I'm 22 years old, and I've never really travelled anywhere. Or, I guess I used to be able to say that. When I was in high school, I watched most of my friends jet off on foreign adventures here and there. I would watch them do road trips with their families over spring break. And I always stayed put, bingeing Friends for the six hundredth time and looking out to see the same old backyard I always have. I never really thought much about travelling back then. I had other things on my mind.
But now that I'm in my early 20's, it's all about backpacking your way to "self discovery". This was my year to take the plunge, and the only problem was that I had no one to go with me. So, I did some research and found a great company called "G Adventures" that takes a random group of people from the ages of 18 to 35 on the trip of their choice. I chose Europe. My choice had a little to do with the fact that it's a great spot to travel, and a lot to do with the fact that the trip was on sale.
Leading up to my European adventure, people kept asking me if I was nervous or excited and I didn't really have much to say back to them. Truthfully, I questioned how much this experience would affect me. I knew that it would be cool to go away but I wasn't sure that it was going to be "life changing" the way that everyone described it to be. But I now know that I was very wrong.
I learned so much about myself and about life itself. And it wasn't necessarily from seeing historical landmarks or from buying a bunch of Barcelona fridge magnets. It was the journey itself that changed me.
I'm a very shy person by nature, and I'm still learning to be comfortable with myself (mostly because I'm still learning who I even am in the first place). So I was less worried about the whole being in a different country and more focused on the hanging out with a group of random strangers for 10 days.
My first day was to be spent in Barcelona, and when I got there it was pouring rain and I wasn't even allowed to check in. I was too scared to really venture out much so I just waited in the lobby of my hostel for a few hours until it was time to meet up with my tour guide and the rest of my group. Not the most stellar first day. Finally, dinner time rolled around and I was able to check in and go out for dinner with the rest of my group. There were some people there around my age and some older, it was pretty well mixed. Everyone there seemed so friendly and just as tired and restless as I was.
My trip was mixed with people travelling on their own and people who had a travel buddy along with them. I felt like I needed to fit in somewhere for the trip to be bearable so I tried to buddy up with the girls that were on the same flight as me. We spent our first day together but by the second day, I was spending time with two different girls and I was really starting to gel with the group. I ended up learning one of my most important travel lessons; be open to getting to know everyone. I didn't feel stressed about having to spend my days with any particular person or schedule, because I had options everywhere. I ended up being so lucky with my group because everyone got along so well, and we enjoyed spending time together at night as much as we enjoyed doing our own things separately during the day.
I met so many different people and heard so many interesting stories about them and their lives. I learned about uniqueness and the gift of embracing it. I learned about letting go of this idea of what perfect and acceptable is, because the world is wide and full of different faces and personalities. It's one thing to know
that, and another to see it first hand.
After we left Barcelona, we headed straight to Madrid, and then Granada. Granada ended up being my favourite stop of the entire trip. Some highlights of my first few days were: renting boats at the Retiro Park Lake in Madrid, watching the sunset at Alhambra, seeing the beautiful architecture (especially Granada), gelato, gelato, gelato, and a very cheap but ample supply of Sangria pitchers. We also went to this club in Granada that had live music. It was one of the best nights of my life. Oh, and when my group and I were having dinner outside on the patio tables in Granada, we spotted a thief stealing a woman's purse across the street from us. My tour guide ended up heroically chasing the thief and after a few stressful minutes he returned with the bag in hand. Everyone on the street cheered for him and it felt like a surreal, can't believe it, movie moment.
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