After graduating from college, my pseudo-boyfriend (a long, unreasonably depressing story that I won’t subject you to) and I went on a trip to France. I had already been once but was looking forward to going back and seeing other places I hadn’t seen in the first go.

I booked the trip on my credit card. We would fly over and stay a week at a Best Western in the Shadow of the Eiffel Tower. It was almost too perfect for the cost! We got Paris passes (those passes you can buy for just about any city that let you ride their version of the underground/subway/metro, get into the majority of museums, and so on.

It was an awesome trip if I ignore a few details… We saw so many things in Paris and took the RER out to places like Versaille and Mt. St. Michael.  (I have a story about Mt. St. Michael for another day).

But one thing I learned from traveling is that traveling and trying to keep a budget is totally fine as long as you aren’t a freaking psycho about it! I usually travel with a budget in mind. I always have backup cash/traveler’s checks in case but I do try to keep my spending down. Collect memories, not things right? But I’ll break my spending rules for a few things. One of them being food.

In my mind when you are in another country, France for instance, only eating American food like McDonald’s or Dominos or w/e to save money is 1. annoying 2. an insult to good food, and 3. depressing.

I was all for spending money to eat what and where I wanted. If I wanted to have a coffee at a sidewalk cafe at a cost of essentially $12 dollars so I could feel Parisian and people watch, fuck it! I was gonna do that! The pseudo boyfriend was not down for that and insisted on eating all the American food to save money (and forego any Parisian experience). We had Dominos practically every day we were there! And the saddest part is I KNOW we could have gone down a few more blocks and gotten a kebab for less…

Boys, you aren’t always right… Just saying.