From Home to Horizon: A Voyage Through My Travel Journey

Welcome to Caroline Across Countries! I’m so happy you’re here, and I want to thank you for supporting this new chapter of my travel journey. I figured the best way to kick off my blog was with a more in-depth “About Me” post. I want you to get to know the girl behind the blog, understand where I hope to take this blog, and most importantly how it will help YOU on your own travels. For me, seeing the world has become more than just a hobby; it is a necessity. Despite fears, uncertainty, judgment from others, financial obstacles, and any other excuse you can think of to keep you from traveling, I am here to help you feel empowered and equipped to turn your travel dreams, whatever those may be, into a reality.

Nurturing the Wanderlust

Growing up, my family was very intentional with the trips we took. Unlike my peers at school, we didn’t take frequent, smaller vacations within the continental U.S. to the beach or skiing every summer or winter break. Instead, we would take larger trips every 3 or 4 years to further away destinations such as Hawaii, the Bahamas, and various European countries. I didn’t think much of this while I was growing up, but the older I got, the more I realized how grateful I am for this choice because it fostered my appreciation of other cultures and languages from a young age. 

In school, my favorite subject was always Language Arts – Spanish in Elementary School, Latin in Middle School, and French in High School (I even took 1 semester of Italian my senior year of college because I missed learning languages so much!). I’ve always had a natural aptitude for picking up a language quickly and a strong desire to become proficient at it. This was my first clue that my purpose and passion lay somewhere beyond what could be found in Dallas, TX. 

Fast forward to my junior year of college, I decided I wanted to have the quintessential study abroad experience. My degree plan only offered one month programs over the summer, but I still made the most of it. The University of Oklahoma has a small international campus in Arezzo, Italy, a small town in Tuscany about half an hour by train from Florence, so I of course chose this as my study abroad destination. As many study abroad courses go, we spent less time doing school work and more time going on day trips, exploring the town, and making friends with the locals.

It was during these day trips and weekend trips with friends that I realized I was better suited for solo travel. While having someone to share moments with is great, I was far too independent and adventurous to be held back by someone else’s itinerary or their wanting to go back to the hotel when I wasn’t done exploring. If you’re like me, you may be feeling the same way but not quite ready to take the leap and embark on your first solo trip. I hope my stories, advice, and encouragement in future posts can help you feel more confident about being a solo traveler because, trust me, once you do it, you’ll never want to turn back!

I don’t want to be that girl who still talks about “that one time I studied abroad,” so let’s move on to the experience that played a huge part in shaping who I am, not only as a traveler but as a person. My time studying abroad came to an end far quicker than I wanted it to, and it only left me with a deeper desire to go back and stay for even longer. So I got creative…

Exploring New Horizons

Fresh out of college, I was eager and ready to explore new horizons and not at all ready to start working for the next 40 years of my life. I thought of every possible way that I could get back over to Italy and stay for an extended time after graduation. Ideas included applying for graduate school to get a student visa, pulling out a large chunk of savings to travel around for a few months on my own, trying to get hired at jobs related to my field of study, and more.

The one that stuck out to me the most was the idea of being an au pair. An au pair is sort of like a live-in nanny with an emphasis placed on cultural and linguistic exchange. As compensation for taking care of their children, the host family provides you housing and food plus a small amount of “pocket money” to use for any other expenses. Legal protections for au pairs and their working hours vary by country, but it is not considered a full-time job, which leaves you a fair amount of free time to explore the city on your own and even take weekend trips. I’ll write more in-depth about my au pair experience in a later post, but I wanted to touch briefly on how this experience impacted my outlook on travel moving forward.

While I had already experienced traveling as a tourist, this time around I wanted a different experience. I wanted to live as the locals do. What better way to assimilate into the culture and immerse yourself in the language than living with a host family? I matched with a family in Bologna, Italy towards the end of July 2019, and, after 2 conversations via FaceTime, I packed up and flew halfway across the world to live with them less than 6 weeks later.

My family and friends thought I was a bit crazy, some more supportive than others, but I knew, despite my fears, that this was the right move for me. The 3 months I spent there were the most challenging, enlightening, and rewarding months of my life thus far. Being forced out of my comfort zone allowed me to learn so much about myself and what I wanted out of life. I thought this experience would scratch my travel itch, and I’d be ready to settle down into a steady, predictable 9-5 when I got back. I could not have been more wrong.

Despite wanting to pack back up and continue traveling the world, I did the responsible thing that society expects and got an office job instead. My goal was to find a job that paid well enough and offered enough PTO to allow me to still travel in short stints. It just so happens that this turned out to be a pretty good idea at the time because I started my administration job at an engineering firm at the end of February 2020, and we all know what happened three weeks later…I bided my time and rode out the pandemic at my reliable 9-5, but by the time things settled down at the end of 2021, I was more than ready to move on. What I once thought was exactly what I wanted left me now feeling trapped and unfulfilled.

Even though I had no formal education on the subject, I decided that I was going to try to land a job in the tourism industry. After all, education isn’t everything, and often personal experience, passion, and work ethic make the best employee.

Admittedly, it was harder than I expected, but after a few months of endless searching, applying, and interviewing, I was hired at a boutique luxury travel agency in my area. While I was initially hired as an admin, an opening for a travel agent became available sooner than expected, and I was thrilled. It’s truly a dream job to be able to help people see the world and to feel fulfilled at the end of the day (not to mention it comes with some pretty cool travel perks too). My agency specializes in luxury cruising, so here is a photo of me on my first cruise to Alaska!

Solo Adventures and Unexpected Connections

In December of 2022, I set off to Prague on my first truly solo trip. Though this trip was supposed to happen the year before with a friend, it got canceled at the last minute due to more unexpected country closures, and I am SO GLAD it did. I thought this was going to be a liberating and self-enlightening solo trip, but the universe had other plans. 

On my second night in Prague, while I was out at a club with friends from my hostel, I met a cute Scottish boy named Johnny. We hit it off right away. As luck would have it, he was at the end of his trip but wasn’t quite ready to go home yet, so he continued along with me for the next 10 days of my trip. I felt like I was living out a Hallmark movie as we strolled the snowy streets of Prague, ice skated in Vienna, and lounged in the baths in Budapest. We even spent both of our birthdays together on this trip. What are the odds of that?! The way this trip panned out was far from what I expected, but I embraced it and allowed it to unfold exactly as it was meant to. The best trips always happen when you let it guide you rather than you trying to control it.

Sorry to leave you on so many cliffhangers, but more on this story later. I will leave you with this spoiler though: we’re meeting in Spain next week.

What’s Next?

Now that you’ve heard my entire travel-life story, let’s talk about why I started Caroline Across Countries and what I hope you take away from it. I have thought about starting a travel blog for years, but I had no idea where to start. Putting my thoughts and words out there for the world to see is intimidating. I let my fear and lack of knowledge hold me back for so long. Now that I’m here, I can confirm that what everyone says is true: “The hardest part is getting started.” While there are thousands of other travel bloggers out there, none of them have my exact experiences or mindset, and I believe that my stories, advice, and passion are worth sharing too.

I love taking photos of the places I visit. I am by no means a professional photographer, but I enjoy capturing unique angles and showing the destinations through “my lens,” so to speak. (If you’re interested in seeing more of my photos, I post daily on Instagram.) While photos are a great form of expression, you can only say so much in a caption. I want to be able to inspire people to get out and see the world no matter their circumstances. There will never be a “perfect” time to travel. You will always find a reason to stay behind, such as not enough time off, not enough money, or no one to travel with, but if traveling is important to you, I’m a firm believer that you can and should find a way to make it happen despite your internal objections.

So what can you expect ahead on the blog? In future posts, I will share stories to inspire you, tips to prepare you, and itineraries to equip you for your future travels. My goal for this blog is to use my experiences to create an encouraging and fun space to support all of your travel dreams. I hope that you continue to follow along on my travel journey and that it has a positive impact on your own travel journey.

I’ll leave you with some final thoughts. No two stories are going to be the same. This is mine. Yours will be different, and that’s okay. Having grown up in a family that fostered and encouraged exploring the world and seizing every opportunity to do so, I was blessed to start my journey at a young age with family trips and continue to feed my passion into my adult life through studying abroad, being an au pair, working as a travel agent, and all my other trips in between. Maybe you’re still looking for that opportunity to get started, and you’ve come here to find the courage to do so. So if you were looking for a sign to take that trip, here it is! If you’re already well on your travel journey, then I hope you can find some new ideas and different perspectives here because we can always learn from each other.

If you’ve stuck with me to the end of this post, thank you so much for taking the time to read it. Your support means the world to me as I put myself out there and share this piece of my life. To stay up-to-date on new posts, please subscribe to my email list and follow Caroline Across Countries on social media. I’m so excited to have you on this journey with me.

Much love x

– Caroline