Travel Plans

Dream big, that’s what I like to say! Here’s all of the places I’d love to visit in 2018, from Namibia to Nauru to NYC.

I remember doing a reader survey in 2015, and someone anonymously said, “I wish Brenna didn’t live in London, I wish she was still out travelling.” At the time, I laughed that off. Two years later, however, and I can feel that familiar hum in the back of my mind, the one that’s calling out for a big adventure. It’s the same feeling I got in 2006, when I backpacked around Europe. Or 2008, when I moved to Japan. Or 2011, when I backpacked through Asia for a year. Or 2012, when I travelled through Central and South America for a year. It’s back.

Because I’ve also been fortunate enough to stay in London a bit longer, I’m seeing this as an opportunity to see more of the UK and of Europe in general. It is incredibly cheap to fly to many European countries from London; with airlines like RyanAir and Easy Jet, it’s possible to fly to some European cities for less money than my weekly Oyster card update to travel around London. I don’t know what the future holds after those couple years in London, so I thought I should take advantage of the proximity to Europe as much as possible in the upcoming year. While I’ve visited a lot of the major cities around the continent, there are a lot of smaller cities and towns I haven’t seen yet. More than that, there are experiences I’d really love to have if I can.

If you’ve read this blog for a little while, you may know that I used to travel a lot – I visited every continent except Antarctica at least once in the last four years, including long stints of backpacking around Asia and Central/South America. When I moved to London about two years ago, I didn’t really plan to slow down… and for the first year, I didn’t, not at all. Last year, despite having a job and a full-time master’s degree, I visited fourteen countries on three continents.

This year, however, was probably the slowest year of travel for me in the past decade. I don’t even really know how it happened, but with work and the final stages of the degree taking over, plus an undying love of London, I realised I had to – and wanted to – focus on a few more things in life. That doesn’t mean I didn’t go away; this year I’ve visited Spain, Denmark, Ireland, Canada, and the USA, as well as lots of fun trips around the UK.

But I was a fool to think this wanderlust wouldn’t get the better of me eventually.

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