How I Travel.

Hi there!

Now, this is a story all about how…I travel? It doesn’t quite work with the “Fresh Prince” melody but I’ll  go with it. Since I started a blog, I’ve been getting questions about “how I travel”. These questions come in various ways but the theme is usually the same.

Before I started traveling more frequently, I often asked similar questions to no one in particular while reading travel blogs or scrolling through Instagram. “How do they do it?” “Isn’t it expensive?” “Where do they find the time?”. I soon learned that for a lot of these people, traveling is their job. Their office is the tray table on a plane, the poolside at a resort in Mexico or a hammock in a hostel in Panamá.

Traveling is not my job, neither does my job include any traveling yet, so my setup is a little different. These are the three main factors that affect how and when I travel!

Flexibility: I’m a full-time graduate student and a part-time graduate research assistant. It sounds like a hectic scenario, and to be honest, it is, but it’s also quite flexible. My job allows me to work remotely with only one day assigned for face-to-face meetings. I also have Mondays and Fridays off from classes. Usually, I plan my trips around my free days. Students in the United States also get a number of holidays; one of them is a week-long spring break which I am currently spending in Montréal, Canada.

On this week in Puerto Rico, I was able to vacation from Thursday to Monday.

Planning: Besides my flexible lifestyle, I’m an avid [trip] planner. I have a long list of places I want to visit and I’m almost always planning trips in my head. Once I narrow down a location, I write down the logistics of visiting and give myself a minimum of 3 months to plan it all out. Every trip I’ve taken and will take this year was in its planning phase late last year! Sometimes I’m spontaneous when there’s a good deal on airfare.

Money: “Where do you get the money to travel?”. I’ve read a lot of blogs that say travel doesn’t have to be expensive. While I agree with that, I have a different answer to the question. Quite simply, travel is high on my list of financial priorities. Because of this, I tend to put quite a bit of my spare cash into savings for travel. You’ll invest in what you feel is important to you. Sometimes I tell people that the best gift they can get me is a plane ticket. I’m patiently waiting for someone to take me up on it. 😄.

To save money, I also try to buy tickets when they are cheapest, stay with friends or use Airbnb to save on hotel costs. {Click this sentence to use my code for $40 off your first stay with Airbnb}.

Tip 1: GoogleFlights is great because it gives you a calendar view of ticket prices. If you’re flexible, you can play with the dates to find what prices work best for you. You can also track ticket prices to see when they change. 

Tip 2: Apps like Skyscanner will offer you a broader range of airlines than GoogleFlights as well as give you the option to track ticket prices. Skiplagged is another cheap flight platform, and I like this one because it shows current and future ticket price trends. 
The truth is, once you find something you’re passionate about, you find a way to make it a priority. It’s my goal to see the world, learn from my experiences, and positively affect the lives of the people I meet along the way. Every plane, boat, train or car ride is an opportunity to learn something new and make memories that will hopefully last a lifetime.

Sometimes there are obstacles that hold us back, and other times there aren’t. Take advantage of the times there aren’t to pursue fulfilling experiences!

As always, 

Thank you for reading! 

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Same footprints, different sands.