Kyle Hepp

September 15, 2009

Seba and I have a budget. We follow it pretty strictly. And for our month in the U.S. we actually came in under by about $500 dollars. Now, this doesn’t mean that we don’t let ourselves do fun stuff or spend money on fun stuff. It just means that we know exactly how much we can spend to stay within a range that will hopefully allow us to continue to live comfortably when we’re back in Santiago and then travel some more next year.

So in Europe, we’ve been sticking to the plan — we’ve actually been Couchsurfing though, almost our entire time here, which has meant that we’ve come in waaaaaaay under budget every day.

Meeting local people in every city you’re in is really awesome. I feel a lot more connected to the places we’ve been than I normally do when I travel. The only downside is that you’re always on someone else’s schedule. So when we left Dublin for Galway, we decided we’d splurge. At first we said we’d get a private hostel room. We quickly realized that for a couple traveling together, that really doesn’t make much sense, since here, most of the hostels charge you per person. So we were going to end up paying almost as much as we would’ve for a hotel room. We decided to just go for it and get a hotel room. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH, this is the life of luxury. It’s SO NICE to have our own space. I can leave my makeup on the bathroom counter if I want to and not make my bed if I don’t feel like it. Yes, I generally enjoy living like a complete slob. So we’ve been way over budget the past couple of days, but since we’ve made up for that the rest of the trip, we’re fine. And we’re enjoying these three days to the maximum.

Yesterday, Seba asked, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could always travel like this?”

I responded, “Yeah, but do you really think we’d appreciate it as much as we do now?”

Of course being super rich would be wonderful. But I like that right now, I walk into our simple little hotel room and I want to squeal because I feel so lucky.. I like that with every new city we go to, I have to pinch myself and I think, “OMG, this is REAL. WE DID IT.” We saved up for over two years. We busted our asses like two poor little hamsters on a wheel. And now we’re here. Traveling through Europe. Sleeping in a nice hotel room every once in a while. I FEEL SO LUCKY. And I hope this feeling never goes away.