Lessons from a Europe Sister Sleepover
Reading Time: 6 mins
Imagine telling your younger self that someday you’d get the chance to partake in a two-week-long sleepover with your sister…
… in Europe.
*11-year-old squeals.*
After this past winter, little Breda would be crying with joy, barely able to comprehend that she got to travel across the world and touch places she’d always dreamed of seeing with her best friend sister.
To top it all off, she’d spend her birthday in one of the best cities in the world – Florence.
Basically, many dreams came true the moment my sister and I stepped foot in Charles De Gaulle airport on November 27th and they continued to unfold under the Parisian, Tuscan, and Greek skies over the next 14 days.
Each destination was filled with incredible views and wonderful people, but the highlight of it all was experiencing everything with my best friend by my side. Seeing the world together through adult eyes made this escapade more fruitful than had we gone frolicking around Europe as the little girls we once were.
This trip overseas with my sis taught me many things about both us as women and the world itself.
These were the top 10 lessons I learned:
1. Deep breathing, daily stretches, and feet in the air are essential methods of travel self-care.
I’ve been traveling now for years. Throughout my adventures, another journey I’ve been simultaneously taking is one with my health. One of the reasons I ended up leaving China was due to the increasing battle with my physical health. It’s a constant struggle trying to balance adventure and self-care, especially when you’re young and not in tune with your own body. During this specific adventure to Europe, I hoped to prioritize listening to myself and meeting my physical needs before hitting the tourist scene.
Guess what? It turns out that traveling with a sister in a nursing profession is a great inspiration for self-care. Pausing for moments of rest and deep breaths as well as laying with my feet up in the air to support blood flow after hours of travel are now incorporated into my routine.
2. Irritability can be placed through laughter, love, and silence rather than on another person.
If you grew up with a sibling, you know the dynamic. The one where external irritability breeds a quick annoyance with each other. Imagine something not going quite the way you’d hoped. Pair that with a lack of emotional maturity and what usually ensues is a situation where, as long as you’re in the same room, you’re blaming the person who shares the same genes as you. It’s just the way siblinghood works, especially in early life.
This trip was much different than any family vacation of Bosch-sister-past. We ran into several travel mishaps and easily passed our irritability through laughter and love. It was comforting to have each other through seasickness, misogynistic neighbors, and days of tired feet.
Not once during this sleepover did we point our anger at one another. We acknowledged that many things were out of our control and leaned into each other for care and support.
3. Cats are nice.
I’m a dog person. Always have been, always will be.
My sister? Cat person through and through.
This means our trip to a Greek island filled with vaccinated, clean, stray cats meant we usually had at least one on our laps and two at our feet at all times. 24 hours into being on Hydra Island I had already decided I could get behind the whole ‘cat’ thing.
Yeah. They’re cool.
4. You don't have to see everything on your list.
As younger versions of ourselves, travel meant never stopping for a breath. We are big life enthusiasts which has always meant trying to do everything, see everything, and talk to everyone possible in each waking minute of our lives. Getting older and incurring more self-awareness has led to a better understanding of how exhausting and counter-productive this way of life really is.
During our sister Europe sleepover, we took each destination in stride, keeping our pace slow and our eyes wide to soak up the present moment versus checking off a giant bucket list. We took spontaneous roads that spoke to us versus roads guided by Google maps. We followed the directions of our hearts and sometimes tired minds. It turned out to be the most perfect way to travel.
5. You can still do a lot and sleep in every day.
A piggyback off the last point. Not only do you not have to stress about trying to check off every tourist activity from your list, but you also don’t have to wake up before the sun.
The only days we set an alarm were if we needed to catch a ferry or bus. Otherwise, we let our bodies take the reins. Waking up when we felt the need, eating when our stomachs were hungry, and putting up our feet when we got too tired (usually with a glass of wine). Contrary to our prior beliefs, each day in these foreign countries was just as fulfilling, if not more, by taking it slow.
6. Voluntary kindness to strangers can be highly rewarding.
On our first morning in Florence, I woke up late (surprise!) and caught the continental breakfast right before closing time. The breakfast room was large and quiet, and, at this late in the morning, was only occupied by myself, my sister, and the woman serving food behind the buffet counter. Instead of giving into my morning anti-social tendencies, I stroke up a conversation with the hotel employee. By the end of our stay in Florence, we’d become great friends with Miriam. She invited us out for dinner with her sister and to their apartment to visit them and their pets anytime we find ourselves back in the city.
We both highly cherished the connections we made throughout the trip. From hotel breakfast rooms to winery trips in Tuscany. Many heartwarming friendships unraveled from starting simple, genuine conversations.
7. Big picture and social thinking enhance cultural immersion.
My wonderful public health hero of a sister is a nurse, working a career dedicated to serving marginalized communities in the biggest city in Washington state. Our conversations in these new worldly contexts often circled back to social inequities across the world. Discussions were fueled by my sister’s big heart, service-oriented mind, and social justice experience. Giving yet more meaning to the places we were seeing.
8. Being happy and sad at the same time is real and survivable.
When you travel, life doesn’t stop moving. Real problems from back home follow you wherever you go.
Weird right?
Mental health, relationships, physical health, and all the other issues this human experience entails can’t be escaped by hopping on a plane to another time zone. Our lives’ troubles trailed at our feet under the Eiffel Tower, across the Ponte Vecchio, and over the Mediterranean waters surrounding Greece. It was humbling in an intensely human way to feast our eyes, tastebuds, and hearts on this glorious world while constantly coming face to face with the troubles of our daily lives.
Thank God, above it all, we had each other. Life is happy and sad a lot of the time, and overall, that is a beautiful thing to share in solidarity with your sister while exploring the world.
9. We are FULL ON GROWN-UPS.
Even with the constant growing pains of adulting, we’ve grown up.
We’re women. Cool women.
Of course, we continue to hold pieces of who we were as young girls. Interests and characteristics have remained constant throughout the decades. However, our individual perspectives, forms of communication, depth of emotions, and senses of self have grown just as we have.
I'm SO proud of the women we've become. The ones we are still becoming.
An incredible confrontation on a sister journey overseas.
10. I am so gosh darn lucky.
Having a sister has always and will forever be one of the greatest adventures of this life. I am so incredibly grateful to not just have a sister, but one who is compassionate, thoughtful, and adventurous like mine.
One who will answer a text of ‘Hey. What if we go to Italy for my birthday this year….’ with a response of ‘HELL YES.’
10/10 would recommend giving yourself the adult sleepover of your dreams with a sister, blood or chosen, as soon as possible.
