The smell of dusty books and warm coffee. The old brick mixed and melded into new construction. A lake so vast, I feel as though I am staring at the ocean.
I have never had the opportunity to travel alone. My father has always worried something horrible would happen; my finances were never enough to send me anywhere; I lacked the time for any amount of substantial exploration.
This year, a golden ticket fell upon my lap. A chance at the freedom, responsibility, and risk that come with traveling alone.
My journey began in Niagara Falls. I’d never been and admittedly, I didn’t really care about seeing some water falling. What I did care about was Ripley’s Museum of Believe It or Not!
It was everything I could have hoped for. There was a strange mix of cultural paraphernalia and circus type wonders of creation. Everything from two-headed animals to the world’s tallest man to a piece of the Berlin wall to a fork for eating human flesh to optical illusions that I’m still processing the realities of. Do I believe everything I saw at Ripley’s? Probably more than I should.
This all sounds splendid and rad, but my trouble began here in Niagara Falls — no solo travel goes without some hiccups. My hotel for the night was on the American side, in New York state. I’ve never crossed a border by foot nor alone. I’d also never been responsible for booking my own hotel.
The border guards to the American side of the falls were not amused by my little mishap in hotel booking and seemed to only dig deeper into what I was doing in America. They questioned what I was doing on the east side of the continent at all; I remember stuttering as I gave my answers.
Despite my nervous habits, they let me through since all the facts checked out. I enjoyed some rest on a luxurious king size bed that night, and awoke to a rather strange hotel breakfast. I’m not sure if it’s an American thing to have biscuits and gravy for breakfast, but I was certainly disappointed at the lack of pancakes and syrup.
From here, I went on a two hour train ride to Toronto where I would be staying for the remainder of my trip. My final day is where things started to go askew once more. The weather had been fine before this point, but for the entire morning of my final day, snow flaked down from the sky. That gentle snow turned to a blizzard by the afternoon and I had to start figuring out how the PATH network, the underground tunnels in Toronto, worked. I knew that they were attached to the building I was staying in, but they feel like a labyrinth when you’ve never been in them before.
After some trial and error — and finding a map of the PATH system — I found my way back to my cozy Airbnb. Later that night, I ventured out to indulge in the last meal of my trip at Shoushin, a Michelin star restaurant.
The blizzard only got worse and the restaurant staff insisted I call an Uber. I’ve never had such a terrifying car ride in my life, and that’s saying a lot. The driver stopped multiple times to de-ice his windshield, and had to intentionally swerve the tires to create friction on the snow; there were no lines visible on the road. A piece of me wondered if I should have walked to the subway station — at least the train would have been safely operating underground, free of snow.
Long story short, I survived. However, I woke up at 6 a.m EST the next day to an email stating my flight home was cancelled due to weather. This was the start to a horrifically long day of insecurities and panic. I was out of funds, so I couldn’t afford to stay any longer in Ontario, and I had never been on a plane alone before.
I lucked out and got a seat on a flight from Hamilton to Calgary, and then a connecting flight from Calgary to Abbotsford at the last second. What was meant to be a simple six hour flight turned into a eighteen hour fiasco of delays and cancellations that ended in me finally arriving in Abbotsford at 2 a.m.
Traveling alone can be freeing and give you experiences you never expected, but it also comes with risks and unpredictability. If you ever get the chance, I say go out and grab onto it for dear life, and hope it takes you everywhere and then back home.
Emmaline is working on her BA and ambitions to become an English teacher. They always say, those who cannot do, teach. She spends her free time buying, reading, and hoarding books with the hope that one day she will have no furniture and instead only have piles of books.