Category : Travel

I still remember standing outside a train station in Lisbon at eleven at night, alone, with a backpack that suddenly felt way too heavy, wondering if I’d made a huge mistake booking a solo trip in the first place. Nothing bad happened. A local pointed me toward my hostel, I

Two summers ago I stood in a hotel lobby in Bali watching staff replace the little plastic water bottles in every single room, all 214 of them, every single day. Full bottles being swapped for identical full bottles because that’s just how the place operated. I’d flown halfway around the

Three summers ago I missed a bus connection in a small town in Montenegro. I ended up stranded for six extra hours with nothing to do. What started as an annoying travel mishap turned into one of my favorite afternoons ever. I wandered empty stone streets with barely another tourist

(Learned the Hard Way, Mostly in Barcelona) My phone got lifted out of my back pocket on a crowded metro in Barcelona. I didn’t feel a thing. One second it was there. The next, I was patting my pocket like an idiot at the next stop, already knowing what happened.

A few years back I booked a trip to Bali in January without checking one important detail, the monsoon season. I landed to grey skies, flooded streets, and a beach that looked more like a swimming pool with debris floating in it. My “tropical getaway” turned into five days of

Two years ago I sat in my kitchen at midnight, laptop open, trying to figure out why a country I’d never even considered needed a visa I couldn’t apply for online. My flight was in six days. I ended up paying a rush fee, missing a connecting hotel booking, and

What I Learned After Way Too Many Overstuffed Suitcases I once paid a forty dollar overweight baggage fee for packing four pairs of shoes on a three day trip. Standing at that airport counter, watching the agent weigh my bag with a slightly judgmental look, I finally admitted my packing

What I Wish Someone Told Me Before My First Trip I remember standing in an airport at 2am, jet lagged and confused, having just paid nearly triple what I should have for a taxi because I didn’t know public transport existed from that airport. That one mistake ate almost a