride share ((Grab/Uber/Bolt/InDrive)) rides along the way.)

Three months in Southeast Asia.
Then a rapid-fire lap through Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

It sounds insane written out like this—and honestly, it kind of was.

But that’s part of the fun.
And after traveling like this for three straight months…

Sometimes all you can do is drop a blog and watch miserable people be jealous.

This was, by far, the longest—and most expensive—trip of my life.

I blew through my budget. And once that happened, I made the call to keep going anyway, because I was already there. I ended up canceling my Eurail pass and coming home three weeks early to stop the financial bleeding.

At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever use my all-you-can-fly pass again, so I went into “see everything now” mode and stacked as many countries as I could. I still missed a few, which means there’s a pretty good chance I’ll give it one more run someday—especially since I’m not renewing the pass.

And here’s the truth:

I have zero regrets about spending money on travel.
Not at the end of this trip.
Not at the end of any trip.

What I do have is better awareness.

Travel is worth it.
The memories are worth it.
The experiences are worth it.

I just need to be smarter next time in Europe and use train travel—pace it better, plan a little tighter, and learn from the mistakes without losing the magic.

That’s not regret.
That’s learning and sharing.