Learn from my mistakes experiences.
I didn’t visit Europe until I was 30 years old. In fact, I arrived in London exactly one day before I would cross into my third decade on earth. For some, that’s late in life while others may be waiting until retirement years for the opportunity if it comes at all.
My little brother, for his part, will be making his first trip across the pond at 20 years of age.
When I first heard Nathaniel was planning an international trip, he was 18, a senior in high school, and though there may have been a fleeting feeling of jealousy at the time, it was quickly replaced with nothing but pure excitement for him and the adventures he would experience.
But then the pandemic delayed those plans for a year. And a second year. Until finally, recently, he was refunded the money for the program he had originally signed up for through school. While I have little doubt he would rather have made the trip with friends and classmates, this opened up the possibility for a different kind of trip. Rather than a structured schedule with a city-by-city agenda and overpriced hotels, we could throw that out the window and plan our own trip, one similar to the way I traveled during my three months in Europe back in 2017. While half of that trip was spent walking the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage across northern Spain, the other month and a half were spent traipsing through Europe, staying in hostels and sleeping on overnight buses from one city to another, choosing my next destination only a day in advance at most.
That summer, I managed to visit London, Lisbon, Porto, Granada, Barcelona, Nice, Munich, Venice, Milan, and Rome for varying lengths of time. While I certainly have some favorites on the list, I don’t plan on picking which cities we see. This trip is my brother’s to take and I’m simply tagging along as a sort of chaperone, offering some nuts and bolts advice like managing train travel and fair hostel prices and making sure he doesn’t get too lost along the way.
So, although totally unsolicited, I thought I’d share the advice here on my newly refreshed blog, on the day we depart from Albuquerque. And while some of these are specific to my family (number one is in there cause we can be a sweaty bunch), I hope you’ll enjoy the list all the same and come back for new blogs in the future.
Five Pieces of Unsolicited Travel Advice
Sweat happens, get a buff.
We're a sweaty people, our family. There's just no getting around it. I've been known to break a sweat in a 65 degree room and my default mode is a slight glistening at minimum.
For those reasons, and others I'll touch on, I carry a buff. Or a neck gaiter. Or, as Eddie Bauer in particular calls it, a multiclava. All the same thing, it's the piece of circular fabric one can don in a dozen or so fashions. My default preference is wrapped around my wrist, at the ready for blotting my face while on the move.
But where the multiclava starts to shine is once you've placed it on your head. At that point, it can be a headband wrapped around your temples, it can be drawn over to cover your scalp, pulled down over your neck, adjusted to protect your ears, or pulled down to block dust and the elements from entering your nose and mouth.
The headband mode is particularly helpful if you start working up forehead sweat as I do. And if things are getting a little heated, dunking the whole thing in cool water is a quick way to cool off.
Just keep in mind this will be one of those articles of clothing subject to frequent handwashing, a practice that has never been commonplace at home but one you'll have to get used to on the road. Trust me, you won't be the only traveler at the hostel scrubbing clothes in the sink and hanging it up to dry on, well, anything resembling a clothesline.
I’ve found it helps to have two or three, one to wear while another is drying, and they don’t take up much room in a backpack. If there’s one article of clothing I recommend for anyone traveling or hiking or just going for a walk down the block, it’s this one.
Don’t be afraid to ask a local.
Hostel staff are a wealth of information and (usually) more than happy to help. They're often quick with answers to the most common questions about where to eat and local transit options. They may also double as guides for walking tours and pub crawls or any number of group activities so it's not a bad idea to be friendly with them. Learn their name and make a genuine effort to get to know them a little bit. You'll quickly learn
I showed a little interest in how a tour guide prepares paella for a hostel in Granada and received a thorough rundown of how to cook for a crowd plus I received an extra hearty serving when it was time to plate up.
I made sure to befriend the guide for a pub crawl, also in Granada, and she gave me a heads up when she noticed someone else on the tour flirting with me and made for a good wingwoman.
A long chat with a a tour guide in Mexico City transformed our planned cantina visits into bar hopping his favorite neighborhood bars and ending up in the back of a leather goods store where a full blown band was playing for a crowd of folks dancing.
A free birthday shot in London. A bottle of wine from some nuns on the Camino de Santiago. The heartiest bowl of pasta bolognese I've ever had despite being in Munich and not Italy. I don't befriend hostel staff for the freebies, those are simply the natural result of being a friendly and respectful hostel guest. A good rapport also came in handy in Mexico City when I locked my passport in a locker and needed the hostel staff to call in someone with a metal grinder to saw it off when I lost the key and had to get my passport out so I could catch my flight.
Bonus tip: Use combination locks instead of ones with a key you can lose!
Use your headphones sparingly.
I don’t mind one bit if you use them for the entire 10-hour flight. Heck, I’ll probably have mine in and cranking through the list of audiobooks I’ve downloaded for the occasion. But when you’re in Europe, in a new city, listen to the sounds around you. The newness of everything around you will be heightened and this includes your sense of sound. Of course, the sights around you will all be new and you’ll be tempted to take pictures of everything you see. Do it. Yes, live in the moment as well but I can’t tell you the number of times I wish I had even a crappy picture of a place I visited if only to have a basic record of it to look back on. Your sense of taste and smell will come into play too, not just for all the new and delicious foods you’ll be trying, but the pungent smells of a bustling metropolis after the rain has soaked the sewage or the smell of the River Tagus in Lisbon lapping up at the shores. To this day, if I smell fennel I’m instantly transported back to certain stretches of the Camino where it grew wild along the Spanish highways.
Bathroom breaks are non-negotiable.
Let me be as clear as possible on this one: Use the bathroom wherever you can, whenever you can. That means before we leave a restaurant or a museum or anywhere a free bathroom is available, use it.
Why such a stern warning? Let’s just say I’ve learned this the hard way, more than once.
There was the time on the Camino, miles away from the nearest town, in desperate need of a toilet with nothing in sight. I sacrificed a few pages from my Camino guidebook from sections I had already completed and lost a little bit of my dignity hiding out behind a tree a ways off from the nearest path.
Another time I was in London, in one of those awful stretches of tourist hell where there’s not a single bathroom in sight. By then I had learned to look out for “WC” signs indicating a water closet was nearby. Whether you call it a water closet or toilet or bathroom or washroom, it didn’t matter because there wasn’t one to be found. By the time I reached a row of buildings that showed some promise that at least one would be home to a restaurant or cafe that would let me use their facilities—with a purchase, of course—I was at a point of desperation. I turned a corner, saw what looked like a sandwich shop, entered and barreled my way straight to the back wall where an unmarked door stood closed. I wasn’t entirely certain what would be on the other side—a private dining area, an office, maybe a utility closet—but it didn’t matter, I was going inside no matter what. You can imagine the sigh of relief when I saw a toilet and sink inside and I was able to take care of business. When I finally emerged from the water closet I was relieved to see my traveling companion had taken the liberty to pay for a bottle of water to smooth over the fact that I walked in without even acknowledging any of the staff. I still worry to this day about what might have happened had I opened that door to anything other than a water closet.
Don’t default to relaxing in bed.
A hostel is not a hotel. You’ll learn that quickly after your first night cooped up with a room full of bunking snorers while the party animals start returning in the wee hours of the morning and the early risers begin rustling through their bags to get packed for their 5 AM flights.
But one of the most important aspects of a hostel is the communal nature. Nearly every hostel will have group activities, like the aforementioned walking tours as well as the time-honored tradition of the pub crawl.
There are common spaces for a reason. If you’re tired enough to take a nap then, by all means, that’s why the bed is there. But if you’re simply looking to rest and get off your feet for a bit, try doing so in one of the hostel’s common areas. I can’t tell you how many adventures have started because I chose to take a break in a game room or on a couch or, like on one of my early solo trips, relaxing on a balcony overlooking a plaza in Puerto Rico which led to learning and playing an Italian card game which led to walking the streets after the bars had closed which led to helping some new American friends film a video for a song they wrote. You never know where things will lead when you put yourself in a position to interact with others. But it’s a certainty that nothing will happen if you consign yourself to a bed and shut out the world. The world is waiting, quite literally, considering all the countries that can be represented in just one hostel, something I captured in this quick pic I took last time I was in Portugal.
No matter what advice you heed or ignore, I know you’ll have a memorable experience, on that is all yours to enjoy however you want.
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