I hesitated putting up this post. I started writing it to give clients a bit of history on my personal travel so they could see I have experience in the industry. However, after I started listing out various trips it started to look like I haven’t worked a day in my life. On the contrary, I just spend all my free time planning trips 🙂 I love traveling, so I won’t be apologetic about it. We have made travel a priority in our lives and I feel like our lives are more fulfilled because of it. We have also worked with various budgets over the years, and found out how far the dollar will stretch when we are forced to stretch it, and how much we appreciate the luxuries when we are able to afford them. My goal with this post is to help you be more confident in entrusting your hard-earned vacation plans to me, and knowing I will make the best of them.
Getting The Travel Bug
As a child, most of my travel consisted of road trips with my family. Being on very tight budgets, we brought our own food and shared motel rooms five to a room. We drove 28 hours one way to southern Florida. We went to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. We went to Arizona. But by far my favorite trip was Washington DC and seeing the history of our country come alive.
I have very fond memories of these trips, but I would have to say I really caught the “travel bug” when studying abroad in college. It was a nervewracking but exhilerating experience for me, something I never thought I would do. All of a sudden I was living in an apartment in a different country. I took advantage of my base in Barcelona, Spain and went on weekend trips all over Spain. My roommate and I jumped on last-minute cheap flights to Paris and Geneva, and went cross-country hostel hopping on spring break in Italy.
Our European Tour
My future husband visited me while there and caught the bug himself. We saved as much as you can in college and postponed our full time jobs for two months. I don’t want to say we did something as cliche as backpacking across Europe, so I will say we travelled with carry-on sized roller bags instead. We rented someone’s apartment (pre-Airbnb, via Craigslist and Skype – yikes) and then alternated between hostels, hotels, and the occasional airport and train station lobby. We visited several areas of Germany, Prague, Paris again, Amsterdam, Salzburg, Vienna, Dublin, and London. Finally we ended the trip via train in Italy. We stopped throughout Italy from Venice all the way down in the island of Sicily. (Who knew a train could ride a ferry to Sicily?)
In order to accomplish this on an almost non-existant budget required meticulous planning. There were certain things I would not compromise on (when going to Paris, I had to go to Versailles, even if it did cost $20 each and the price of extra train tickets). We ate apples with nutella for lunch that day. (Okay, everyday).
While on my college Spring break trip, I saw the unexpected expenses other friends had run into because of poor planning, and I was not going to make those mistakes. For me it was a matter of making these trips on budget or not being able to make them at all. In doing this, I discovered a love for planning trips almost as much as going on them.
My love for Travel Grew, as did my comfort zone.
When visiting Costa Rica, we made it a priority to travel to Nicaragua. It was a completely different experience from any other I’ve had. Our business-travelmates thought we were crazy, but it was my favorite and most memorable part of the trip. As with every travel, we took necessary precautions and made sure we were not putting ourselves in dangerous situtions. That is one area where I do not make compromises. But having done the research, we knew we were in safe areas and with a very competant guide who made getting in and out of the country possible when we never could have done it on our own.
Since then we have returned to Europe a few times, first visiting Budapest and Eger, Hungary and Venice, Italy for a second time. After discovering a love of cruises, we took two European routes. In the first we visited Athens, the Greek Isles, and parts of Turkey. In the second we traveled back to Barcelona where I got to visit my old haunting grounds and see the progress on Sagrada Familia. We traveled around the Iberian coast up through Lisbon and ended in Southhampton. We even managed to visit Windsor Castle just months before the Royal Wedding.
And then we had to start Adulting
After getting married and having kids, we have learned a whole new set of travel rules, limitations, and ways to experience fun traveling. We currently go camping two out of three weekends in the summer and have grown closer to family and friends because of it. I have organized extended family vacations of up to sixteen people that can coincide with work trips, allowing both work and play. Our travel in our home state of Minnesota and the United States has grown extensively.
Wait, You Can Relax While On Vacation?
About five years ago, we went on our first Caribbean cruise with my brother and sister in law, on the Celebrity Constellation, and were immediately hooked. We all had doubts going into it. My sister in law was afraid of being on a ship, my husband was worried the food would not be up to our new found “foodie” standards, and I felt like I would be bored, not being allowed to fill every minute of the day with a pre-defined activity. We were all blown away. To say the quality, price and entertainment surpassed our expectations is an understatement. We are now officially cruisers, as well. I should mention by this time I stayed in several very nice resorts and hotels, so it wasn’t just the awe of coming from a hostel either 😉
The Next Chapter
This post is about my travels because I want my clients to see I am willing to take on any sort of travel need. I learned from experience how to navigate bus routes in ten different countries. I booked train tickets in eight countries. I rode elevated trains, electric trams, and subways that doubled as bomb shelters. I learned to converse with people when neither of us spoke the same language. I rented a Smart car to (make my husband) drive the audubon. I cruised. I drove. I flew. But most of all, I planned. And planned.
To get the most out of a vacation, you can’t just pick the top five sites out of a book. What if it isn’t open the day you want to go? What if it is closed for renovation, or a holiday? What if you planned to take a train to see it and the train schedule is twenty minutes behind? What if you took a taxi there but there is no way to get a taxi back? What if you literally can’t read the bus schedule because it is in a different language? What if there are no ATMs and you ran out of money? Unfortunately, I’ll be honest, all of these things have happened to me at one time or another. But that is the benefit of making the mistakes myself; I have already learned from them and know what random things to check for in the future.
I hope I have instilled some confidence in you about my knowledge and dedication to making a travel plan go the best it can. While there is no way to make things perfect while traveling, there are a lot of ways to make it better, and that is what I hope to do for you. If I have inspired you to take a vacation, contact me here.
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