Two years ago today, on May 13th, 2016, I left with my mom to go on a trip to the UK and France. I had been planning and preparing for the trip for over a year. Since I'm two years late on this post, I'm probably going to forget some things, but I'll do my best. And sorry in advance, this is going to be kind of long.
I have two main reasons for wanting to do a write up about our trip on this blog. The first is that I want to try to record my memories of the trip, because reading my old posts from study abroad makes me feel like I'm right back in that same place. The second reason is, that I don't think this second trip would have happened if it wasn't for my study abroad experience. My mom is not great with directions, navigation, or trip planning (she will admit this, and it's not an insult). So for us to go on a trip this big by ourselves, that meant that I would be the sole navigator and planner. If it wasn't for my experiences during my study abroad trip, I don't think I would have had the skills or the confidence to be 100% responsible for the trip. Because I studied abroad, and did that extra travelling, I was familiar with navigating around unfamiliar cities, figuring out public transportation, and all the other things that go along with travelling.
Anyway, my plan now is to post each post on the corresponding day. We left for our trip on May 13th, 2016, so today, on May 13th, I'll write about that day. And hopefully I won't forget to do this for the next 2 weeks :) You know how it is.
The idea for this trip began while I was studying abroad. Every time I went to someplace new, I kept thinking that I wished my mom could be there with me, to see these different things that I knew she would love or appreciate. I travel frequently with my mom (although it's usually shorter, long weekend trips to places not too far away), so I immediately decided that I wanted to bring my mom to the places I had been in the UK. However, study abroad really killed me financially. In fact, I'm still paying back the parent loan that my parents got to help me pay for study abroad. And on top of that, I lost my job while I was away, so I came back after study abroad to no job, and a lot of debt. It took awhile for my financial situation to stabilize. Once I had a good job, I started contemplating the idea of the mother/daughter trip to Europe again. I started saving for this trip in the beginning of 2015, with the hope that I'd have enough money to go by 2016.
By September of 2015, I had enough money to buy our plane tickets, and the trip then went from being a hopeful dream, to being reality. Even my mom said she wasn't 100% sure the trip would happen until I actually went and bought the plane tickets.
The flight would be from Boston to Glasgow, with Icelandair. The total cost was $1805.30 for two round trip tickets. After the plane tickets were booked, I started seriously planning the specifics of our trip. We would be gone for a little over two weeks, and go to 7 different cities. After a ton of planning, and counting down the days, it was finally time for us to start our trip.
Packing, the day before.
Friday, May 13th, 2016 (Yes, I actually booked a flight on Friday the 13th without realizing it)
To limit the amount of time we had to take off of work, my mom and I both decided we would work for a few hours on the day our flight would leave. So we both worked until about 1, then went home and finished up a little bit of packing. Then it was time to leave for Boston.
We each had one suitcase, plus our backpacks.
Boston is about a 3 hour drive from our house, and we flew out of Boston because it was significantly cheaper than flying out from our local airport. Like $700 cheaper. My dad drove us to the airport, dropped us off, and then our trip really started. Our flight left Boston at 9:30 pm, and then after a layover in Iceland, we would arrive in Glasgow at around 9 am, local time.
The flight itself was not super fun, because neither of us could sleep, and we would be arriving in Glasgow in the morning with a full day ahead of us. I was impressed with the airline - the plane was nice and had lights that looked like the Northern Lights. They also had the screens in the back of the seat that track your flight and all of the other flight info. It was very nice to be able to track our progress and know exactly where we were.
We had a brief layover in Reykjavik, Iceland, and then we got on our next flight to Glasgow!
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