So.

 

Where to start.

 

…….

 

Well, I guess the easiest thing would be to start with where I’m at physically right now.

I’m exhausted. I’m hungry. I just hit my finger on something, so that’s bleeding now.

I can’t decide if I should use a bandaid on it because it’s on one of those awkward places on the knuckle of my ring finger where the finger meets the hand. Not conducive to bandaiding.

On the other hand (as in, on my right side), I have a wall. Some of you dear readers (Mom and… Mom) may remember me bragging about choosing seats on these Westjet flights and getting a steal by choosing window seats that were free (normally it costs a bit to choose a seat in advance) because the seats were labeled ‘less desirable.’

‘Ha!’ I said. A less desirable window seat? What could that possibly mean? Less legroom? Fine by me. My legs don’t take up much space.

And to that, Westjet said, ‘Ha!

‘We will give you your legroom you small human, but that window you so desire? Well… you’ll see.’

And now I do see. Or rather, I don’t. Because my window is not where it should be. In fact, my window is really more like a wall. And the truth is that the person in front of me kind of just has two windows…. So I guess she is the real winner.

Turns out she also has a really nice magenta manicure.

If I lean all the way forward in my seat and lean my forehead against her seat back, I can look straight out half of the window. If I stay back in my seat, I can see a slanted, blurry view out the bottom left corner of the window.

 

This, of course, is all assuming Miss Lucky Two Windows decides to leave her second window open for me.

We’ll see.

 

So you are probably wondering why I am so exhausted if you haven’t talked to me in the last couple days (or weeks actually.)

Tbh I have been so dead the last few weeks. Scrambling to finish up a senior project that my team was way way way behind on (I fixed it. It was cool. Don’t worry.) Juggling job interviews and desperately hoping one company would offer me the job and salary of my dreams and the other one would go a different direction so I wouldn’t have to make any decisions. (I hate making decisions. And this situation didn’t exactly turn out how I’d been hoping, because I did have to make a decision in the end. Only time will tell if it was the right one.) Then on top of that, I got sick, and I couldn’t find a long enough break to catch up on sleep, and I still had this whirlwind trip to finish planning along with a million other things that have just made my life a hot mess.

 

….

 

Because of all these little things, it is now 1pm on Thursday, and the last time I woke up from sleep was 9am on Wednesday.

So yes. I am tired. But I am somehow not sleepy. It sucks.

Amidst all of this exhaustion, I have not been able to get truly excited about this trip. Not yet, anyway.

I get glimpses of the excitement I’m used to when I’m looking at Airbnbs or pictures of future destinations, but then it gets washed away again in exhaustion.

Here’s hoping I will be able to sleep on the plane and wake up a new person in London tomorrow. I managed to fight exhaustion with excitement on my September Adventure of 2016, and I really have my fingers crossed that the same will happen this time around.

 

—-

 

Okay. So now you know a little about where I’m at. (Oh. I guess I didn’t tell you I’m in Canada. Because I decided on this trip about 2.5 weeks ago, I had to fly out of Vancouver instead of Seattle, into London instead of Copenhagen, and on a budget Canadian airline instead of my favorite German Lufthansa.) I got on a bus in Chinatown at 6:30 this morning, and now I’m taking off to a layover in Calgary.

After that, I’ll have one month of travel in which I will attempt to consume the following countries in sort of this order:

 

UK

Switzerland

France

Italy

Denmark

Netherlands

Germany

Spain

Portugal.

 

Wish me luck.

 

I tried to plan his trip differently from my last. I wanted to force myself to spend more time in one place before taking off for the next. I also thought this would be a solo trip again.

But yeah. None of that happened. I just love planning. Almost as much as the trip itself. It makes me feel like I’m there already.

~Just took off. Flying through endless and terrifying whiteness right now.~

Anyway. I started planning and ran into the same problem I had last time around: so many places, so little time. I have an extra week compared to September, but it really doesn’t make much of a difference when there are thousands of places I’d like to go. So I will be doing the same crazy stop-and-go travel. I liked it though. And I think it will be good for me right now. Keeps me on my toes. Keeps me moving. Keeps me absorbing and exploring and experiencing. And eating, hopefully. (:

As far as the solo part of this trip goes, well… it doesn’t really go anywhere at all! I have so many friends in Europe right now that I’m only going to be alone for my first day on land, and then maybe again for a couple of days in Naples. I think that will be good for me, too. Time to reconnect with friends and life in general now that this thing I’ve been doing for the last seventeen years called School is actually finished.

~Good news: we’ve surfaced above the clouds and the sky is beautiful and blue up above them. No more scary. I did just get shunned by my row-mates for supposedly ‘blinding them’ with my phone screen, but oh well.~

Also, I just found out this flight is only an hour long. Not much time to sleep! I’ll have to do that on the way to London, I guess.

I think I’m done writing for now. I’ll check in soon with more pictures and/ or thoughts.

Oh, I did find this wonderful sculpture in the Vancouver airport:

 

Okay. Talk soon.

Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa