On Travelling Alone

Hi everyone!
As you may or may not know, I spent the last two weeks travelling through Italy for my spring break. I travelled entirely alone for the first time in my life and it was quite an experience. Before I get all personal and deep let's start with what my itinerary was, ok?
March 25: 7hr train ride to Barcelona where I met Laura's incredible cousin who (with the help of his boyfriend) took great care of me!

March 26th: After a day of exploring Barcelona by bike with Javi I took a train to Girona where I got hopelessly lost trying to find my hostel for the night.

March 27th: Beginning at 4:30am I began my trip to Italy starting with a bus to the Girona airport for 6am flight to Pisa, Italy. Once in Pisa I took a bus to Florence where I waited for a train to Rome. I got hopelessly lost in Rome (again) trying to find my hostel.
Details about where I went will come during their individual posts.

April 1st: After five days in Rome I took a train back to Florence where I would spend the next four days.

April 5th: Train to Milan. I got lost again because the metros stopped mid travel to my hostel because of an attempted suicide so I had to wing it through the streets of Milan.

April 6th: Bus to Milan's airport for an 8am flight to Madrid where I took a 4.5 hr bus back to Vitoria!

Phew! What a whirlwind of travel, but through it all I stayed safe and healthy and had a great time.

Travelling alone was definitely a challenge as it isn't usually my style to go out and try new things without at least one person by my side. However, I am so glad I decided to do all of this on my own, just as I decided to come to Vitoria on my own because it has given me the ability to discover new strengths (and weaknesses) in myself that maybe I wouldn't have discovered if I could rely on another person. For instance, I now know how to read a map pretty freaking well, and I never got lost once while using one which I was pretty proud of in a monster of a city like Rome.

Being alone for almost 14 days also gave me a lot to think about.  I'll have to admit that sometimes it got the best of me and I had to work very hard to distract myself (seems pretty shallow seeing as I was in some of the world's most incredible places).  None of this thinking lead to any sort of concrete solutions of revelations, but I did have the ability to mull over things that could not have been done had I been with other people.

Starting the trip by myself was not easy as my first night I almost choked on my food with the thought of how ridiculous I looked sitting alone at a bar eating dinner.  However, I learned from my mistake of not having a book with me and that fixed my problem very quickly, not to mention no one really cares that you're eating alone. Once I hit Rome and started to explore I really started to appreciate what was happening.  I was seeing incredible history and beautiful views on every corner.  Not a day went by that I didn't thank the lord for allowing me to have such an incredible opportunity.  Sometimes when I was walking down the street and the sun broke through, I would just stand there with my eyes closed and really take in my life.  It didn't matter if anyone else was around because (as I learned earlier) no one else cared, and no one else mattered.  For those moments it was me, the sun, and an incredible city. I still have a hard time even wrapping my mind around being in Spain, but travelling around Italy really made it all seem like a dream.

I did learn a few things though.
1. Drink well.  Eat better.
2. Ibuprofen is your friend (your feet will thank you).
3. The Romans do not like toilet seats.
4. "Your vacation, your rules."  This was my mantra for two weeks. It means if I want to have gelato one hour after breakfast that I'll do it.  It means that if I want to see this museum and then backtrack to go to that piazza, that I'll do it.  It means that I'll do whatever it is that I want, on my time, to make myself happy.  And that's exactly what I did.

I'll post picture posts soon enough so you can have a taste of what I saw.

Autumn

 

(This is the only picture I have of myself and it's pretty bad/lame. But this was in Rome at the Forum).