Growing up I always associated traveling and “being a wanderlust” with a concept for those that were well off. It’s grandiose. I could never afford that. Maybe someday when I\u2019ve made real tangible \u201cadult money\u201d I can possibly go to Italy like I\u2019ve always dreamed.<\/i><\/p>\n
Although I still think a lot of these things are true, my opinions have changed on just how possible it is to save money, plan accordingly and just travel. Take that trip you\u2019ve always wanted to take and don\u2019t look back. I used every \u201ctraveling\u201d cliche in the book to justify the amount of money I spent going all throughout several countries in Europe. In the last two months on three separate occasions with my girlfriend, my sister and with my father and aunt, I took trips to France, Italy, Spain and Amsterdam. All of these trips were undoubtedly the highlight of my study abroad experience. London truly is an exceptional city to begin a European adventure and I feel lucky to have been granted this study abroad opportunity through Rollins. This blog post I\u2019ll spare you the details of each and every place I visited and I\u2019ll attempt to answer the ever so intriguing question: Why do we travel?<\/i><\/p>\n
My favorite traveling cliche is very apt in describing how I feel about the topic and it\u2019s along the lines of: Traveling is the only thing you can buy that makes you richer.<\/i> I\u2019m sure certain stock brokers might disagree but I have to say that I agree with this one strongly. 6 months ago I think I might\u2019ve laughed pretty hard at this cliche but now I understand it. If I\u2019m breaking down why I believe people travel I think it boils down to three core concepts: <\/span><\/p>\n Imagine the best vacation you ever took. Did you work while on it? Did you have to worry about the usual chores and tasks that you might worry about if you were home? The answer is almost always no. Traveling is getting a break, although not permanent, from the sometimes unavoidable mundaneness that is working and studying. Traveling and vacationing is that much better because it\u2019s a treat, a reward of some sort. My thoughts on stepping away from the norm this entire study abroad experience was heightened because the bulk of my time in London was spent staying at my dorm with a tight grip on my cash. I had to keep things simple and only spend money on transport and groceries so that I could afford to travel for as long as I did towards the latter months.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n On this best vacation when you went somewhere else, did you want to do exactly what all the tourists do and stick to a strict no-local favorites itinerary? Well I certainly hope not. Although many people I\u2019ve seen can succumb to this trap I\u2019d argue that most humans have a general need for belonging and this need extends to traveling. Sites like TripAdvisor and yelp exist so that one can find where the locals go. People want unique experiences that are familiar to locals because it may be an activity, food or sight that can only be seen in the country or city in question. In my experience I found that my strategy was to always get to a place, put my bags down and explore. I asked complete strangers in their language where I should eat, what I should order and where were some of their personal favorite places to go. I think asking a stranger what they personally like, throws them off because it\u2019s ultra personal and it\u2019s not the same as asking for recommendations. If you ask for recommendations you may as well ask other tourists where they\u2019re headed to. You\u2019ll likely end up in a tourist trap.<\/p>\n A trend one can simply not deny is how unrepresentative instagram feeds can be of one\u2019s actual daily life, temperament and feelings. Why is it that we only post \u201cthe good stuff\u201d on our feeds? I\u2019m guilty of it too. There\u2019s little to no vulnerability anymore. I think traveling has a negative stigma at times because some people use it as an excuse to go to a place and get a good photo. Why? Well, good photos with witty captions lead to the maximum number of likes and, if you\u2019re lucky, more followers. Going abroad and moving around I learned to realize when I had to put my phone down and I also came to understand just how insignificant social media can be sometimes to actually connecting humans. The best experiences I had with people while in Europe was through communication and interaction with no Facebook or twitter involved. I wish to keep this energy going.<\/p>\n So all in all, no matter why we travel or why it\u2019s an opportunity to experience unique things it\u2019s hard to deny that it is pretty sweet. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Growing up I always associated traveling and “being a wanderlust” with a concept for those that were well off. It’s grandiose. I could never afford that. Maybe someday when I\u2019ve made real tangible \u201cadult money\u201d I can possibly go to Italy like I\u2019ve always dreamed. Although I still think a lot of these things are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340,"featured_media":11068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-qmul","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13924,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11064\/revisions\/13924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n