Spending two and a half weeks straight, no breaks, with grandparents sounds like every college student’s worst nightmare. But when your grandmother offers an all expenses paid trip to Spain and Portugal, are you supposed to say no? That’s how I wound up on the most unique experience I’ve faced so far.
To provide some backstory, my grandmother has always wanted to travel, but never has. More specifically, she has always wanted to travel with me. Realizing it was time to knock off a bucket list item, I agreed, and we booked a trip scheduled for right after finals this May. When we booked the trip, I had two rules: I wanted a trip through a tour group so we would not have to make the decisions (aiming to decrease animosity), and to sign up for an all ages tour so there were other people my age. Well, only one of those things happened!Â
You guessed it – after 10 hours of flying with my plane-anxious grandmother, we arrived to meet the other travelers and there was nobody remotely close in age to me! In fact, almost everybody was a senior citizen! Who would I become vacation friends with? Who could give me a reprieve from spending all the time with my grandmother?
 Now the first night I will admit – I panicked. What was I supposed to do for sixteen days with old people? But then I reframed and I decided to embrace it. Here I was, in Europe, how could I complain?Â
The tour my grandmother selected was one that went all around the Iberian Peninsula – stopping in 11 cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, and Seville. The sights we saw were amazing. I was very much on a tourist trip, and while I would have loved to feel more of local culture, what I experienced was tremendous.
There were other travelers from the US, but also people from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. One couple had walked the Camino Trail the week before the trip, and were planning to bike in Croatia the week after. Others had just completed a river cruise. One woman had been to Antarctica and another couple told me how they hiked Machu Picchu.Â
I learned life lessons from hearing their stories. Everyone was telling me how exciting it is to be young – how I have so much time and no reason to know exactly what I am doing. Which is great to hear, because I constantly feel behind, with no direction and no idea what I am doing with my life. They said to travel, experiment, and keep trying new things. And while I need to convince myself of these things and not just hear other people’s validation – hearing validation is a nice feeling. It is a good reminder.
Spending 16 days with people who were reflecting on their lives made me forced to reflect on mine – and by reflecting I had a clearer picture of what I wanted. I also learned to rely on myself and bring myself joy. I would sit with my thoughts often, or do something on my own when I had the time.
I will not lie, it is exasperating traveling with old people. They are winded walking up a flight of stairs, or crossing a street. We spend a lot of time sitting and eating, because they need the breaks. We did not do any of the cool experiences I saw others doing – like ziplining across a canyon or jet skiing on the Douro River. There was a festival in Barcelona and we did not go check it out, even from outside the gates.Â
My favorite experiences were walking through Toledo and Grenada. They have old town architecture and I love the narrow streets and unique buildings. Plus, the vibes in Grenada were unique from anywhere I have been – it felt like a cross of so many cultures. I also loved being in Santiago de Compostela, because that is where the Camino Trail ends and it was very cool to watch all the hikers coming in after their journeys.Â
I felt that the culture I experienced was very jovial and enjoyable. I appreciated that in Spain when I tried to speak in my broken, minimal Spanish, they listened, and would work with me without being impatient. I felt very connected to people I had short interactions with because we proved we could interact without using words, and somehow that felt very powerful.
My biggest takeaways from this trip were that I desperately want to go back to Spain, and you can learn a lot by listening. I was terrified going into this trip because it was out of my comfort zone to travel with my grandmother, and while I am not going to pretend it was breezy, it was worth it.
While I will always have crazy memories from this trip, I do not regret it and I suggest traveling anyway and anywhere you can – and yes, that includes with your grandparents.