Illustration by Ren O’Hare

 

Words from our Sex Editor Alice:

You are reading the second instalment of our ‘Perspectives’ series. Please enjoy the work of another of our extremely talented writers.

 

At the end of my time in high school, my senior class took our  annual messy trip to Disney World. We stayed in a questionable music-themed motel, spent most of our days in the parks, and ended up spending too much money on overpriced (but tasty) food. Overall though, it was an amazing trip and such a good experience to add to our core high school memories. But there was one major issue that many people thought about months before the trip: who were they going to spend all of their time with in Disney World? Who were the best people to make these memories with? For me, I chose my main friend group that I spent every lunchtime with. The group included my best friend, as well as my other close friends that I had known since I was much younger. We were a fairly cohesive group and spent every lunch hour at school together, but we had some clashes happen fairly often. We have such different personalities, and while my close friend and I agreed on virtually everything, we would often have “debates” with some of the other members of the group that generally ended in a state of disagreement. Despite our differences, we made the choice to room near each other and spend our time in the parks together. I had no idea how this was going to go, as I had never travelled with them, but I figured we would just decide what we wanted to do and go with the flow. I was definitely wrong. While my best friend and I just roughly decided what we wanted to do and thought we might as well make loose plans that could be changed, one member of the group wanted to organize every day down to the smallest detail, and stressed everyone out when things did not go perfectly- something that unfortunately happened very often during that trip. 

This is a classic example of why it isn’t always easy to travel with close friends: no matter how well you know them, travelling with them is a different experience that causes stress and arguments. Coming from a small town in the USA to Dublin for university gave me the opportunity to travel more with my friends, and meeting so many new people helped me experience more positive times while travelling. When going on a trip with someone, you need to be able to trust them to do certain parts of the planning, because when one person tries to plan everything the stress always falls on that individual. For example, I went to Rome with some of my closest friends last semester, and we planned our trip in a fairly laid-back manner. We forgot to book tickets to the Vatican, but instead of dwelling on that we took some pictures outside of it. We looked around a little afterwards and found an amazing restaurant with cheap and delicious pizza, and then we spent the day exploring. It ended up being an amazing trip because we didn’t get stressed; we made loose plans for each day, and when we needed to change them it didn’t affect us because we were able to find other ways to enjoy our time. I could definitely see myself as the type who would get stressed when plans start to fall apart a little, but, because of who I was travelling with on this particular trip, I felt calm and unbothered by minor issues when they came up. 

Another trip I went on was with my close friend and former roommate to Edinburgh for a long weekend. That trip began a little stressfully… we missed our outbound flight and had to make the decision of what to do – do we re-book and still go, or should we just call it a loss and waste our round trip ticket back to Dublin? After some discussion, and going back and forth, we decided to seize the opportunity to travel to Edinburgh and re-booked our tickets hours before the flight. Since this cost us more money than expected, I was glad that we didn’t book for any attractions ahead of time. We ended up having the most amazing time. Most of our trip was spent doing free attractions, including a mystery and murder night tour lead by a Dracula who came highly recommended on TripAdvisor and a self-guided tour of Harry Potter-related areas in the city.

I went on another trip with the same friend to Belfast for a quick and spontaneous weekend get-away which we ended up planning around 10 hours before getting on the train there. We explored the city and surrounding areas for 2 days, and our biggest issue didn’t happen until Sunday night right before our return trip. As we prepared to leave our hostel, we double-checked the time of our train, yet forgot to check where exactly it was leaving from; we ended up a bus station on the other side of the city from the train station 5 minutes before our train. Clearly we missed the train, however after some thinking and laughing about our stupid mistake, we were able to get on the bus after explaining ourselves and our need to get to Dublin before classes started the next day. That was slightly nerve-wracking as far as travelling experiences go, but because we stayed calm and had good attitudes we figured it out quickly and it didn’t cost us a penny more. 

These trips ended up being amazing because I went on them with my close friends who have similar travelling habits to me. During these travels, as well as others that I have been on since I began university, there has been some planning involved, but this planning has not been as stressful as I would’ve expected based on past experiences when travelling. I have learned so much about people in my life by travelling with them, and I have also learned a ton about my own travelling habits and how having the right people with me can make any situation fine. 

 

It’s okay to be the type of person that is stressed with travelling and wants to make sure everything is perfect because there are definitely times like that for me. Travelling by myself and with my friends has taught me so much about why I stress over certain issues and inconveniences. My attitude to making friends has slightly shifted, as I know that the best friends for me are ones who can help make any stressful situation bearable. Next time I’m travelling with friends and we miss our ride back home, or we forget to book an attraction ahead of time, it’ll all work out. No matter what, I know that I’ll be able to adapt quickly to the situation, and do so while probably laughing at my and my friends’ little mistakes.