Getting back in to it…

Traveling holds different meanings to different people. Some may prefer the short distanced in country trips to the coastal areas. Perhaps a slightly longer trip to the beautiful hill country that we are blessed with. For me traveling has always been associated with the excitement of packing a suitcase; for a completely different weather. Even the mundane portion of going through baggage claim and passport checks excite me.

Considering all forms of transport, the one that puts me to ease is the airplane. I am not a fan of the speeding cars or rickety buses. Albeit the takeoff dose pose a slight jolt of adrenaline in me, but never in the fearful sense. Since the year 1996 I have been up and down on airplanes, at least once a year. The actual travel bug however caught me much closer to the year 2016.

To make a long story short my now – cousin sister in law and I wanted to plan a trip to Australia to surprise our partners. This turned in to an year long search in to getting visas without them knowing. However, since there was no way around it we had to reveal our plans to them. At the time of us planning this Europe was seen as the expensive and difficult place to plan a trip to – at least from here. One thing led to another and here we were planning two trips to Europe.

I will be honest, being unemployed at the time did not win me any favours with any of the travel agents. I am not going to name them here but over five informed me that I would not be able to get the visa because I was not working. Those who know me would tell, the day someone tells me something cannot be done, that is when I go in to super sonic mode.

I must have read a little short of 100 articles, watched so many videos, checked in to each national train bus carriers in Europe just to understand how all this works. Reading is second nature to me so this was the part I enjoyed. I calculated from the daily spend to the exact flight times, and decided on a 12 night trip covering 5 cities. I am not going to say that we covered entire cities in this short period of time, but I knew what I wanted to see.

The hardest part in this journey was losing my cocker spaniel ‘Maya’ 4 days before we were to depart. It was sudden and heartbreaking to the point that I don’t believe I have still recovered from it. Despite the challenges I was determined to make it work.

I am not going to get in to the necessities and the visa process that followed, this has already been covered before. However, now that post covid and post pregnancy I am getting back in to traveling, I believed it was time for an introduction that I never did before.

So until next time.. Happy travels!!!