Lesson- Change is always in your favor (if you believe it is)

On Day 7, after my friend and I had finally settled into a beautiful lakeside loft hotel in Varenna, our plans changed yet again. The hotel we were staying at only had availability for one night, and we needed to find another place to stay.

The town of Varenna was completely booked. It felt a little ridiculous that we had spent the better part of a day getting there to spend one night, but there genuinely was no other option. (I technically knew of an Airbnb with availability, but come on now 😏)

It felt annoying to relocate, especially after the journey I described yesterday, but after seeing what we were able to come up with under pressure, I knew things were going to work out.

We found a hotel in Bellagio, one of the more famous parts of Lake Como, packed up and left our bags in the hotel lobby to explore Varenna for a few hours.

Around 2pm we got back on a ferry (this one, thankfully, only 30 minutes) and made our way to Bella...

Lesson: The Journey is the Destination—You’ve Already Arrived

On day 6, I migrated from Florence to Lake Como, and it was a VOYAGE.

The train from Florence to Como San Giovanni (which I thought was my final stop) takes approximately 3.5 hours, and it includes a transfer in Milan.

I was meeting up with my friend Jessica, who texted me when I was about a half hour away.

“Dude we need to get on another train for 2 hours—we booked our tickets for the wrong station. We need to go to Varenna.” I kind of started to melt down. Time is so precious when you travel and 2 hours on another train felt gut wrenching. I wanted to experience Italy!

After further research, we found that we could take a ferry that got us to Lake Como if we hustled. Before concluding the ferry was our best option, we tried everything to avoid it altogether. It felt like such an inconvenience—we just wanted to arrive already!

Little did we know, the ferry turned out to be one of the most incredible parts of the trip. For 10 euro...

Lesson- Honor Where You Are!

I was first to the meeting spot the next morning for my tour of Tuscany. I was in a better mood than I had started the day before, having had such a great time at Cinque Terre. I was excited to potentially make even more new friends.

I was the first to arrive. We have a group of seven today, the guide notified me. OK, not a great first sign; my fear that the tour was going to be all couples started to kick in. Couple number one showed up. They were 10 or so years older than me, and quickly struck up a conversation.

A few minutes later, couple number two showed up, followed by, you guessed it, couple number three.

I was a seventh wheel in one of the most famous romantic destinations on earth. And of course I was the only one wearing a white dress 🤦🏼‍♀️

Everyone introduced themselves in the van. “Well cats out of the bag, we just got engaged last night!” The guy in the front seat beamed, showing off his new fiancé. The couple in the middle seat was from Canada and...

Lesson: You’re Not As Alone as You Think

On my first full day in Florence, I went on a day trip to Cinque Terre.

The day trip started with a 2-hour bus ride, which took us to a train that went to each of the towns in Cinque Terre. I sat on the bus in silence and was seriously in the worst mood ever. As much as I was enjoying my own company, I had barely spoken to anyone else in 3-days, and I was getting a little lonely. Rome had been a high for me, and my time in Florence felt like a crash.

It was one of those days where my thoughts were just not on my side, and I felt stupid for being on a tourist excursion. Looking back, I want to shake myself!! You’re in Italy, girl!! Logical or not, a bad mood was my reality at the time.

One of the girls on the group asked if she could sit near me when we got on the train, and I reluctantly agreed. I was in one of those bad moods where you literally don’t want to talk to anyone because you want to just sulk in your own misery. I started to realize how ...

Lesson- Take Yourself Out! You Just Might Learn Something.

 In the past, I described myself as a “doer not a planner” and I never saw anything wrong with this. (Pretty ironic for someone who is launching a planner next year, right?)

 What I meant was “I’m too insecure to form an opinion about what I actually want to do, so I’m going to let (make) you decide instead. I have no preferences.”

 I liked to be invited to things, but I never initiated plans. I liked to be told where to be and at what time, and I liked to complain when no one asked me to hang out. “I’m down for whatever” was another tagline I liked to frequently employ.

 It semi served me, and I got to participate in awesome experiences, but none of this brought me any closer to understanding myself. I was a people pleaser, but I never understood what truly made me happy.

 Enter solo travel.

 Solo travel truly helped me develop and identify my preferences. I learned more about what I liked without the pressure of trying ...

Lesson: Not everything is all or nothing, this or that 

My soul led me to an Italian church service. I take no conscious ownership of this decision—I can’t even tell you the last time I even went to mass. I attempted to go to the coliseum for a tour on that Sunday morning, but it was sold out in English, so I wandered around the campus and before I knew it, I stumbled into a church. I was lured in by the beautiful service in Italian.

For those who know me, I’ve really connected to my spirituality over the past few years. I’ve probably offered you an energy reading or have sent you reiki. Maybe I’ve saged your apartment, gifted you a crystal or guided you through a meditation. For me, my spiritual practice has been my way of managing my mental health, particularly my anxiety, and it’s become an important part of who I am.

 I wasn’t particularly surprised to find myself in a church; my grandmother had guided me on this trip, after all, and she was a devout Catholic. Her faith got her ...

Things got worse before they got better.

The last time I traveled to Europe, I was 21 years old, studying abroad in London. I still look back on the experience as one of the happiest periods of time in my life, yet I hadn’t been back in almost a decade. I kept waiting for an engraved invitation.

I’d look at couples who took trips and blamed not having a boyfriend as the issue. Disclaimer: for a long time, I viewed this as the root cause of nearly every problem I had in my life.

I finally received my engraved invitation to Europe in May, in the form of a trip to Croatia to celebrate one of my dearest friends getting married. I backed out less than a week before the trip because of work. I let fear, excuses and anxiety get in the way of yet another experience, and I seriously let down someone I loved.

In case it’s not already blatantly obvious, being single was never the problem- the problem was, and had always been, me. The golden opportunity to go abroad I had been waiting 9 years on had c...