Costa Rica reminded me of the version of travel that made me fall in love with backpacking in the first place — humid air, long bus rides, jungle everywhere, and nights spent staring at stars so bright they barely felt real.

Travel changes your relationship with money in strange ways. Somewhere between unfamiliar currencies, cheap street food, overpriced airport coffee, and mentally converting everything back into dollars, I started realizing money mattered less for luxury and more for freedom.

Lebanon didn’t feel completely foreign to me. It felt familiar in the way family recipes, loud dinner tables, and inherited culture sometimes do — like parts of my identity existed there long before I ever arrived.

London felt exactly how I imagined it would — rainy, cinematic, endlessly walkable, and full of neighborhoods that somehow each carried their own completely different personality.

Belize felt humid, chaotic, sunburned, salty, and slightly unorganized in the best possible way — the kind of trip where ferries run late, everyone lives in swimsuits, and eventually you stop caring about plans altogether.

One of the strangest parts of solo travel is how quickly strangers can stop feeling like strangers. Something about movement, unfamiliarity, and temporary shared experiences makes people open up faster than they often do at home.