Travel With A Sprinkle Of “Love”

My journey will be taking a short pause as I make my return to the states in the name of love.

Let’s be clear not love for me but for some of my dearest friends, Christine and Alex who will be tying the knot with their respective loves in September.

In hindsight, I must love Christine as I had already agreed to return for her bachelorette party in Napa. But a girl sure wants to keep me longer state side after she asked me to be one of her bridesmaids via a FaceTime session while I was in Hvar Croatia. What this means is that I’m in the states for roughly a month and a 1/2 with a trip to Canada during that time. While I love Christine and feel honored I must admit it was hard to swallow the fact that I would have to pause my travel plans especially when you’re seeing the sun set in Hvar but it’s hard to say no to Christine. Trust me, I’ve tried.

Since I’m making my return to the states for love I figure speaking about traveling and “love” are in order.

The irony about “love” for me during this trip is how hard I pushed “love” away after I made the decision to make this #GirltakesMundo journey back in December 2016. That is also the time when I decide to stop “love” from happening to me as I was so desperate to make this trip happen that I wasn’t going to let anything or anybody hinder that. The way I looked at it, if I fell in “love” I would probably not go on this trip, leave in a limbo or worse yet, hurt. I had to protect my heart and that’s exactly what I set out to do. What this meant though was that during the 6 months before my trip I avoided dating like a plague, pushed away a guy who genuinely cared for me, to not even bother letting others know how I felt because I figured what was the point.

During this journey it’s been night and day from the person I was before this trip started. Granted when you travel it’s a different type of “love”, a more in the moment because the time is now, a less committal and less orthodox type of “love” as your rules of “love” and dating get thrown out the door. So yes, I’ve had my “loves” during this #GirltakesMundo journey from good bye kisses at bus stations, breakfast dates sitting in front of cathedrals, kisses under bridges because God forbid you risk 7 years of bad sex, crashing stag parties amid pub crawls to even scooter adventures under a starry night.

It’s goofy I know but even as I type this I hear the song, “Still not a player” by Big Pun playing in my head saying, “I’m not a player, I just crush a lot.” And that’s exactly it, I’ve fallen in and out of crushes during this #GirltakesMundo adventure and respectively at times I’ve been heart broken too. Ok, heart broken is WAY too extreme and I’m being WAY too dramatic. I am a Leo after all but as one of my favorite lyrics from the song, “The light” by Common says, “I ain’t goin assault them, cause I probably did it too.” What I’ve discovered is that you can’t protect your heart or your feelings as we’re human after all and no matter how hard we try or where we are one cannot avoid it even while traveling (ask other travel mates even the anti social ones have their stories).

So to all my travel “lovers” even if you were there for just a couple days, a day or even a couple hours, whether we were a flop or not, thanks for “loving” me back.