In 2017, I took a trip to Copenhagen, DK via Keflavik, IS - for three days. When I returned, I traveled to Atlanta and Delaware. From Sunday, August 27, 2017 to Sunday, September 3, 2017 I traveled:

15,109 miles by plane
381.5 miles by car
17.8 miles by train
12.9 miles on foot

“I was on the eve of my 33rd birthday and hard-pressed to do a lot of living in a very short amount of time. ”

2017 was an intense year professionally. I was often working 60 hour weeks and if I wasn’t hitting 60, I was in the workplace everyday that ended in “y”. My grandmother’s health was declining and I found myself wrestling with what my priorities were.

I’m not someone who lives with regret, but I never felt quite right about not studying abroad in undergrad (not to mention skipping out on all the Spring Break and Grad Week trips with my friends). Growing up, I used to say, “the world’s too big and life’s too short to stay in one place” - yet, that’s what I’d done. Ok, well that’s a slight exaggeration. I’d seen much of the country thanks to business travel and my mom did a great job of making sure my sister and I were traveled early on. But, as an adult, I’d truly let my younger self down.

Cue the right-on-time-creepy-algorithms that are social-media-advertisement-in-motion. I started getting an absurd amount of Instagram ads for companies like Remote Year that were becoming increasingly harder to ignore. I did my research and decided this was going to be how I overcame that nagging faux regret I’d been experiencing. The only problem was I did not have a job that could be done remotely (they do have some ideas about this) and I wasn’t financially liquid enough to fake it.

It was at this point my boss caught wind of my research and suggested I take a week off in August after things quieted down at work. As I mentioned, my grandma wasn’t doing well, so my initial plan was to travel to Georgia and spend the entire week with her. But there was a voice in my head that I could not shut up saying. . .

“You need to get out of the country for a minute.”

— The voice inside my head

I figured this was my chance to test drive solo travel, even if only for a few days. Given it needed to be a few days, I was very limited in where I could go - there was also the little matter of budget. Both my sister and mother had traveled to Iceland in 2015 and 2016 respectively and suggested I take a look at WOW Air. If you’re unfamiliar, they are the now defunct Spirit Airlines of Iceland - or, as I enjoyed calling it - Sole Plane.

(If you’re really not picking up what I’m putting down, that’s a play on words of the fish and the black cult classic “Soul Plane”.)

After many hours mapping out itineraries and seeking the opinions of my family (see below), I landed on Copenhagen.

Mother: but why Copenhagen again?

Sister: That's my question. Did you find a deal or something? I'm looking up things to do there now and it doesn't speak to me really.. It's all a bit stuffy & museumy looking. I bet the technology might be cool... Probably really nice bathrooms.

Their confusion subsequently turned into enthusiasm and before I knew it I laid out an itinerary that took me from Baltimore, through Keflavik, to Copenhagen, an afternoon in Malmo, back through Keflavik**, to Baltimore, on to Atlanta, back to DC, up to Bear, DE, and back to DC*** in the span of a week.

***I’ll write a post (well, probably multiple posts) about the whole week and my travel later.

**This is the part about how I traveled Europe for a month

On my layover in Keflavik, there was an announcement made that Sole Plane had overbooked the return flight to BWI and were seeking passengers to volunteer to give up their seats in exchange for a lodging voucher and a coupon for future air travel. I looked around, surely thinking these folks would jump at the opportunity for an extra night in Iceland, but no one was budging. I was curious, so I messaged my mom and sister to ask their opinions and then called my grandma to see how upset she might be if I was delayed one day while I walked to the WOW service counter. By the time I got there, everyone had given me their full support and the ladies in purple were still looking for volunteers.

What resulted was a comped night at a nearby hotel, meal vouchers, and not just a coupon but an entire round trip ticket!