The Perfect Traveler.

a song to set the scene // i still haven’t found what i’m looking for by u2

It was to be our first big trip together.

Just the gem and I- 5400 miles away, vacationing for the first time together in the splendid country of Italy.

As the months counted down and we finalized the planning, I started noticing curious sorts of comments from those around me.

“Wow, first big trip! You’ll really get to see if you travel well together after this.”

“If you guys can get through this, you can get through anything!”

And so on and so forth.

Well, lucky for him, I was the perfect traveler.

Never lost a bag, never missed a flight, and I always showed up chic and stylish.

Piece of cake, I thought.

Ever heard of expectations vs reality?

Yeah, it’s a thing.

Because everything that could go wrong went wrong.

My first plane was late, so I missed all of my connecting flights. For the first time ever, I had to find an agent and reroute my entire trip.

I couldn’t get my eSIM to work, so I had to chase down someone over the phone who could help me get my phone unlocked.

Someone spilled cranberry juice on my lap.

When I did finally show up in Naples, I neglected to notice that baggage claim was before security checkpoint. So I went through security… and my bags were stuck on the other side.

Reuniting with Andrew was not like the movies. While he glowed like some big bucatini Italian man, I was instead: frazzled, smelly, sweating in my merino turtleneck sweater that seemed like a good idea when I left Alaska, and crying.

Getting my bags proved to be rather difficult. After butchering our way through explaining how yes, I walked past baggage claim and through the security checkpoint that you cannot cross back into, I was very rudely escorted back to where my bags were, suffering through the humiliation of being talked about in another language.

Retrieving my “bags” was the icing on the cake because I was only able to find one. My other bag? Not there. Gone, lost, stolen, had missed a flight somewhere, I didn’t know, but it wasn’t there. Which meant, that in my frazzled, smelly, sweating in my merino turtleneck sweater that seemed like a good idea when I left Alaska, and now emotional state, I then had to file a lost bag claim. In a foreign country. By myself.

Welcome to Italy, you so called perfect traveler.

Unfortunately, my tumultuous arrival set the scene for a very tinted trip.

Already feeling the dissapointment towards myself at how poorly this “perfect traveler” actually traveled, I started to feel somewhat self-conscious.

Surrounded by Italians, who were some of the most beautiful people in the world, I compared myself to them, feeling plain and so insignificant in their presence.

In places where I once would’ve reveled in the beauty and grace, I instead pulled at my clothes, feeling like a wrinkly, cheap, dirty napkin.

As we traveled from city to city, I felt like the laughing stock, the dumb American who traveled with way too many bags.

And whenever I felt like this, which was often, it had an effect on my gem.

Of course it did. This girl wears her heart on her sleeve.

And when this happened, in came the self-loathing.

What a failure.

What a dissapointment.

What an embarrassment.

He’ll never want to travel with you again.

I hated myself.

How could I be like this: here, in Italy?

This was supposed to be our trip. It was our salvation, our saving grace during the exhaustive summer months and here I was: ruining it.

This wasn’t the kind of thing I read about on my travel blogs.

This wasn’t the kind of scene I pictured when scrolling through Instagram reels and picture perfect posed shoots. Snotty faced and hiding in the bathroom that I paid 1 euro to use and sitting on a toilet with no seat wasn’t exactly what I had imagined.

But it seems that wherever you go, there you are.

I was sharing my trip with my counselor a couple of days ago, and he started the session with that quote.

“Wherever you go, there you are.”

Taken from Jon Kabat-Zinn, I found myself struck by that sentiment.

It had such simplicity and honesty to it.

See, for a good portion of my trip, I had loathed myself for not living up to this expectation of the perfect traveler I had touted myself to be. Beating myself up for “feeling that way” in Italy of all places, in what was supposed to be this perfect trip, I neglected to realize that wherever I went, there I was.

And being a different country doesn’t change the fact that I’m still in the process of learning. I’m still in the throes of growing.

Looking back now, the stage had not been set for success. Over-confident, and maybe slightly naive, things happened that were completely out of my control. I became overwhelmed, quite honestly, and totally out of my comfort zone. Resenting myself felt right because historically, that’s what I’ve always done. And that’s okay.

I just wish I had practiced some of that compassion and kindness to what I was going through, and not judged myself as harshly for feeling the way I did.

But that’s how you learn and that’s how you grow.

It seems that this so-called perfect traveler is learning exactly what it means to be a perfect traveler.

A perfect traveler does not, in fact, travel perfectly.

In actuality, what makes a perfect traveler is her ability to adapt to all things imperfect. The perfect traveler experiences all the problems, all the delayed flights, all the missed bags, and all the language barriers. She accepts the shi* on the street, navigates the vespas, and remembers to not wear wool when traveling to the south of Italy because she already made that mistake once and she is not showing up frazzled, smelly, and sweaty again.

She takes on challenges with a smirk, learns from each mistake, pays attention to and accepts how she’s feeling without judgement; and over time, becomes that perfect traveler she’s meant to be.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Baggage, and all.