Traveling Abroad

To travel abroad, solo with your most precious cargo, your kids can be scary.  I do it, and according to social media it looks like with ease.  However I will tell you I have a moment each time when I am on foreign soil, and I do not speak the language I panic.  I mostly worry that I am not prepared enough for my children to keep them safe.  However, it is short lived.
I just returned from 4 days in Dublin and 7 in Paris with my 17 year old daughter.  I took lots of notes and plan to do several blog post.  I do this so I can reference, but also so anyone can gather my do's and don't as well.
I am often told by people they wished they traveled and did these adventures but it's overwhelming, to plan, let alone do.
I get it.  This started long ago for me. 2000 and 2001 I was a flight attendant for Untied Airlines.  3-5 nights a week I woke up in different cities around the U.S and abroad.  Rarely was I with people I knew and well before there was such a thing as google maps or smart phones.  I took full advantage of every place I landed to see what there was to see.  I used the free hotel maps, asked questions at the concierge and took all those free rack cards with descriptions and set out.  I learned to successfully navigate the "L" in Chicago,  the "metro" in D.C and the "MTA" in NYC.  Not an easy feat for a girl from central Washington.  The more I traveled the more I wanted to see.  I love people, culture and history, I was hooked on travel.  Things came to an abrupt halt in 2001, and my career as a flight attendant was over.
2002 I had a second child and 2003 started a business.  For the next 9 years I would focus on my little family and business.  We traveled but often to Hawaii, for easy relaxing vacations. However in 2011 after going through a devastating divorce, in an attempt to pick my self up I decided to revisit the things that used to make me happy. I realized that during that 15 year relationship I had lost so much of who I was.  I had become an "us" and zero clue who "I" was.  All I knew was I use to love to travel.  It was now just my children and I, so if I wanted to travel it would have to be them, because there was no way I was leaving without them, and it would have to be cheap.
We started with all the major cities in the U.S. I wanted to show them, and then branched out on a super cheap deal in 2014 to Iceland, from there the international bug came flooding back!

Hence where I am today.  The memories from all our travels are something I will forever hold close to my heart.  We have had a lot of mishaps along the way but I wouldn't change it.  We've managed to find our way, communicate, and walk miles and miles in every new place.  It reminded me of who I am, and that is a capable woman.  Stay tuned for Dublin and Paris blog posts!