Some of the best experiences are unplanned—the ones where you show up with only your things and no preconceptions. You haven’t had time to build up expectations in your mind. It’s just you and the day ahead of you.

It’s a strange feeling flying from Scandinavia to Spain in the same afternoon. That morning, I woke up early to take photos—not too early though since it was late fall in the high latitudes—before we made our way to the airport.

Through the mist, you could make out columns and facades in the Austro-Hungarian style. Hedgerows disappeared into the distance, and I began to wonder if Cedric Diggory might be around the next bend.

Walking the empty streets reminds me of walking through a dream of endless corridors—always wondering what’s around the next bend. The corridors don’t always make sense, and what seems like a dead end might just have a narrow passage to somewhere else.

The best mornings start with a coffee and a walk by the sea. There’s a quiet buzz about the old town in the early morning light. Beneath ancient arches and along cobbled corridors, shopkeepers and city workers quietly get ready for the day.

On our first morning in Croatia, I found myself sitting side-saddle on the front of a speedboat through choppy seas as Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” blared over the radio. My face cold as we cut through the morning air. The sun hung low from the East casting shadows from the mainland across the channel giving the whole scene a subtle orange glow.

The other morning, one of the bakers asked me a question. I paused for a moment, but before she could finish repeating the question in English, I had answered her in French. The guy behind me leaned around and in a very thick French accent laughed, “Oh, he’s good.” It’s the small victories lol.

The trail followed a mountain stream out of the valley, and shepards led a group of horses along the other bank as we made our way toward the granite cliffs. The crowds quickly thinned, and we strolled along drifting from topic to topic as we gazed at the cold peaks etching their way through the cloud layer.

Today, I bit off a little more than we could chew.

Several summers ago, the family of the girl I was dating at the time hosted an exchange student from France, Pauline. I felt kind of bad that out of all the places in the U.S., she ended up in a forgotten whistle-stop in rural Tennessee, so we went out of our way to make sure she had a good summer from flying in the Cherokee to trips to Nashville and the symphony.

Paris is certainly one of those places. It’s the epitome of romanticization, but visiting the city in particular has never been at the top of my bucket list. After awhile, all of the big cities of the world start to blend together, but after hearing the wide range of opinions on it for most of my adult life, I wanted to see for myself.

The moorish palaces and bustling streets of Andalusia quickly faded into vast deserts and mountain ranges—the occasional highway or small town here and there. On the descent, clouds began to form, and in an instant, the mountains erupted with lush forests spilling over granite cliffs into the valleys below. Villages of red-tiled houses punctuated the landscape with the question: why weren’t we staying here longer?