Changing Plans

My life in one word: Movement. Moving to new places both physically, mentally, and emotionally. I've especially noticed how much change occurs in a person, and in myself, throughout these last couple of months in Europe. This European experience was inexplicable. Something that helped me to grow as a person, friend, and traveler. To put into words my experiences almost seems impossible, but I know I have to try. Try and recollect the good times, frustrating times, and awkward times that reprised our trip. 

Someone recently asked me what my favorite part of this trip was, and I really enjoyed that question. So far, I've been asked what my favorite country was or my favorite thing that we did, but the way this new question was worded was easier for me to answer. Asking my favorite part gave me the opportunity to reflect on all-encompassing aspects of this trip instead of simply one thing in particular. My answer? I loved the flexibility. Rosemary and I hardly ever planned anything up until the day we were going to do it. There were times in which we did have to schedule things further in advance, but most of the time we woke up and asked each other what we wanted to do that day. While this travel style doesn't work for just everyone, it most definitely worked for us. Not only did it give us wiggle room to split off if we wanted to see different things, but it allowed us to relax the entire trip. No stressing to make it to reservations, just go with the flow. Not to mention, if we met people along the way (which, we met plenty of people) we could plan stuff with them and not have to re-work months of planning. My advice for anyone planning a long European venture is to save the planning for overseas. 

Straying away from my favorite part of this trip, I can start attempting to answer the other burning questions I've received over the past few weeks... I guess. So the most popular questions has been what country I liked the best. This question is particularly hard for me because I loved every single country and would revisit each one in a heartbeat. In total, Rosemary and I managed to visit ten countries. Because of the sheer amount of places we visited, each one brought something new and refreshing to the trip. Whether that included different scenery, night life, or food, it was constantly changing. Some stand outs did include Morocco, Lake Bled and Ljubljana in Slovenia, Dubrovnik in Croatia, and Budapest in Hungary. Not that the other areas weren't amazing, but those are the stand-outs for me. As I was writing those, though, I felt really bad I couldn't simply list everywhere we went. That being said too, all of those places were interesting for completely different reasons, making this question that much more difficult and vague to answer.

Alright, on to the next: What was my favorite thing we did? I actually have an answer for this one, I promise. In each new city or country, Rosemary and I would take a walking tour to get a lay of the land and learn some history about the area. I LOVED those. We always did the free walking tour, which you sign up for online and the only expense is tipping the tour guide at the end. Most of the time the tour guides were locals that had grown up and currently lived in the area, giving us the perfect brain to pick for food and activity suggestions. The groups were relatively small giving us plenty of opportunities to speak with the guide and ask questions. Recommended for any place you go!

Those were just a few of the questions I received whilst abroad. I'm sure I can think of more and will be telling stories on here about that trip for a while. So stay in touch, stay in mind, and stay tuned. Cheers! :)