Hey! So on my travels I spent my time staying in Hostels and in this post and the next few to follow I will be going into detail about :
Why I recommend staying in hostels,
The perks and drawbacks of hostels,
The different types of hostels,
and, how to pick a hostel
For this post, I’m just going to go into why I recommend staying in hostels in the first place. Enjoy!
WHY I WOULD RECOMMEND HOSTELS Just to start off, I love staying in hostels. I think it’s a fantastic way to meet people from all over the world in a really cool environment. Everyone’s there for the same reason, so it’s really easy to go and talk to people.
(For all of the introverted people whose hearts just crumpled, don’t worry. If you don’t want to talk to start conversation, someone else eventually will.)
Hostels are marketed towards people between the ages of 18 and 30. There will be someone your age (or close to it), and I gotta say, nothing makes a new place feel like home than meeting people your age with similar interests. It’s also amazing meeting people from all over the world and hearing their stories, learning about where they’re from and finding out where they’ve been and what kind of awesome things they’ve done. I had a blast in the hostels I stayed at and, especially when you’re travelling solo, it’s a really great opportunity to figure out who you are and what you’re looking for when you travel.
As an introvert, I was really nervous at my first hostel. I’ve never been one to initiate conversation–especially with people I don’t know. But once I figured out what kind of people I clicked with better, and began making some friends, it was a lot more fun. I ended up trying and enjoying a lot of stuff that I never would have done if I had been with family or friends from home.
On your own, there’s nothing holding you back from being completely authentic. No one knows you, and I can guarantee that the friends you’ll meet while you travel will be just as awesome and weird as you are.
In hostels you can book private rooms, but getting a dorm room is a lot less expensive and makes it easier to meet people. You can get male, female, or mixed dorms, so whichever you’re most comfortable with, they are available. But if you’re looking for an inexpensive place to stay where you can meet new people from all over the world, Hostels are definitely the place to do so.
Hostels have a great atmosphere and there’s a lot of cool people to meet and awesome places to see. So go forth and explore! The world is your oyster 🙂
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to travel. I’ve loved reading stories of adventure, of great journeys and quests, since I was a child; and I always wanted to go on an adventure of my own. I was introduced to travelling at a young age through my family. My grandparents and parents were my biggest influences of that, and it has always been a part of my life in some way, shape, or form. Starting at a young age, there was always a kind of ‘magic’ I associated with travelling, exploring, and adventures; and it still holds to this day.
I was first really introduced to travelling when my grandmother took me on a trip when I was 11 to Prince Edward Island.
Near the bottom right corner, the little PE is Prince Edward Island. (Shout out to Google Maps for any images of Maps I use.)
And despite the fact that my diet consisted of six boxes of Oreo’s, and sea food, I had a great time. I got to see Green Gables, run barefoot across the red beaches, and avoid the purple jellyfish that inhabit the waters on the coast. I have a lot of very fond memories of that trip, and it further fuelled my desire to travel more. My grandparents travelled a lot throughout their lives for school, work, and leisurely experiences. I grew up with their stories of where they’d been and what they’d seen and done. My grandfather especially used to bring us back souvenirs from his travels. He worked back and forth from China a lot when I was very young, and he’d bring us back journals and toys and singing candles for our birthdays. But their house was full of mementos from their travels–books, paintings, photographs, sculptures, et cetera–and, especially to the young mind, they were the artefacts of their grand adventures.
Then there’s also my mom’s parents. Every year they go south to escape the Canadian winter. Texas or Mexico are usually their choice destinations, and they always bring back stories of the places they’ve been and the people they’ve met.
My second big trip was the beginning of a series of family adventures. When I was 13, my parents bought a 1985 Volkswagen Westfalia and for the next 5 years, every big family trip would be gotten to via Hippy Bus.
What’s really at the end of the Rainbow? – Dad
Over the course of 3 summers, my family crossed Canada. I can proudly say that I’ve been to every province in Canada, and that we did it in a Hippy Bus. First, it was to Alberta. My brother, dad, and I went to the Canadian Scouting Jamboree in Sylvan Lake. It took 4 days to get there–2 to get out of Ontario–and while we were there, explored the Rocky Mountains and Alberta. My mom and sister flew out to meet us after the jamboree and we took a week to drive back home, giving us some time to see the sights we missed in our hurry to get to Alberta in time.
Dad, Erik, and I
When we FINALLY reached the Manitoba Border
Our Scout Troop at the end of the Jamboree
There was a giant goose statue. How can you not take a picture with a giant goose statue?
Cheesy photos became a running thing on our travels
There’s a big t-rex in Alberta. We couldn’t resist
This is a statue relaying the spirit of Lake Superior, or as it was originally called, Lake Gitchigumi
My Family at Lake Superior
Our Campsite on the shores of Lake Superior
From there, we went to Newfoundland and Labrador via the Trans Labrador Highway! I won’t go too into it now, but if you ever decide to take the Trans Labrador ‘Highway’, just keep in mind that 1. It’s not all paved, so be wary of your undercarriage, and 2. Find a rental. (Ruin it instead of your car) or rent a tank (because its undercarriage will actually survive the trip).
5 am Ferry to Newfoundland (Take 3… There’s a whole story to go with it)
The van broke down on our way through New Brunswick and we rented a car to get back home. My brother, dad, and uncle drove back a few months later to pick it up. We fixed it up and readied it for its final trek of the cross-Canada saga for the following summer.
Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island were our final destinations. We met up with some of my parent’s old navy friends, explored Halifax, Peggy’s Cove, and then, once again, Prince Edward Island.
Peggy’s Cove
The Rocks at Peggy’s Cove
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
Acadia University
We decided to test my sister’s concentration… She only noticed when we asked her how she fancied having wine poured on her head. (In jest) But for a solid 15 minutes of pulling tongues, she didn’t notice. Quite impressive, I must say.
Unfortunately, that was the last big family trip we took with the Westfalia. The next summer, we had scheduling complications, so no family trip. And then the year after, we attempted to go to the Gaspé but we had to turn around because of gear troubles with the Westy.
A few months later, it burst into flames. But it had a good run, and I have a lot of very fond memories and stories of where we went with it.
It was a few years later that my next adventure would happen. My Grandmother (the one who took me to Prince Edward Island) wanted to go on a three week trip to England, Scotland, and Iceland. She wanted one of my siblings and I to go with her. I volunteered first.
First look at The London Eye
Grandma on the London Eye
Family Picture!
Flowers in Scotland
Ferry Dog
Scenery of the Highlands
Unfortunately, a lot of my pictures from that trip were lost when my laptop at the time crashed. The hard drive went kaput, but these photos were saved. The trip started in London. Then we went up to Wigan to visit my family (on my dad’s and my mom’s side). After that, we travelled up to Scotland, visiting some family friends along the way. We took an Outlander tour and visited some of the castles they did their filming at. It was pretty freakin’ cool. And then our final stop was to Iceland. We were only there for a few days, and we got a chance to check out Reykjavik and go on a tour of the Golden Cirlce. It was a lot of fun.
My family went to Florida once when I was around 12, and then I went again with my grandma, sister, cousin, and my counsin’s other grandmother. Those trips were awesome. (On a note about Florida, Epcot and Universal are both much cooler than Disney World. Just a personal opinion)
So, all in all, I guess I could say that I’ve travelled a lot. Well, enough, anyway.
And then, of course, my most recent excursion. 5 weeks travel in Europe, but that deserves a post in and of itself.
With all of that to say…
In my experiences, I’ve always found that there’s been a certain magic to travelling. It opens your mind to new experiences, people, and cultures. The more I travel, explore, adventure, the more I want to learn and do. I met a lot of people on my travels, and I’ll never forget them. For me, travelling was about the experience. I wanted to go and see the world without having anyone else with me to rely on or, I feel terrible to say this, drag me down. I wanted a 100% solo experience. And I got it. And I have no regrets.
I learnt more about myself over the three weeks I was travelling by myself (my sister joined me for the last two weeks) than I have at perhaps any time of my life. I can’t express how much I hate to sound like ‘that stereotypical newly-enlightened-#WanderlustIsLife’ traveller. Yes, I am a traveller. Yes, I feel like I have gained a certain perspective because of travelling. No, I would not describe it as enlightenment. To be honest, coming home has made me feel like I had an ice cream cone and someone abruptly took it away from me. I found my people. My group. Some are jocks, artists, drama kids, mathletes, et cetera. I thought I found my place in the military, to be honest. The bond you get from being in cadets or the reserves is remarkable. But meeting my fellow bohemians, hippies, travellers, and vagabonds opened my eyes to something I never would have gotten from home. It was finally a group of people who I could relate to, associate and identify with, look back at and just say ‘yeah, that was me. 100% authentic me.
There’s a magic to travelling. And if you can go, if you want to go, just do it. Go explore, learn, live, embrace the weird and wonderful world out there and discover that magic for yourself
Planning a trip is something of a daunting task. I’m going to walk through the process I took to plan my first trip, and give some pointers about what I might do differently, and what I suggest to those planning their first trips.
Just to be clear, I don’t consider myself an expert planner. I like to think that I have enough experience to judge a badly planned trip and the capacity to plan a trip well, but I didn’t start out that way.
My first attempt at planning a trip looked something like this :
To be clear, there are 307 points on that map I was determined to visit over the course of a 6 month backpacking tour. I was 16 when I came up with this monster. Needless to say, that’s not what I did. Over the course of my last year in high school, I came up with a new plan. This one was much less complicated and extravagant, and it looked like this :
Only 43 points. To complete over a course of 5 weeks. I admire and laugh at the optimism of my past self.
My final plan, after much deliberation and editing, was narrowed down to 12 countries : 20 cities, and the flexibility of a steel post. No wiggle-room. No extra time. Nothing. All in all, a really bad plan. But the only thing that made me realise this was when my passport was delayed and I had to scrap the first few stops in my trip. When I started planning this trip, I sent my passport-renewal application in a month and a half before my tentative leaving, which is plenty of time… Until they sent the forms back because my signature didn’t match the one on my drivers license. So I had to resend all the papers back in, and was then told that it would be arriving mid-November, nearly two weeks after my initial date to leave.
Luckily it didn’t take that long.
But the time frame I thought I had forced me to narrow down my destinations even more. By the time I narrowed it down to 12 countries, I decided to change my tactic. Instead of definitely planning out my trip, I ‘planned’ out my trip. I came up with a list of places I wanted to go, and decided along the way where I was going to end up with a vague idea of how long I would be staying. This gave me the flexibility I desired, and the ability to go where I wanted to without worrying about deadlines. Once I decided to do that, I figured out three days I absolutely had to be somewhere. It was a good grounding point, and gave me a vague time frame for me to work in. Date number 1 : December 10th, My flight home. Manchester. Date number 2 : December 1rst, Surprise my Nanny for her birthday. Liverpool. Date number 3 : November 6th, FC Bayern Munich Game. Munich. It wasn’t much, but it worked out alright for me. After that, I came up with an idea of where I was going.
After Munich, I knew I either wanted to go to Vienna, Prague, or Krakow. I chose Vienna, and stayed for a few days. After Vienna, I decided to go to Prague. And that was pretty much how the rest of my trip went. I always had an idea of where I wanted to go next, and the people I met gave me urges to go to places I perhaps wouldn’t have if I had kept a very rigid schedule. And I have to say, it led me to some of the coolest places.
So, keep it simple and flexible, never go with your first plan, and keep in mind that plans can change. That’s the beauty of travelling solo.
So, as an 18 year old female, when I told my parents that I had decided to take the month of November off to go and travel Europe, it isn’t hard to imagine that they were… sceptical. It’s a big world out there, after all, and there are no end to the online statistics describing the likes of rape, drugs, human trafficking, murderers, muggers, et cetera, per city in Europe. And of course, my mother discovered all of these. As did my grandmother. And they reminded me constantly. So I’ve come up with a list of 5 tips for the youth of the world to use to show your parents that letting you travel by yourself really isn’t that terrifying.
A Tower in the Trees
Come up With a ‘Plan’ When I say ‘plan’, I don’t mean organise your trip out by the minute, or even the day. Here’s why. It makes your life way too stressful. My first itinerary for my trip was planned so that I would have a few days in each city/country I was visiting. I had everything planned down to the train times, arrival times, and how long it would take to walk from the train station to my next hostel. It was absolute madness. If I had stuck with that plan, I would have been stressed, exhausted, and always trying to meet strict deadlines, which takes away from trying to actually experience where you are. If you plan out your trip so that you’re constantly moving around, not only will it take away from the time you have to explore where you are, but it’ll also take away any kind of flexibility to sit back and relax if you like a place.
To avoid having a stress-filled, anxiety-ridden, exhaust-fuelled trip, I would suggest this : pick a first location. (For example, I picked Munich.) So, depending on your travelling time-frame, I’d say stay in the first location for a few days (3 or 4, perhaps) just to make sure you have some time to get over jet lag, and get familiar with where you are staying. Then, just enjoy yourself. Explore the city. I stayed in Munich for the first week of my travels, and only made a solid decision of where I wanted to move on to on my last couple of days. It’s nice to mull it over, but don’t feel like you need to have everything planned out ahead of time. I know it’s corny, but go with the flow. Think a few days in advance–just to make sure you’re not rushing on the day of–but don’t plan everything to a ‘T’, either. Find some middle ground. Then you can enjoy while also keeping your relatives and friends updated with your travels. Also, this helps before you leave because it shows to the people worried about you that you’re not walking completely blind into a foreign country. Nothing like a lack of faith in your abilities to send them spiralling into an endless statistics nightmare. There are other ways I tried to keep my travels as stress free as possible, but I’ll go into that another time.
Find a way to Keep in Contact. It’s a lot easier now with the advances in technology to keep in touch with the folks back at home, so find a way. A lot of people I know just buy a new sim card whenever they travel (especially in Europe. Because it’s a lot less expensive.) You can also purchase international or travelling sim cards online, which you can usually customise to your needs. While I was travelling, my parents helped me figure out a way to extend my data plan to Europe, so I used that to keep in touch. Shooting them a message every day, especially when you first start your travels, will relieve a lot of stress back home. When I first started my travels, I texted my parents at least twice a day. Once in the morning, once at night, and then some intermittent commentary if I was doing something cool. But as your travels go on, you can ease up a bit. Just remember that it’s natural for parents/grandparents/guardians/friends to worry, and even if you’re not worried, shoot them a text to make sure they aren’t worried either.
Make Sure you Have a Credit Card. Debit Doesn’t Work. When you travel, your card from home probably won’t work in a foreign country. At least as a Canadian, get a Credit Card before you go. Test it out. Call your bank and tell them that you will be travelling for ‘x’ amount of time. Cash is very useful, but it’s also better to generally not carry your life savings in your wallet. A card can be cancelled, cash can be withdrawn. But if you lose cash, not much can really be done. In the world of parents, I have noticed that not much will stress them out more than when you tell them that your card has stopped working. If something’s up, call your bank. They will help. And never forget to tell your parents that you’ve resolved the issue. Relieve the stress.
Take Some Cash out Beforehand Having some local currency while you travel is a really good way to ensure that if anything goes wrong, you have a backup. Familiarise yourself with the currency before you go.
And Finally, Remind Your Parents That You’re a Capable Human Being In the end, once you’re 18, your parents can’t legally tell you what to do. You’re an adult now. It’s your own problem. But if they don’t want you to go, or they don’t feel like you’re ready to go, they can make it harder for you to go. Just remember that it’s your decision. If you feel ready, go. If you want that adventure, go do it. Travelling is one of the most exhilarating and wonderful experiences you can get. Just sit down and have the conversation. Talk over your ‘plan’, know where you’re going, figure out your mode of contact, figure out the currency, and answer the call to adventure.
Hi, I’m Anna. I’m an 18 year old Canadian and have just recently returned from a five week self-guided-tour of Europe, and in my excitement to return (hopefully in the new year) I was encouraged to start a blog. So I have. And consider it an attempt not only to ease the minds of young adults who wish to travel before lunging into the world of school or work, but also to ease the minds of the parents who may be tearing their hair out worrying about their child’s well being should they decide to solo travel. It’s not that scary, I promise. So, just because it was my first trip abroad, listed below were my stops on my travels. I’ll be describing the do’s and don’t’s of the places I’ve been, where I’d consider the best places to go, and what I would do in those locations.
On Monday November 4th, 2019, I left my couch and caught a flight in Montreal to Toronto. From Toronto I then flew to Munich, Germany. A list of my stops are as follows: 1. Munich 2. Vienna 3. Prague 4. Krakow 5. Bruges 6. Ghent 7. London 8. Liverpool 9. Belfast 10. Wigan
To travel really opens your eyes to the weird and wonderful experiences in life, and I hope to share my experiences. From drunken proposals to drunk spray painting t-shirts to 36 hour train rides to pick up your sister in London, I have no regrets over this trip, and I hope that–if anything–if anyone ever reads these silly ramblings, that they may feel inspired to travel as well.
Anna's Travelling Antics 