I want to share some “real talk” with you for a moment. Now, I have my pride…but sometimes you just have to make fun of yourself. I was telling my friend about the ins and outs of my trip, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculous things that have happened during the past two months of travel.

I’m going to share my top blooper moments with you, so be gentle… laugh with me, not at me. We are in the tree of trust now. K, thanks.

• I busted it in Malta. HARD. I was wearing my oh-so-glamourous Birkenstock sandals and stepped on a fine layer of dust on a slant and took a tumble into the street. My first thought? I’m going to get run over. My second thought? Thank God I didn’t drop my pastries.

• I got caught on the grill of a van in Amsterdam…and it started driving. Before you think, “oh my God…is she okay”…don’t. Just laugh. You can even laugh at me on this one. I was wearing a trench coat and I was walking in front of a van with a walking tour (yes, there was an audience for this) and my cuff got stuck in the grill. The van started driving until I was visibly yanked back and gave a quite obviously terrified expression (and I’m sure an audible reaction). I was not easily freed either. There was honking involved, crowding around me, pushing, pulling and finally my dad jammed the grill in to liberate me from my embarrassment. Note: the coat was not as fortunate as I was.

• I sobbed to an old man in Florence. Y’all…I’m not joking with you. This poor Italian man met me in a dark moment on a dark day. I had 3 heavy/large/cumbersome boxes to ship from the train station, my luggage, and my backpack. I couldn’t find a taxi stand for the life of me (taxis aren’t supposed to stop unless at a stand). I was rolling my suitcase on cobblestone, trying to balance the boxes, and manically waving down any taxi in an effort to guilt them into stopping. Of course (as fate would have it), the boxes fell, the taxi number kept hanging up on me, and every taxi driver just shook their head “no” through their windows as pedestrians just looked at me and continued walking. In a weak moment, I threw my head back to the sky and screamed. NO ONE stopped to help, until I turned on the water works. Luckily, this man had a notepad with another taxi number and stayed by my side until it arrived. The cherry on top was that when I got to the train station, they told me that 20 minutes wasn’t enough to complete my shipping (what the…?!) and I had to take all my ever-loving junk back on the train with me.

• I drank too much limoncello and hated every second of the next morning. I won’t recap this now, but you can read the post here.

• I wore dirty socks for a week. Gross. Gross. Gross. This is where I need you to laugh with me, and not at me. This is the reality of traveling for long periods of time. I had no access to a washer, and the weather was not warm enough to wear sandals. I tried to wear boots without socks, but I just shredded my feet, and then had to wear dirty socks over my blistered tootsies.

• My hair turned to hay. My poor hair. I trained my hair not to get oily before leaving (yes, you can do this) so that I could just use dry shampoo. However, what I didn’t think about was that I would be curling and straightening my hair multiple times before conditioning it again. I’ve remedied the situation with multiple hair masks, but I had to put face lotion in my hair just to get it to do anything. The struggle is real and you can read about all the rough realities of traveling here.

• I’ve had 2 cancelled ferries resulting in 2 lost hotel reservations. Don’t book a ferry in Greece on a holiday. They can call it bad weather, but we took a ferry the next day in much worse conditions. I’m not judging…I’m just saying that I think someone didn’t want to come to work that day so that they could indulge in some ouzo.

• I shivered in the wind and rain by a shed. My awesome friend, KJ (see her rockstar status blog here) came to visit me in Greece and I had it all planned. Spa day: Check. Hot tub: Check. Transportation: Check (ish)…see previous bullet about the ferries. However, sometimes Airbnb owners don’t show up when they should. And sometimes, their absence perfectly coincides with horrible weather and (practically) freezing temperatures. At first we weren’t even sure the taxi took us to the right place, then our host didn’t show up and blamed it on my lack of communication, and then lastly, we realized that our covered porch was 10 feet from us the whole time. Whoops.

• I packed my hotel key in my luggage. KJ and I were at our backup hotel in Greece after a ferry cancellation. I was Hellbent on the fact that I must have left the key in the door the night before (potentially even more terrifying). After a few judgemental stares from the staff and 30 minutes of searching the room, I realized that I had buried the key at the bottom of my packing cube inside my luggage. Whoops (again).

• I busted it in Greece. HARD. Sound familiar (see bullet 1)? Yep. It happened again. This one is for all the ladies out there. I was with KJ in Santorini and we were feeling good. I had a sassy dress on, boots, and a leather jacket…and way too much wine (you see where this is going). Let’s just say the curb reached up and tripped me. I looked up at KJ like a kicked puppy as a group of Greek men tried to rescue me from my shame. Needless to say, I ran away as quickly as my scraped knee could carry me.

• I wandered the streets of champagne champagne-less. My friend Brittany came to visit me in Paris and we might have imbibed in a bit too much red wine the evening before our morning train to Reims. Imagine getting off a train, heading to a champagne tasting, and then braving the elements to find a nearby restaurant to grab a bite to eat (and absorb the wine from the night before). The upside? We woke up at 8:30, showered, got completely ready, and caught two subway connections, all to make it to our 9:28 AM train across town. The downside? Language barriers can cause Google maps to take you to parts of town where the only restaurants are Chinese take-away restaurants and pastry shop that sell cold quiche…which we ate.

While I have loved this journey and learned from every second of it, it doesn’t mean that every second was always enjoyable. Just like if I were back home, I would have good days and bad days. However, the good news is that I can look back and hysterically laugh at my bad days…and I hope that you did too!