#tripswithtaylor

I left my flat, along with the majority of my things, in Pontevedra the 27th of July. From there I traveled along the northern coast of Spain, flew to the the US and visited a friend in New Jersey, then went back 'home' to my parents house for a week, then a week in the Adirondacks, then home for another week, to California for 10 days and finally back 'home' for a couple of days before a weekend in Boston then a flight over to Europe.  I have been bouncing around place to place for the whole summer.  However for the backpacking trip, left my 'home' in the US and stared traveling the 15th of August and was traveling until the 23rd of September. After 5 1/2 weeks of travel, 6 plane journeys, 5 train trips and various other transportation, here is what I have learned:

1) Don't be cheap.

There is something drastically different between traveling at a low cost and traveling cheaply. Handover the extra $2 for the nicer, more centrally located hostel. In the big picture $2 is nothing and there is nothing worse than sleeping is a smelly, dirty hostel and feeling like crap (this happened to me in Brussels and it was subsequently my least favorite city I visited). Save money on food. Go out and be social but eat before you all go to dinner and then just have a drink with everyone. I did this and saved at least 10€ every time everyone went out to dinner. But don't be penny pinching when you agree to go out to dinner with some. Just split it and enjoy the rare dinner out because no one like the persons that argues about the 20 cent difference in drink costs.

2) Break up the routine

Going city to city, cathedral to cathedral can become so repetitive that you start to not enjoy the city as much. Break up the city tours with a day trip. When I was in Zagreb with my brother we started to get a bit bored of all the city site seeing so my brother found this great day trip out to the Plitvička Jezera National Park near the border with Bosnia & Herzegovina. The gorgeous blue lakes and hiking trails were a needed change up from the cobble stone streets.

  3) Allow yourself the occasional sleep in

I will admit that I am not good at this. But the excitement of travel, new cities, new people and checking out the local night life can be exhausting. Allow yourself once a week to just not set an alarm and wake up when you wake up.  Its hard when you only have a couple of days in each city, but a good sleep in is needed to recharge your batteries so when you do go out site seeing you won't be dragging your feet.

A surprisingly stressful decision. Too small: it won’t fit all your stuff Too big: you over pack and its a pain to lug around.

The Process: 1) figure out the type of backpack you want. Are you camping? Trying to pack a tent? Or just a sleeping bag? How many days are you going for? In what kind of weather? While you don’t want to buy a backpack for a single trip only, thinking in these terms might help. 2) research. I gathered information from ANYONE I could. Everyone has their own opinions and styles and ideas on what works best. I did online research then asked employees in stores. I went to The North Face store and they were so knowledgeable ALSO they had weight to put in the packs so I could really test how it felt. 2) the size. This was the hardest part for me. I wanted my pack for backing around Europe. So this means hotels and the occasional friend’s house and the rare hotel. So I didn’t need to pack any camping gear. Then I can very easily over pack. So I wanted something a bit on the smaller side that would prevent me from going overboard. 3) style. I am a girl so I bought a backpack designed for women. Easy enough. It’s narrower (for women’s shoulders) and provides a general better all around fit for women.

I ended up purchasing The North Face Alteo 35 for women. The size is measured in liters. So mine is a 35. I originally researched that a 40 to 50 would be a better size. But I would prefer to pay for a load of laundry then have a backing breaking heavy pack.

I have just started the trip and so far so good. I seem to have enough clothes. But I have only been traveling for 4 days and staying at a friend’s house. I will report at the end of the trip with more info re the backpack.