When I was 18, I sat in the Atlanta Airport, waiting to board a flight to Milan. I was bound for a study abroad month in Sorrento. As I sat with a bundle of nerves and excitement over my first travels abroad alone, an elderly Italian woman mirrored my emotions. She appeared nervous about the impending flight, confused over the announcements in English that she clearly did not understand. Yet, she seemed excited, thrilled about the prospect of returning to a land that speaks her language in more ways than one. She innocently offered me some sort of Italian candy. I know we are told at a young age to never take candy from strangers outside of Halloween, but I couldn’t resist. It was a moment where we bonded over our common emotions about travel. If this sweet Italian woman was feeding me poison, at least I would die traveling.

In that brief instant at the gate, we broke candy and sat in that moment. Travel was just across the jetway. Recently I have been drawn back to this moment at 18 years old. That was my life at that moment, solely focused on travel and where it was going to lead me. Little did I know, that this trip would spur others to Italy that would eventually take me to the life I face beginning now. With my wedding just over four months away, life has detoured the ways of my traveling soul. The details of getting married can be all consuming, leaving me searching for save the dates and wedding cake vendors instead of flights and hotels. Living has clouded the importance that I place on travel in my life, career and existence. 

I am not the only one that feels this way. I receive emails frequently asking how to make travel work with money, with a career or with a fixed home. Frankly it isn’t easy to juggle life and travel, especially when a major event in one’s life is just four months away. Life can always get in the way of travel, whether it be a job that ties us down, kids that keep us in a routine or a lack for funds. I am stuck in limbo until the wedding details subside and I can focus on travel again. In an effort to gain some clarity, to take travel off of the hold button, here’s how my traveling soul plans on surviving those four months when life is in the way.

When travel gets clouded

It’s the little trips

When major life events are road-blocking travels, you have to focus in on the little trips. In just over a month, I plan on exploring Chicago, a city I strangely have never been to, unless you count layovers at O’Hare. Sure, this isn’t a round-the-world adventure but I hope the little traveling stint will bring me back to a clearer traveling mind. If you have a free weekend in the midst of major life events and on goings, take a little trip. It might be small and inconsequential to other travelers, but it will recharge the traveling agenda and give a small sense of clarity. It has been a long time since I didn’t travel for a set purpose. I know that I was starting to lose that wander that only wanderlust can lend. To deal with the problem, I am taking a trip that doesn’t make sense in all of the wedding details, but one I know will recharge these travel batteries. I plan on throwing in a few of these little trips each month until August.

It’s not the Eiffel Tower but at least it’s something new.

Spend time planning the big trip every day

If travel is nowhere near the horizon for you, the mind can grow clouded with the details of life. I know this to be true, but I am gaining some clearness by focusing on my dream trip, even if it is over four months away. For the month of September, I will explore the Greek Islands and revisit Sicily. It seems a long way off when you never think about it. If you have a big trip months away or just the dream of one in the distant future, plan it. Set aside time each and every day to leave life behind and research travel instead. This will keep the traveling soul as balanced as it can be in life limbo.

Relive what travel once felt like

Some people wait a lifetime to begin traveling. They wait until their kids have grown old and the funds are finally there. I am merely waiting four months until I will be back at full travel speed. I know that once I touch down in Greece, I will be back in that travel rhythm so much so that I might ache for those comforts of my own bed at home or a more routine day. The grass is always greener when it comes to traveling and not traveling. I keep that thought in my mind in order to get through these days and months not focused on travel. If you are in a travel drought, only you can change it. You won’t make changes if you don’t relive what travel once felt like. Emotions are always what spur travel. Life gets in the way that you forget that exchange with the Italian woman over nerves and excitement. In the meantime, I will relive those moments until I am in the midst of them yet again. 

Remember this moment…

How do you deal with those time periods when travel is not a priority in your life?

Honeymoon in Italian translates viaggio di nozze. Most literally, it means wedding travels or the trip of the wedding. I prefer this translation for I believe it can mean two very different things. One meaning is the most obvious and literal, the actual honeymoon where the bride and groom ride off into the sunset for a resort in Mexico. The other meaning is a trip that combines wishes and dreams into a matrimony with reality. It is the trip that we all hold dear, the one we place on this shelf until at some point in time we take it and go.

We circled the purchase button as though we were circling the earth. Whipping across oceans and lands far away in the simple click of a button is as intimidating as it sounds. Anyone who has ever purchased a big flight knows this circling the globe in a click. It validates the journey in a second and yet it can seem like it takes a lifetime to get there. Every time I travel, I am excited. However, there are certain types of travel that bubble up a whole different level of excitement. This excitement is rare. It has been a long time since I took a journey with this level of anticipation. It might sound ungrateful, but there are places I dream of, places I don’t know why I am compelled to go, but I am.  They are always on my list and for whatever reason I don’t get there. I hold them in this dream and wait, wait for the moment for the track-pad to bounce back, validating the journey with a click.

It might bore the person who has been everywhere, but my dream trip has long been seeing a place that I have only imagined and experiencing another, again, that my imagination just couldn’t catch up with on my first visit. For me, a honeymoon should be a journey in between these dreams, in between the place that I can only imagine and the place that exceeds it. Those two places happen to be Greece and Sicily. Again, the destinations might seem too small or too large for someone else’s imagination, but that is what is so endearing about these types of travels. The individual has so much say in travel and then no say at all. We have dream travels and actual travels.

We all have these trips in our minds. Whether we take them is another story. We might fill up the calendar with trips that we are excited about, but not to the level of the imagined trip. Nothing can compare to those emotions. You know when you are about to conquer the dream compared to just jumping into a regular journey. Sometimes I think we keep the fantasized travels at bay for a variety of reasons. We are waiting for that right combination of person, time and action.

 I kept Greece as my dream trip for reasons that I can’t explain. It was too hard to get to or to expensive to reach. I have had the choice to travel wherever and whenever I want. And yet, it was always the place that I kept in my imagination. It seems that travelers do this all too often. They build up the idea, keeping it on a list to cross off later. And when it comes time to cross it off so to speak, we have to confront reality. Did it live up to the vision or fall short? This question haunts the traveler so much so that rather than seizing the dream, we keep it on the shelf so it can live in our imaginations most beautifully.

Like the next person, I don’t want to be disappointed on my honeymoon. I don’t think Greece will disappoint me, but just in case it does, I have back up. The place I dreamt about at 20 years old was beyond my imagination. Sicily proved to be an island that I would never forget. It filled up my imagination until it burst. You can’t expect every aspired journey to live up to what you have created in your mind. Sicily however did in a way that I could imagine. I ache for a place  that gives me utter excitement again. It is exciting in that it is too good for our imaginations.

The whole point of this rant about the universal honeymoon perhaps has no point at all other than this. We can wish up these places, put them in our imaginations and file them away as just that. Or we can save our meetings with the dream for something special. No matter how long it takes to meet the hope, at least it is always on the table. I’m going toward my dream trip in September because I know just how inspiring those trips can be. I need a trip that will inspire me again. Like my travels to Sicily at 20, the rare excitement for a place, the unique time when a destination exceeds our imaginations is the very reason to pursue the travels of your dreams. You might not have a bride or a groom, but you don’t need them to take my translation of viaggio di nozze, a trip that marries our dreams with reality.

Do you have a dream trip that you haven’t quite made a reality? 

“These were my conversations in Sicily, over three days and their respective nights. They finished as they had begun. But I must note that something else happened after the end.” –Elio Vittorini, Conversations in Sicily

All across Sicily, from dinner plates to the flag, you will see the Sicilian Trinacria. The ancient symbol features a less frightful head of Medusa surrounded by three legs. Its meaning is somewhat muddied. Some say the symbol represents the shape of Sicily, used by the ancients to distinguish the island. Others say it refers to the Phoenician god of Baal, god of time. The three legs running represented the racing of time, the very cycle of nature. I was first introduced to the Trinacria, derived from the Greek word for triangle, on my study abroad semester in Sicily. At the time, it merely echoed a fragment of what I would come to know as Sicily. Little did I know that the meeting of time and location in Sicily, my translation of the Trinacria’s meanings, can be a very powerful confluence. 

The traveler is faced with all sorts of decisions. I sat in my sophomore dorm room faced with a decision. I could spend the fall semester of my junior year in Sicily or in Florence. Whichever location I did not venture to in the fall, I would head to in the spring. I didn’t think much of this decision about time and location. Italy is Italy after all. And for whatever reason, perhaps just by eeny, meeny, miny, moe, I selected to spend my fall semester in Sicily.

I arrived to the old town of Siracusa, known as Ortigia in late August of 2007. From the strange noises emitting from locals, sounds that certainly weren’t Italian to the clash of cultures right before me from the Greeks to the Arabs, I knew that I wasn’t in Italy but a far different location. My study abroad program featured just 13 students, much to my surprise. When you have such a small selection of people in a foreign land, you never know what you might get, feast or famine. 

I shook hands with one of those unknowns on the steps of a 13^th century palazzo. If you are going to meet someone for the first time, it might as well have been here. Time and location had collided in one of its rare forms, those means that you don’t recognize are truly special until you find yourself five and half years later traveling from Slovenia to the southern United States with that chance meeting. Forever the sarcastic skeptic, oddly enough I found my soul mate in a chance meeting of time and location.

Travel has given me far too much. I could never pay it back or say an adequate thank you. So often I encourage others to study abroad, to head out to far away lands and see what is on the other end. I spent nearly the majority of my collegiate years abroad, away from my home campus and in search of this careful meeting of time and location. For those that didn’t have the chance to study abroad, they can  wake up in the middle of their 9 to 5 desk job and crave something more. I believe those cravings are destined greatness. If you don’t follow them, you could wind up in a completely different world.  Travel can lead not just to an enrichment of the self, but relationships and friendships that you would never have if you just stayed home.

Last week I found myself in a different meeting of time and location. I walked into a grand ballroom at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. At its center was a table set for two and that man I met on the steps of Sicily on bended knee. The Sicilian Trinacria had appeared again, blending this time and location in a form that I recognized on those palazzo steps over five years ago. And just as I said yes to traveling, to going places for the sake of going, I said yes to someone I would have never met had I not made the decision to see where time and location will lead. 

Do you have a travel love story, a chance meeting of time and location that completely changed your life?

I’m waiting on a plane to Branson with a group of those with white hair and walkers. Mostly I see gentle smiles and kind eyes, those eager to get to Branson. I also see lots of confusion. So often I complain about the fatigue of travel. As a twenty something looking at lot of eighty somethings I recognize just how ridiculous my complaints are. The gate agent gets on the intercom saying, “I know a lot of you haven’t flown in a long time or this is your first time flying so listen up to how we do things around here.” This is air travel at its most confusing, when you haven’t flown in decades or you have never been on a plane.

I picture myself at 90 traveling on an airplane. The whole process is exhausting without 65 more years under my belt. The build up to the airport drop off always wears me out. Packing is exhausting. Beating traffic is fatiguing. Once I arrive, it is a zoo inside, but I have youth on my side. At 90, I won’t have youth to brave through the utter mess that is airport security. At 90, my bones might be a bit more fragile that one slip on the jet-way and my hip is broken rather than just a bruise.

We begin boarding. The first group to be called is anyone who needs extra time getting on the plane or those traveling with small children. The entire gate area stands up to mosey on to the plane. Everyone on this flight needs extra time.

I patiently wait my turn for I know a few ninety year olds. I have heard accounts of the trials of mobility with the onset of years. My grandma doesn’t drive anymore. If she wants to travel, she must rely on someone else. I can’t imagine losing this ability to go where I will, when I want. However I know that I wouldn’t want the ninety year old me behind the wheel. Traveling in old age becomes infinitely more difficult, but perhaps some of those not in the elderly age bracket make it all the more a challenge for those elderly travelers.

Boarding takes what seems like ages, but finally we are up in the air. A quick hour passes and the pilot announces that we will be landing soon. I sit in the second to last row of the plane, behind a group of forty-somethings. As I survey the sea of gray hair in front of me, I realize that I’m not getting off of the plane anytime soon and frankly I am just fine with that. However one of those forty somethings behind me is not.

As we all sit and wait our turn for it would be sheer pandemonium to try and get off the plane before the row in front of you, this man takes it upon himself to hurry the rows upon rows of elderly in front of him. He retorts to his colleagues, “I don’t know why everyone is waiting their turn!” Well sir, you are in the last row on the plane. Should you claw your way to the front of the plane, climbing over passengers in front of you, you are only delaying everyone from getting off the plane.  

I have seen this practice in Europe where if you don’t step out into the aisle immediately once that seat belt sign goes dark, the rows behind your will storm. Now I am seeing this more often in the United States. By trying to race off of the plane before the row in front of you, a giant bottleneck forms. I understand those instances where people need to make connections, but there are no connections to be made for this man.

The six rows of white hair don’t know what to do about this man. They need to get their bags down from the overhead bins and he is hurriedly standing in their way. When you hurry someone that hasn’t traveled in decades or a person that has never flown, something bad can happen. A false step could lead to some broken bones.

The man with an eighties haircut doesn’t care. He bumps on past the elderly as though they were just some slow obstacles in his path rather than actual human beings. His friends have the decency to wait their turn. I breathe a sigh of relief once I see that his lack of respect for elder travelers doesn’t cause a major medical problem. As I walk off of the plane, at the end of the jet-way, I see the hurried man, waiting for his friends. Rushing a bunch of fragile travelers off of the plane was clearly out of necessity for him. He was in a hurry to wait.

With every elderly traveler that I see on a plane, I try to put myself in his or her position. Travel can be hard enough as it is, but I imagine when you are older, it is a challenge to say the least. I admire those who continue to travel with age. Instead of hurrying them off of plane, we should pause and applaud what they are doing. I can’t wait to ride on a plane with that man in a few decades time. Hopefully by that point, he will have learned to respect his elder travelers because he is indeed one of them now. 

Hopefully what I will look like when I’m 90.

Have you ever seen an elderly person mistreated on your travels?

The road on the map is a squiggly line that appears to connect with the Pig Trail Scenic Byway in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas. That darting line of indecision proves to be the rockiest of roads with no cushy marshmallows to break up the bumps. The car stops as the windows roll down. I listen to the chatter of the leaves in the wind. The sound is magically uninterrupted. Time suspends.

Lately I have been struggling with travel, time and money. There never seems to be enough of these three. Travel and time collided for me on a whirlwind trip through Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, Vienna, Zurich and Lucerne at the beginning of the month. Views were only appreciated for brief moments. Feelings weren’t given enough time to grow for each destination. And yet on that back road in Arkansas, I found travel, time and money meeting in their simple, true forms. 

I pass by barns that look like they have seen a few covered wagons roll past. Deer frolic in open fields as they though don’t have a care in the world, despite the fact that hunting season is in full swing down south.

I have nothing but time to get lost down these stretches shaded by bright orange leaves. And with time comes the ability to soak up the travel experience. Each bend in the road, every change in direction is not just a foggy muddled mess in my mind, but rather an experience of fall in Arkansas. I don’t have 5 minutes to enjoy the view or just $5 to spend on the experience. I am penniless and content. 

I have wondered if my ability to merely let travel and time go as they will has something to do with the lack of funds spent on the experience. To traverse the back roads of Arkansas, you don’t necessarily need to be rich in your pockets. A few gallons of gas will see me through this afternoon excursion. There are no hefty plane ticket prices, baggage fees or admission tickets tacked on to this lazy weekend adventure. With no real life worries, I can focus on the task at hand, simply traveling through a corner of the world. 

My simple journey of bumpy back roads meets up with the paved Pig Trail Scenic Byway. It travels through the rugged Boston Mountains of the Ozark Mountains. Around 19 miles, a few other cars travel beneath the tunnel of foliage. 

With the afternoon quickly fading and the evening creeping in, my journey becomes an act of chasing the sun. I pause at an overlook, blanketed in shadows. 

And in chasing the sun, it becomes clear that I am in a metaphorical race. I want to capture this day, this simplistic travel moment under the sunlight. In many respects, I don’t want it to end for I know these days are few and far between, days where time, travel and money meet in their best light, a light you don’t notice until its gone. You don’t need a full bank account to see the world. You just need to see the world in the subtleties of travel.  

Have you ever had a similar travel day, one where time and money seem to fade in significance and you can focus on the travel experience completely?

“One, two, three, four,” I utter as I count the number of people hitting me on the Brooklyn Bridge. Before you get too scared, I am on the pedestrian walkway, high above the roaring traffic below. These little brushes with my fellow walkers aren’t so damaging to me physically but perhaps emotionally. I often hear the words “wonderful” and “pleasant” used to describe the journey across the Brooklyn Bridge. And as I met a teen face to face on the Brooklyn Bridge, one of those who at a crowded mall at the holidays lets oncoming pedestrian traffic move for them, we collided somewhere over the East River. 

What no one tells you about the Brooklyn Bridge is that it can literally drive you mad, something I imagine remains eerily connected to its rather dark history. A white line divides the two sides of the pedestrian platform, one side for bikers and one for those on foot. And those little sections are divided themselves with giant arrows pointing where you should be on your side, depending on if you are coming into Manhattan or leaving it. And below all of this commotion are cars, trucks and vans gliding on by at speeds I don’t want to know from up here. 

I am not a rule breaker. I stay inside the lines of the coloring book like the best of them. However I have my limits. On the Brooklyn Bridge, you must fight for your right to stay alive. I can see that teen I will later collide with up ahead. The whole group of four has now spanned the entire walk lane, hording over both sides of traffic. They are even overflowing into the bike lines. As bikes come whizzing past, a tourist could very well go down in this moment and I hold my resolve. I won’t become a statistic on this bridge. And with a boom and a teenage hairy eyeball, I stay on my lane and my side, all to survive this bridge. 

My struggles on the Brooklyn Bridge are truly minor compared to those who built the connector between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Over a hundred workers were paralyzed while working on the bedrock 44 feet below. At least two dozen died in fires, explosions and collapses while building the Brooklyn Bridge. Even the own bridge’s creator, John Augustus Roebling never got to see his design come to fruition. Roebling died in a freak accident days before construction began. His son Washington would take over until he too would experience caisson disease due to working on the bedrock. His wife Emily would help communicate Roebling’s vision. She would also be the first to ride over the bridge when it opened on May 24, 1883.  

I guess I had visions of the Brooklyn Bridge being a somewhat romantic experience. Coming from one land to another via an 1883 construction has a certain ring to it. It is also mere poetry to traverse a landmark that would in essence change New York forever. And yet, I can’t enjoy it completely. With each passing step, there is another group that takes over the walkway and the bike path. Luckily for the bikers they have bells to ring to get these saunters to move. I need a bell to keep sane.  

The constant brushes with tourists and locals are nothing new. Just after the Brooklyn Bridge’s opening, a stampede occurred, killing 12 and injuring 35 people. Apparently some believed the bridge was collapsing so mass hysteria took place. In an effort to put minds at ease and avoid future catastrophe, circus promoter P.T Barnum brought 21 elephants across the bridge to show its strength. 

I reach the halfway point and I stop, putting aside my impatience to take in the moment I had envisioned. Another world is just a half mile away. I imagine what Emily Roebling thought of her journey across the water. So much loss went into building the first steel suspension bridge in the world. I hypothesize it was a bittersweet journey for Emily, just as my trip across walking on water was today. 

By the time I make it to the end of the Brooklyn Bridge, I collapse on a few benches provided. These seem cleverly placed for those who just went insane on the Brooklyn Bridge journey. I can handle a one mile walk, but not when with each step I could be taken out by a teen or a biker. 

If you want to survive the Brooklyn Bridge, I recommend staying inside the lines, making the walk at less busy times of the day and pulling to the side to marvel at the view of Lower Manhattan to keep you grounded. I also think being annoyed by the crowds while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge is inextricably woven into its very design and construction. The struggles of those who gave their lives for a job or perhaps just to connect two worlds is felt with every near take down by a biker or brush with a teen on the wrong side of the line.  Sometimes the passages we take to reach our destinations are not always how they are described. They are not always pretty, but at least they aren’t boring. 

Have you ever crossed the Brooklyn Bridge? Did you find it to be a death trap or a pleasant stroll?

They joked about their ex-wives as I stepped up to the ring. I was about to let two crusty old men dangle me from a 15^th century castle, all to kiss a stone whose surface probably belongs in a petri dish rather than a top tourist attraction. As I let the strange man hoist me upside down, I could see the glowing green earth below from an angle unknown to me. I was alone in Ireland, doing things I would have never considered solo activities before, including putting my faith in strangers to bring me back up from my big smooch with the Blarney Stone. 

It would be an utter shame to miss out on seeing a country merely because I had no one to accompany me. The excuses for not traveling run deep, with many pertaining to money, lack of vacation time and of course that pesky little reason that going alone is not an option. My first completely solo trip, one where I didn’t plan on meeting a friend a few weeks into my travels, took place in Ireland. I was asked a few weeks ago what was the best place to travel solo. I couldn’t help but reply Ireland. 

There are only so many words you can utter to convince someone to try traveling alone at least once, especially when the only other option is to stay home. Sometimes the images of what we are missing are the only elements that can spur a person to book that ticket on a whim, even when everything inside of them is trying to stop that fateful click of the mouse. In a few words and a whole lot of images, I found that being alone in Ireland was worth every minute of silence and those moments of doubt. 

The bed and breakfast scene in Ireland tends to comfort the solo traveler, mostly through its décor and hot meals. I stayed in places that probably hadn’t been remodeled in decades, ones adorned in cow themes and others that featured teddy bears for a little comfort. Whether you stay in a hostel, hotel, bed and breakfast or even rent Sykes holiday cottages in Ireland, the solo traveler’s best comfort is that breakfast in the morning. By the end of my month alone in Ireland, I was a tad sick of bacon, eggs and mysterious puddings, but I realized along the way these moments at breakfast tables across the country provided a great deal of home. I would feast on the meal all while planning out my day. Breakfasts in Ireland served as the constant to every day. No matter what would transpire that day, triumph or defeat, the breakfast table was always there. 

Part of what I think makes Ireland so easy for a solo traveler came through its settings. I found myself staring at the haphazard gravestones in Glendalough shortly after arriving. There were countless tour groups around me and voices of those long since past. We toss around the phrases “solo travel” and “begin alone”, but in essence, that is very rarely the case. I found this out on that chilly day amidst the moss-covered graves of Glendalough. 

It is even more difficult to be alone in Ireland when you find yourself in the country on a major holiday like Saint Patrick’s Day. I secured a perch for the parade in Galway over a cappuccino. I wanted to be alert in order to observe the faces in the crowd, the juggler who just couldn’t juggle and the idea that crowds comfort the traveler alone. We all shared in the simple joys of seeing what act or float would come down the street next. 

I made my way up to the Dingle Peninsula on the west coast of the country to sit in beehive forts from 500 B.C. The thing about Ireland is that you might have a sense of self-consciousness for your first time traveling alone, but then you quickly realize you aren’t the first. I imagine the isolation one must have felt to reside in these forts and ponder the isolation of solo travel. We are all connected in the end merely by being here. 

Perhaps my favorite image of Ireland alone is not just one scenario. The images in my mind are those faces I had multiple conversations with, conversations I wouldn’t have been daring enough to make with a friend by my side. From the perfumer in the Burren to the café owner in Clifden to my own relative in the tiny town of Teelin, these conversations are what make solo travel thrive. 

The Homeland, Teelin, Ireland

I would cross over into Northern Ireland, technically a different land with a different currency to prove it. I captured the giant at his causeway at the Giant’s Causeway, a scene of pure ironic poetry. 

I crossed the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge as salmon fishermen have for decades, all with crashing waves below. I watched as a castle fell into the water and the funds in my wallet disappear without my knowledge. 

At the end of my solo travels, I was robbed in Belfast and soon wanted to return home. And at the same time, I knew this was just another test of being alone in Ireland. Could I handle it? Suddenly my favorite images of solo travel in Ireland flashed in my mind and I knew I could. For without these visions and without a giant leap of faith to trust in being alone away from home, I would be less complete. These images of being alone in Ireland would never have been had I not clicked purchase to go alone. You might not think solo travel is for you, but if you are not traveling for this reason, you could be missing these scenes, conversations and memories the camera has captured for the mind eternally. They are behind doors you have closed, ones that are just waiting to be opened.

Have you traveled alone in Ireland? What do you think is the best place to try solo travel for the first time?

This post was sponsored by Sykes Cottages.