While I had traveled quite a bit domestically, it wasn’t until I was 25 that I finally got myself abroad. Sure, I had been to Mexico when I was two, but the foggy memories of dirt roads, stray dogs, and buying a Sprite with pesos in a border town didn’t seem substantial enough to “count.”
While I was a student I wanted to study abroad, and professors would always tell me that this was my best opportunity to travel, but it just wasn’t in the cards for me. I was a full-time student with no job and even with scholarships the price tag was large and I didn’t feel comfortable asking my parents for so much.
My job out of college was low-paying. As an AmeriCorps member at a domestic violence program, I’m lucky to do meaningful work, learn a lot, and get a great head start on my career. I love being an AmeriCorps but my living allowance comes out to less than minimum wage. Once again, travel just seemed impossible.
Then, I discovered Scott’s Cheap Flights. I heard about Scott from a thread on Reddit and immediately signed up for his free newsletter. Every day, I got emails about cheap fares all over the world. I had no idea that I could fly to Europe for $400! Traveling finally seemed possible for me.
I discussed destinations with J and we agreed that we would fly in and out of Paris over his two-week Spring Break. I saved up money for a month, keeping a strict budget, before purchasing a roundtrip ticket from Denver to Paris for $420 (including travelers insurance). My trip was now official and I felt elated.
Now what?
I created a Google Doc and invited J to edit. There we shared our flight itineraries and settled on the cities we would visit and our timeline for doing so. That is about where my fun began and I discovered my passion for planning. I made a list of each city and found four or five different options for AirBnbs we could stay in for each place. I made a list of every sightseeing activity for each city and information about each one. I looked up great bars and restaurants, their locations, their specialties, average cost of a meal. Before I knew it, I had 18 pages of information to work with.
I’m not necessarily the type of traveler that plans out every minute of her trip. I like spontaneity and choice. However, I also like it when I don’t spend an hour on Yelp that would be better spent exploring a new city. I like to have all of the information from the get-go so it is easier to tackle while abroad. A mistake I made when creating my first trip itinerary was not taking the location of restaurants and bars into account enough. I love food but my bigger priority is sightseeing, so I’m not going to travel twenty minutes to get to a specific restaurant when I am already starving. Now when I create travel itineraries, I find places that are in areas I am already going to visit.
My Google Doc was also handy for J and I figuring out plane and train tickets between cities. I looked up the tickets and we coordinated their purchases. I paid for the trains, he paid for the planes. I paid for some AirBnbs, he paid for others. It helped making these purchases a few weeks apart so it was less burdensome on my bank account.
By January, J and I had paid for and booked everything we needed to for our March trip. From there, I got even more strict with my budget to save up spending money. Every morning as I drove past my local coffeehouse on the way to work, I reminded myself that every coffee I paid for in Laramie was a coffee I couldn’t have in Europe. Every time I came home late and felt tempted to order Thai food instead of cooking, I thought of all the amazing food waiting for me overseas.
It isn’t that I didn’t have any fun in the months before my trip. I had friends over to my downtown apartment (instead of going to bars). I read great books and binge watched some awesome television. I taught myself to knit and joined a knitting club, where I knit some grotesque looking disasters. Every night I didn’t go out and every morning that I drank the sub par coffee at my office was worth it for a really incredible trip. It’s about priorities and organization.
Since, I’ve made several more travel itineraries. Some for trips I didn’t even get to go on! I just awakened a love for researching and dreaming about new places.
