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...

Stockholm definitely tops the list of gorgeous views while descending in an airplane. The area is made up of hundreds of green islands, throw in a few colorful aspen trees and you've got some breathtaking scenery.  During this trip, I have enjoyed getting to know cities and playing the, "let's wander around for a few hours, then find my way back with the map" game. My newest hobby seems to be flying to a new city and finding my way to a specific address without a map. You can probably imagine how that game goes. I decided to try my hand at Couchsurfing-a website that connects you with locals who you can stay with for free. I was staying with a girl named Alex and had an address and the metro stop where she lived, but nothing more. I had to ask about five people in order to actually find the metro station, but luckily virtually all Swedes speak perfect English.  After an exhausting two hours of wandering Stockholm and stopping strangers to ask for directions...

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 ...

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...