Unglamorous moments of backpacking

Being sick whilst travelling, eating fish ovaries, and trying not to crap my pants etc

Hello hello! I can’t believe it’s 2025 already! It’s been a hectic six weeks since my last newsletter. We’ve been off backpacking around Germany, Poland and Spain, and then we had some friends visiting from Australia, who we took around Portugal.

I figured I could show you all the glamorous, fun moments from our trip, but instead I’ve decided to show you the more chaotic side of our travels. We were sick for the majority of the time we were away, which is never fun, especially when you’re taking four-hour bus rides or sleeping in a 16-bed dorm room. Don’t get me wrong, we still had a great time, but it seems only right to share with you the more unfiltered moments.

Here’s the only photo I took from our two days in Salamanca, Spain. I simultaneously had a bad cold and a bad migraine, so safe to say I didn’t leave the hotel room once.

My toxic trait is that I refuse to pay for luggage on flights. I only travel with a carry-on bag, but most budget airlines in Europe now make you pay for anything that won’t fit under the seat in front of you, which my bag most definitely will not. I personally think it’s bollocks so I get a thrill out of never paying for extra and sneaking my oversized and overweight bag through the gates every time. I haven’t been caught yet but at this stage if I do I’ll still have saved money. Also with it being winter, I can’t fit all my bulky warm clothes in my bag so here’s me hiding about 4kg of stuff under my jacket to sneak onto the plane. While my backpack may look unassuming, it weighs 12kg and on this particular flight it wouldn’t even fit in the overhead compartments. I thought I might finally be busted, but alas the Ryanair gods were on my side and I happened to have a spare seat next to me on the flight, which my bag graciously sat in for the three-hour flight.

My friend unknowingly took this photo of me on a train, where I got a terrible stomach ache out of nowhere and was desperately trying not to crap my pants. This is the face of pure stress, panic and concentration. Don’t worry, I didn’t crap my pants, thank god.

Ah the glamour of a hostel dorm room.

We went out for tapas one night in Spain, but the whole menu was in Spanish so we just asked the waitress to bring us what she recommended. We decided to eat the whole plate of these tube-looking things, before Googling them and realising they were fish ovaries. Can I say, I didn’t realise fish ovaries were so big! I really didn’t like them, even before I knew what they were, but hey, I’m willing to try anything once.

When your shoe breaks in the middle of the day, you’ve got no choice but to get creative. This isn’t the first time I’ve had a shoe break whilst travelling, and my nifty hair tie fix worked a treat, yet again.

New years eve was a fun night. We had chips and olives for dinner, went on a pub crawl (the majority of the people there were over 50), drank warm bubbles at midnight and ate 12 grapes out of a can, as is the Spanish new years tradition (eating 12 grapes, not the grapes in a can part).

Team work makes the dream work when it comes to a big food shop.

One of the highlights of the last six weeks was the São Gonçalinho festival in Aveiro, Portugal. For this festival, people go to the top of this church in town with these special biscuit things and throw them down to people waiting below. People come with umbrellas and fishing nets and get very competitive about catching as many biscuits as possible. The biscuits were about the size of my head and solid as a rock, so when I tried to catch one with my bare hands I came away bleeding.

Nelson was much smarter and had this broken umbrella to catch them in.

Luggage, luggage and more luggage.

An array of other chaotic times, including:

• reuniting with my friend Alice after 9 months apart, on the street at midnight, in between the train station and our Airbnb

• too much piri-piri sauce in dinner

• licking the walls of a salt mine in Krakow (it was salty)

• squeezing into the world’s smallest elevator

• at-home haircuts

---

I hope everyone had a lovely, and slightly less chaotic Christmas break then ours, and I’m excited to be back writing this newsletter all about living overseas and travelling. We’re back in Lisbon now for the next couple of months just focusing on work. I’ll be cutting back to just one newsletter a fortnight this year as I have some other writing things in the works, which I can’t wait to share with you!