**I traveled Europe for six weeks with my friend Nate and chose not to use anyone else’s name because I didn’t want to ask for permission. This is my travel blog that I wrote pretty much every time I was on the train going city to city. **

We left for Vancouver about noon on Monday, September 26 to stay the night for our 6:30 flight the next morning. Nate’s parents took the day off and drove us. We decided to go to the casino assuming they had a sports bar so we could watch Monday Night Football and not just lay around in the room. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a casino in the States, but the moment you walk in it’s like diving headfirst into a sea of smoke only to realize you will never be able to come up for air. Much to my surprise we walked into the casino and the sea of smoke wasn’t there. My lungs smiled, my heart beat at a normal pace, and of course I had to say, typical Canada. We spent the rest of the night watching football, drinking, and eating bar food. We went back to the hotel and Nate and I could not sleep at all. But I knew that’d be the case. That’s always the case when I go on any big trip. It’s a nervous feeling mixed with a sort of excitement that’s hard to illustrate. The best thing to compare it to is when I try and sleep the night of Christmas Eve.

We woke up at about 3:30 a.m. from that restless night of sleep so we could get ready and get going to the airport. Nate’s parents got us there in a timely fashion, they’re always good at that, making sure everything runs according to plan. That’s why this trip scared them. I’ve traveled outside of the country for extended periods of time before, Nate hasn’t. I guess that’s why all my dad said was see ya when you get back when I left. What was hard for them to accept was our lack of an itinerary. But the more people we talked to the more it made sense not to have a real itinerary. If you’re thinking of traveling, backpacking especially, don’t have an itinerary! You’ll fall in love with a city and want to extend your time there for however long, or you’ll hate a city and want to get out with quickness. Or, my favorite scenario, you meet some other travelers, mesh well, and decide to hit the next destination together or get a recommendation of a city they’ve already been to.

We said our goodbyes to Nate’s parents, they took our picture that was definitely making its way to Facebook and then we threw our backpacks on and were on our own for the next six weeks. There’s a calmness to the airport in the early morning. No lines, no people, just you, customs, and the waiting for your seating zone to be called for boarding. We made it through customs with ease and then got on the plane. A Boeing 737 to Toronto, a 5 hour flight. To our fortune it was just Nate and I in our aisle and had an empty seat for that essential elbow room.

We got to Toronto and had a 4 hour layover, the drag of cheap tickets. A nice thing about an airport in the afternoon you ask? People watching. The wifi didn’t work for either of us, so we were stuck sittin around without a deck of cards or anything to do and decided to people watch and that was entertaining. People running to catch flights, people lost, people pissed off, and then the power walks of the flight attendants strutting down the hallways looking like the popular kid cliche in every movie about cliques. It made the time go by quick and next thing we know, it’s time to fly again. This time for 7.5 hours to Amsterdam.