I’m VERY delayed since I leave in *checks watch* 7 days, 17 hours, and 32 minutes. But I figured better late than never and that I should make a post about the preparation I’ve put into my trip. The driving force behind this all was actually my dad, as ironic that is since he is freaking out. I’ve always wanted to travel and I was struggling finding my place is school while simultaneously trying to figure out what the heck in the world I’m doing with my life. And like all great life changing talks, it was very late at night, and I was frustrated and feeling like I hadn’t found my groove. I’m not even sure how the conversation came about but my dad told me that I won’t be 20 for forever and I can’t keep making excuses to not live my life the way I want. And thus the planning began.
At first I was dead set on going to Africa. I was looking up volunteer programs and travel groups, I narrowed it down to two options. But the entire time in the back of my mind was my dream to visit Scotland. I have no idea where the idea came from but for as long as I can remember I have always dreamed about going to Scotland. So then I changed routes, I started trying to find a way to fit both Africa and Europe in one trip.
I had my Africa plans, trip itineraries, a rough budget, ad I started working on Europe. At worked I printed out maps and made lists of the sites I wanted to see. I narrowed those sites into cities and drew out on the map the route that makes the most sense. And then I realized it wan’t ideal, or even possible to do both. I made the decision to scrape Africa for this trip. In the planning I was the most excited about Europe which thankfully made it an easy decision.
I finally started my in depth planning. Once I had a rough map I used Rome2Rio, and StudentUniverse to look at the price of getting from place to place. I am relying on public transport, because lets be honest I can’t even drive in Lincoln let alone London. My rough estimate of travel expense came to $1300, which included flights in and back. I then narrowed my list down to 7 main cities, Ireland, Belfast, Inverness, Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, and Paris. I then had to go back to my list and revise to what I wanted to see in, and close to each city, and work out a rough estimate of nights in each place. I came to a total of 25 nights. I budgeted roughly $25 a night for the hostels, most are cheaper but I wanted to give myself a cushion, so that brought me to another $625. I’m planning on cooking as much as possible, I want to avoid eating out whenever possible, but I’m still budgeting $200 a week. At $800 this was probably the biggest hit so far, and I plan to stay under that budget.
I finally had it all planned, a itinerary, a pretty solid budget, it was time to start looking at tickets. StudentUniverse was suggested to me by a coworker, and it turned out to be a godsend. They have extreme discounts for students and those under 26 for flights, hotels, and tours. I watched flight prices for what felt like a lifetime. I checked prices flying out of Omaha, Denver, Kansas City, and Saint Paul, and flying into Dublin, Edinburgh, London, and Paris. Ideally I wanted to fly into Dublin or Paris because they are the ends of my trip and fly out of Omaha for connivence of my family.
On October 6th I finally bit the bullet, I bought a ticket leaving from Omaha flying into Dublin leaving November 4th. By the time I got the ticket I already had the majority of the things I needed. I did extensive research on the type of backpack I was going to bring, I ended up getting the ‘eBags TLS Mother Lode Weekender Convertible’ and I am VERY happy with it. It has a clamshell zipper which I think is great because I didn’t want to mess with trying to dig through a top zipper, and I also go the eBag packing cubes which are a lifesaver. I’m planning on making a more extensive packing list of everything I’m bringing.
I’ve read more in these last couple of months than my brother has read in his entire life. I’m part of travel communities on social media, I’m more active on Pinterest now that I was at the age of 14 which is saying ALOT. I feel I’ve done all the research I could’ve and now, it’s time to go and I am so excited!