I left Boston, Massachusetts, where I’d been visiting my family, on Tuesday, October 27th, 2015. I really should have packed the night before, but I’m a bit of a procrastinator (I find if I leave everything until the last minute, I’m more efficient)—so I stuffed the last of my clothes into my backpack about 15 minutes before I left the house for the airport.
If you’re curious about what I packed for 7 months of traveling in countries where I’ll experience all 4 seasons, you can see I tried to bring a little bit of everything:
The picture books are to gift to schools I visit, the magazine to read on the plane, colored pencils to spice up my journal (the purple one). Also, I bought a used kindle paperwhite online (not pictured) so I can read to my heart’s content!
Now you know what’s inside my backpack. When I got it all packed up it looked like this:
The “silk traveller” is like a sleeping bag sheet that adds some warmth, but is way smaller (and less warm) than an actual sleeping bag. The green pouch at the top of the bag is a pack cover that goes over the outside of my backpack in case it rains.
And here’s me, with my 7 months-worth of luggage 🙂
The little backpack zips onto the big one (I’ll have to show that in another photo) and I will end up ditching that purse for a smaller one right away.
I was nice and squished on my flight in the middle of the middle 4 seats, but they served us a huge dinner and then 3 hours later a small breakfast, so at least I kept busy eating and watching bad movies. We landed in London at 6am in the morning, which was only 1am in Boston (asking my smarty-pants phone about time zones helps me to keep this all straight!). Even though it was so early, all the stores were open and busy. I resisted buying this teddy bear to take along with me on my travels:
Anyone know what 1,652.15 pounds (sale price) is in dollars?
I wasn’t tired enough to sleep on my first flight (plus every time the airplane bounces, even though I know turbulence is nothing to worry about, my heart races a mile a minute) But at 10am when I got on my 2-hour flight from London to Barcelona (5am Boston time) I was really sleepy. I fell asleep about 4 times during the time between when we landed in Barcelona and we finally taxied to our gate to get off the plane.
I have arrived at my first destination. Time for the adventures to begin!
(Disclaimer: this photo is from Logan Airport in Boston. I was too sleepy when I got to Barcelona to think to take a photo!)
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