Ember Travels

Good morning/good afternoon/buen dia where ever you are in the world! It is a lovely Tuesday morning in Sevilla, Spain and this marks the two month aniversary of my journey! I want to thank all of you, who I know and don`t know for your comments, messages and endless enthusasium for my travels. Your support has been amazing and it´s always nice to hear from a familiar face! A little bit about my travels...I am excited to be in a country where I  finally  speak the language! I arrived in Spain yesterday and plan to spend a few days in Sevilla, then head to Grenada where I can hopefully find a place to settle down for a month or so to practice my Spanish and meet some locals. Keep your fingers crossed, I´m not sure how the whole, "I want to rent a room for just a month" thing will go, but things always seem to work out, so I´m not too worried. A friend recently commented on my luck saying that I may actually be the center of the universe, so I´ll just bank on that :) Either way...

I am currently en route to Stockholm and in my favorite place, the airplane. The flight was a tight squeeze-overbooked by five people, I was imagining the worst case scenario...another night in Prague? Buying a last minute ticket? I waited at the gate, the anxiety continuing to build.  Suddenly, the gate agent motioned for me to come over and held out a boarding pass...good as gold. I couldn't believe it! I wanted to do the happy dance and hug him all at the same time. Flying standby is a real adrenaline trip. I spend the majority of my time in the airport anxiously pacing the terminal, and a small amount of time manically rejoicing with that, "ha, I won!" feeling. Probably the same kind of feeling a bank robber has when he actually gets away with the bag of loot. I'm not saying this from personal experience or anything, I'll stick to flying for my adrenaline rush thank you very much. Saturday was my one month anniversary of being a nomad. Looking back, this trip ...

Before I left on my trip, there seemed to be a popularity war between Budapest and Prague. Half of my friends said to avoid Budapest and spend my time in Prague and the other half said that I would fall in love with Budapest and Prague would be nothing more than a dot on the map. I decided that with all this controversy I would have to investigate the two cities for myself. I took the nigh bus to Prague and instantly felt at home when I saw billboards and skyscrapers-something Budapest was devoid of. What a strange thought, I never knew such urban nonsense could be so appealing.  I managed to visit almost all of Prague's sites in the first day. The city is very lively and gorgeous. It was Hitler's favorite hangout, so it remains untouched from both world wars. One of the city's biggest industries is tourism and there are tourists EVERYWHERE! The streets are jam packed with people reading maps and street vendors, a little stressful if you ask me.  Interestingly, The C...

I haven't been on top of the time situation, so I hope you're not disappointed by my lack of countdown.  I will be boarding the plane for Istanbul in a few short hours, and I am lucky enough to have my mom joining me on my journey for the first two weeks!  The past month has been full of browsing online travel forums (Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree Forum has saved my life many times), getting travel vaccines, memorizing airport codes and vigorously studying world geography.  The last one wasn’t so hard since my shower curtain is a map of the world.  Needless to say my obsession with maps paired with said shower curtain was probably not conducive to saving water.  Now, I have everything necessary to live stuffed into my little backpack and I am ready to embark on my new career as a nomad. When I tell people that I'm traveling the world, I get one of two responses. 1: wow, that's awesome, I've always wanted to do that, I'm jealous! Or (the critical) 2: Is that saf...