Europe 2016 Saga, Part 1, Leaving the United States.

Leaving the United States

May 17th, roughly one month after I had turned 18 would mark the beginning of the journey that would change my life. Prior to this trip I had never been outside of the United States; the most I had traveled was driving to Arizona and flying to Florida. Neither of my parents were big international travelers aside from my mother who had visited Ireland a few times with and without her father. I have always gone down the path least traveled and this would be no exception. I was 18 and I knew that either my parents would support me and I travel or they would not support me and I would still travel. I had saved up for this trip for over a year and would not back down from the challenge.

Days flew by until the departure date had arrived, I did not sleep the night before because my flight was early in the morning on the 17th. I figured I would sleep while on the flight to combat the jet lag. My mother, grand mother, and grand father brought me to MSP, we left around 5 am from our hometown to make my 7 am flight. 

Everything was coming into focus then, before my departure date I did not think at all about my trip to avoid becoming anxious. Once it was here and happening though, all I could feel was a nervous excitement mixed with tiredness. I had committed to the and would not back out, so I buckled down and held on to my wits.

Now I am sure you all are wondering where it is I was heading, the first international stop in my adventure would be London, UK. Before that however, I had a 7 hour layover in Boston, a beautiful city that I had not been to before. I chose to have a longer layover so that I could explore, I wanted to make the most of the trip. I feel that a lot of people miss out by overlooking the potential that layovers have. Sure you have to deal with security an extra few times but the exploration it can give is well worth it in my opinion. For example I was able to see and explore Boston for free almost, I had to have the stop there and it made my flights cheaper than booking one-ways. You might as well make the most bang for your buck.

Now I only had 7 hours so I was not able to make many stops but the first stop was the Fenway Park and taking pictures with the statues.

I learned a lot in Boston and one of the biggest things that I learned is to use the public transport instead of Uber to save money(This would come in handy in the future). Thankfully though my Uber driver was kind and informed me of this, but also he took these pictures for me.

Now, I was never much of a baseball fan so I had decided to checkout the Boston Commons and the Boston Public Library, both being more in my interest.


I had not known what to expect from the library but I was thoroughly blown away when I walked up those stairs, the architecture was absolutely beautiful. I explored for a good forty-five minutes, going on each floor, looking at each area that was locked and restricted and wondered what was behind each of those doors. But without much time I couldn't do much in the building so I started for the door.

picture source

Now that I'd had my fill of literature I figured I would find the Commons, a place I only really knew of, from a video game that I had played; Fallout 4, which is an excellent game by the way. Something to love about Boston is how easy it is to get places, the people are usually very friendly and will not have an issue with helping you out. After talking to a few people I was on my way to what would become one of my favorite parks ever. I arrived and was giddy due to the sheer size of the park, I love the outdoors and anywhere that isn't filled with concrete. This was like an oasis in the desert but green instead of water and the buildings and concrete being the desert. It made for a good stroll, but my 7 hours was nearing the one hour left mark, so I headed back to the airport with time to spare in order to get through security and make my way to the big stop, London UK.