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What’s the Longest Trip You’ve Ever Taken?

The longest trip I’ve ever taken, both in distance and time spent there, has been my trips to Brazil.

From the U.S., and depending on where we lived, the trip starts in the morning. First, you fly from Tampa to Miami, where you can end up sitting around for several hours waiting for the overnight flight. The plane from Miami usually leaves somewhere around 10–11 p.m. and flies all night.

You land in Rio sometime around 6–7 a.m., and from there it’s about another hour from the airport to where we stay.

By the time you finally arrive, the whole experience is roughly 24 hours.

And most of that time, you’re awake. Sleeping on an airplane is possible, but let’s be honest—it isn’t exactly the Ritz-Carlton.

As for the longest stay, that was a trip we took a few years ago, before I retired. I worked remotely from Brazil for a month and then took a month of vacation. So we ended up spending two full months there.

It was a great way to experience Brazil because we weren’t really on vacation the entire time. We had enough time to settle into something that felt more like normal life.

Now I do the whole thing in reverse.

Since retiring, I travel back to the U.S. twice a year and usually stay for about five weeks at a time.

So apparently, I’ve gone from taking long vacations to simply moving my life back and forth across an international border.