Bird In a Fishbowl: Traveling

A feature where I talk about books or life things that I read/did that are out of the norm for me. More info can be found on this sporadic feature here.

So as most of you know I recently went to Europe, London & Paris. If you want to read my recap posts and see some pictures you can here and here.

Going to Europe was a big deal for me. Phil and I have been talking about doing it for a couple years now, but every time I have started to plan I've gotten completely overwhelmed and just quit. It's a lot of planning, but that's not really why I've quit. I've quit because it scared me. Going to a foreign country is just scary. I can do resorts easily enough because once you're at the resort you don't really leave. But this would be exploring two huge cities all by ourselves. What if I get lost? What if I can't figure it out? It was, in a word, SCARY. 

But this year, we decided we were actually going to do it. And I was bound and determined not to let my fears stop me. I spent hours upon hours planning this vacation. I had a spreadsheet itinerary for every day we were there. I even went so far as to buy street maps and highlight our routes each day that we would walk. I did a lot of research on the train system because I knew that would be cheaper than cabs. 

When we first arrived in London every instinct in me screamed to get a cab. But I fought that. I wanted to do this like a real city dweller. So we followed the signs that took us to the Underground. We bought ourselves Oyster cards and we rode the train all the way to our hotel. And once that one train ride was under our belt we were fine. The Underground was super easy to use and I felt really comfortable with it. 

Walking around the city was easy too. Sure we looked like tourists at time with our street map in front of our face, but who cares? We only got turned around a couple of times, but we found our way again. Worst case scenario we walked until we found an Underground station and rode back to the hotel right? 

Then we took the train over to Paris and again, my instincts screamed at me to cab it. It was too scary. The signs were in French. And I know a little French, but still, it's scary. But once I again, I steeled my nerves and bought our metro tickets and headed down into the train system. And once again, it was easy to use and we made it to our hotel safe and sound. 

The Paris streets were a little harder to navigate because there are so many little alleyways and traffic circles that you can get turned around pretty easily. But if you get lost in Paris, you end up running into cute restaurants or bakeries or boutiques and you don't really mind that you got lost at all. And once again, we never got turned around so badly that we were hopelessly lost. We always found our way again. 

The nice thing about both cities is the river. If you can get to the river it's pretty easy to orient yourself. That was kind of a focal point for me with both cities. 

I couldn't have done this trip without my amazing husband, Phil by my side. He helped me through every step of the way and every time I started feeling panicky he calmed me down and reminded me what an amazing place we were in. And reminded me that if we got lost, we were getting lost together and how bad could that really be? Love you, Phil! 

I'm really proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone and now I feel more confident in our future travels. I've done it once, I can do it again. Next up: Italy! Oh god, I can't wait to eat all the food. 

What's something you've done recently that was completely out of your comfort zone?