11. From Studying Abroad to Remote Work Travel - Ericka Adventures

A Travel Path Podcast

www.atravelpath.com

00:00 Intro

01:06 Studying abroad in Rome

04:48 Have you always wanted to travel?

05:44 How were you able to get a job so you could travel so much?

07:20 Does remote work mean you are always “on call?”

08:12 What are the biggest frustrations you find with travel?

10:10 What makes Disney so special to you?

11:15 What does your travel budget look like?

13:50 What types of places are you staying in?

14:45 What are some money saving travel tips?

15:15 Delta AmEx card

16:30 Traveling with dogs

19:40 What has been your coolest travel experience?

22:00 What can’t you live without while traveling?

23:13 What have you learned you don’t need while traveling?

23:56 Shoe recommendations

25:09 Travel influencers

We had a fun time talking with Ericka from Ericka’s Adventures today! In this episode you can expect to hear all about how:

✈️Her study abroad in Rome

🧳How she and her fiancé manage to take a trip every 1-2 months while working remote full time

💵 A few budgeting and packing tips

And More!

Music:

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/abbynoise/rocky-mountains

Full Episode At:

https://atravelpath.com/podcast/

Channels Mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/@Disney

https://www.youtube.com/@DFBGuide

https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@brogantatexo

💵Travel Hacks

https://www.google.com/travel/flights

https://www.delta.com/us/en/skymiles/airline-credit-cards/american-express-personal-cards

🐶Dogs

https://www.rover.com/

📖Abroad

Michigan State study abroad program

📺Videos

Ericka’s Banf Playlist

(Commissions may be earned from the below purchases, but it will not affect your purchase price.)

👟Gear:

Packing cubes

Allbirds shoes

Vessi shoes

Blog Resources:

https://atravelpath.com/how-to-part-time-travel/

Most Popular Blogs:

Most Popular Travel Hacks: https://atravelpath.com/money-saving-travel-tips/

Travel Gear: https://atravelpath.com/travel-gear/

How to Budget For Gas on a Road Trip: https://atravelpath.com/how-to-budget-for-gas-for-a-road-trip/

Our Favorite RV Upgrades: https://atravelpath.com/rv-upgrades/

How Much We Made Renting Our RV: https://atravelpath.com/renting-camper-van/

Never Run Out of Gas on a Road Trip: https://atravelpath.com/road-trip-tip/

#travel #remoteworktravel #travelhacks #podcast #travelpodcast #erickaadventures

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Transcript from YouTube:

Erica thank you for joining hope and I on this episode of the travel path podcast thanks for having me yes we know you on YouTube and Instagram as Erica Adventures that's Erica e r i c Ka a um you've got content and videos featuring everything from your travel Vlogs all over the country you've got some backpack Packing Tips you have some book recommendations so a lot of variety there and then you also have a ton of Disney so we're excited to jump in here um why don't you start by sharing a little about yourself and then letting our audience know your current lifestyle looks like yeah so um I am a travel content creator on the side I do have a full-time 9-to-5 job but um on Eric Adventures I just love sharing tips and tricks on all of my Adventures whether that's theme parks or Beyond so that's kind of what my lifestyle looks like right now no that's awesome you definitely have some awesome content I've enjoyed watching it I've learned a lot from you about places that you've gone so I'm excited to jump in here um before we dive too deep into your actual current travel lifestyle we want to take a step back and talk about um when you studied abroad in Rome yeah so that was a very very special time in my life yeah that was my junior going into senior year of college I did six weeks there I think I don't know the time time's crazy there but um yeah that was an incredible opportunity I really got to live in Rome I lived in an apartment um really got to like live in the culture there and explore all of Rome the Coliseum um everything and it was a truly life-changing experience and I cannot recommend doing a study AB broad if it's an opportunity for you like I think everyone should do that um if they can in college it just take you don't have to take the whole like semester off like I just went in the summer and just go for go for a couple weeks and it's going to change your life and give you a whole new perspective oh yeah that's awesome now did you have any initial fears or concerns doing that and if someone you know was thinking about going abroad what would your advice for them be yeah I mean I was excited and nervous I think that's everyone's feeling towards that especially that was my first time really going like out of the country um so you know I had to get my passport and like make sure all my travel documents were in order but I was really lucky to go with some solid friends so I knew I had people um that I knew very well going but I definitely met amazing people along the way so I just feel like it's that you just kind of have to take the jump and do it because it's only like a once in a-lifetime Opportunity you can't you know go back later and do it like study abroad you can go back and travel to Europe but you know actually being in the city for that long and and experiencing the lifestyle that's that's like a once in a-lifetime chance yeah absolutely definitely too with you know your group of friends and at that age you just experience things so much different than you know you do when you travel and you get a little bit older yeah absolutely and you mentioned six to eight weeks and that's news to me might not be news to our audience but I always thought like studying abroad you were there for like a year or a semester so I think that almost answers that question hope had originally where like if you have a concern or you're a little bit afraid to do that well you can actually do it for just 6 to8 weeks can you go for shorter or is that like the quickest time frame you can do in a broad study well for me so I went to Michigan State which has a huge study abroad program and a lot of the study AB Brads were semester and I had you know I didn't really want to take a semester off college cuz that's an experience in itself I really want to have the college experience um so I feel like 6 weeks was the shortest one at my school at the time uh there still might be other opportunities it's maybe four weeks but yeah it wasn't too long um it was I feel like it was the perfect amount of time to get that experience but also like come back home too what was the dayto day in like week to week like in Rome when you were there I pretty much had classes every day during the week so that was basically my morning to my afternoon some of those classes did involve like field trips going to like an historic site or something like that um but basically I I had a pretty similar schedule to what I'd have at home like I went to class and then i' come home and I'd either make dinner go out to dinner because I mean I ate pasta every day when I was in Italy that's kind of what like the week schedule looked like and then on the weekends that was free for us to do whatever some people actually would leave the country and go to like Spain or Barcelona for the weekend because you know that was like a short train right away and we did like a mai Coast or went to Florence so we tried to like explore outside of Rome too uh on the weekends awesome yeah it sounds like a really awesome time there yeah well great um I guess we can fast forward a little bit to your current travel lifestyle where you are now so growing up you've been traveling pretty consistently you've been back and forth the Disney World in Florida and you've lived pretty much all over Michigan has that always been a part of you and did that make you want to continue traveling absolutely I feel like I've always like I almost like live to leave I say sometimes like what really gets me excited is having a trip booked or like knowing I'm about to go experience somewhere new like that's always been a part of me I think I get that from my mom like she's always like let's go let's go here let's go there like yeah like let's do it and I've never really had any reservations about that that's just always been who I am and kind of like how I've grown up just I I I I love to go new places experience new things I do love being at home but I can't be at home for tooo long I have to go somewhere at some point so that's kind of always been a part of me so it sounds like the travel came first like when you're looking for your job your full-time job after your graduated college the travel part was a non-negotiable so how are you able to land a job so that you could have that opportunity how it's how it came to be so I've had two jobs since I've graduated college my first job was in retail which gave me five weeks off um a year so I was like perfect like plenty of time to travel um but I soon realized that that career path wasn't for me so I wanted to switch careers which I did and now I'm in marketing at my current job and I was supposed to be not fully remote like I was supposed to be in the office every day but when I got hired it was March 2020 and life happened and I got sent home and everything kind of shifted at this new company I worked for and everyone's like okay well you can work from home now just because that became our Norm so I feel like you know of course 2020 has its highs and lows for sure but I would say maybe like a good thing that came out of it is that there's so many more opportunities to work from home and that really helps like with travel because I can work you know from home and then leave right to the airport after like I I feel like it just gives me way more flexibility so I feel like in today's society we have so many opportunities so many um job opport unities that we can you know work remote or even hybrid my fiance Works hybrid and that still works with our travel schedule when you're working from home it's great you have the opportunity you can travel more you're not making that commute to work but your work and your boss like they kind of always know you're on call if that makes sense does that make your work hours longer than they might typically be or what does that look like yeah so because I do work in marketing so a lot of my job is communicating with our customers and you know if there's anything that they need um whatever time of day it is I'm just always like okay yeah I'll answer them I work a lot in our social media too so if someone messages us at 10 p.m. I'll need to message that customer back and that's just kind of how it goes thankfully I have a really great team where we always like you know pick each other up if I'm on vacation or traveling you know my boss will be like oh don't worry I got this or or whatever but we just really have a great collaborative team and I think that makes it makes such a difference when you have people that understand on your team that like okay this person traveling will help pick up you know anything that's going on at the office sure yeah finding a job in a team where you're like-minded it's group effort and get things done that way yeah what are some of the biggest frustrations you find with this lifestyle I would say that I feel like there's so much to do and so many places to travel to and I only have so much PTO or we have only so much time off and it's hard to like pick everything and then when you go to that destination it's like okay well there's like a hundred things I could do in Rome in Paris at a theme park like how do I you know pick and choose and I feel like that's kind of like the beauty of travel also is like we're never gonna be able to see it all you know so it's Al it's always like I love to do my plan and research ahead of time so that way I know like okay these are my priorities but I always feel like oh I left a place I'm like oh I didn't get to do that or that and it's like I don't know that's like a little struggle I have personally no I definitely feel that like when we're driving through a state it's like which way do we want to go right like there's so much up here on the Northern side and there's so much on the southern side so we definitely struggle with trying to you know feel like what you can get done in that time frame when you actually have off right and then you come back home and people are like so did you do that and you know and you're like no I didn't do that like oh well you missed out and it's like oh but I was doing this really cool thing it's like ah you know you know it's so true we did a cross country Loop we went North out and then back towards the middle of the country and we thought like once we did that we never have to like do that loop again but like what we found was we could drive that same exact Road the whole exact same path out and back and we could have a completely different experience because there's just so many things that we missed right along the way that we didn't get get to do yeah absolutely so it's funny to bring that up because you do go to and I know we're going to touch on this in part two of the Disney World in Orlando studios and all that but so if anyone's looking to plan a trip to Disney definitely tune into part two here but you mentioned there's a ton of places million one things to do and see but you're always going back and forth to Disney and you've been going there since you were a kid I guess we can do like a little bit of a teaser for the next episode is there something that makes that place so special for you yeah I mean well first of all I think the Nostalgia factor for me since I've been going there since I was a kid it's it's always been very nostalgic for me it's always felt like a place I mean kind of like a a second home in a way like I just always feel at peace when I'm there and it's it's just a place I go to when I just want to have fun like I just want to have a good time I want to be entertained and like just have a ball and honestly have permission to be a kid again and just have that Disney escapism um some people call it the Disney bubble like as soon as you enter Disney World all of your problems at home they don't exist anymore you get to kind of be in this like pretend world and just just have fun and just be a kid again so that's something that I do love about theme parks in Disney World like I just love to go and just just be a kid have a good time I love roller coasters and the entertainment so it's just a place I like to visit for sure yeah and they're always making more and more new rides and yeah yeah so everyone tune in to part two we'll be talking about that in the next episode so we'll transition a little bit to some of the budgeting and finance when you're on the road now we typically ask this question what does a monthly budget look like obviously you're not traveling full-time living in a van or an RV so how long are you typically gone for and then what does that budget typically look like yeah so it really depends on the trip um it could be a weekend trip or a week trip but I feel like when it comes to budgeting I really focus a lot of my budgeting when I'm at home like I I budget the most there so that I can save up for those travel experiences so for instance like I rarely really eat at eat out when I'm home like I actually moved to a new city um it's been over a year now and some people ask me like oh like what are your favorite restaurants in the new city you live and I'm kind of like oh I don't really try a ton because I kind of save that money to then eat out when I travel and do other experiences so it really just depends and then when it comes to like a a week or weekend trip if I can drive there that's what I'm going to do just to save some money there so it's all about kind of like saving money leading up to the trip so that way when I'm there I don't have to think so much about you know like oh should I really spend this much it's like well I've been saving for a month now for this trip so I want to spend that money on this experience that I can only get in this city sure yeah saving up when you're back home and yeah splurging when you take that vacation yeah that's kind of how I balance it that's a good point you're bring up and it's it's interesting because we learn that same thing I think the pandemic brought out a lot of people actually going out and exploring their own backyard because for a while like we have like some air Bean bees and people would ask us like oh the best places to eat at and things to do in the area and we'd be like yeah we'd actually never we'd be recommending things but we're like we actually haven't done these things before we spent like one day a couple years ago and just did everything we could in Mystic and it was like like this is such a fun you know such a fun time I remember you worked at a at a shop in one of the in the village and like people were coming in who've lived in this area for like their entire life and they're like I never knew this was here you know once you know there's a shutdown and people are forced to stay home and stay in their hometowns then they get out and explore but yeah it is funny how like little we knew about our hometown until we were like we should probably know more about this yeah no that actually that reminds me of something I saw on Instagram a couple weeks ago and it was this guy I think he was in Switzerland and he was at a bar and the guy next to him was like oh yeah like I'm a local here and he's like oh well tell me all the cool stuff to see and the Local's like no you want to talk to all the tourists at that table because they've done their research they know what to do it's like we're always bad that bad about being tourists in our own town but that's just funny you know that that happens so when you are staying is it air BNB Hotel how does that look mostly hotels um I guess my in September I did stay in Airbnb because we were there for a week and there was six of us we wanted a little bit more space a kitchen and everything but I would say you know if it's like a short trip four days or less I'm I usually do a hotel um but longer I think Airbnb works out best and how many trips a year are you taking I think well I guess I'll think I'll talk about this year because I feel like I got all my trips like in my brain now for this year it's might be like every month to two months which is exciting I'm excited for this year because I'm going to go finally back to Europe because I haven't been since the study abroad that'll be my honeymoon trip so I'm very excited about that so it'll be a big year of travel for me awesome awesome what are some money-saving travel tips you've discovered along the way I love trying to fly during the weekday that really saves a lot I always like looking at Google flights like I love tracking flight prices too to make sure I'm getting the best deal um I also do have a travel card that helps me a lot I earn a lot of miles on that so that helps pay for flights um but yeah I would say just I I really that's probably my number one thing is I really try and save leading up to the trip and that way when I'm there I don't have to worry so much about you know my budget while I'm experiencing what I want to experience yeah so true which travel car do you have I have the Delta AMX card does that get you into the lounges well you know they they changed that rule so I think I was leading up to I think I had to get so many miles and then I could get in but now I don't know they changed the rules and I'm like okay whatever like yeah that's like something we just or I think you had known about it but I just discovered it like you walk in the airports and you see these lounges and I've never thought twice about it but apparently if you have the right card you can just you know get in there and do your work and it seems like the perfect opportunity for someone who is traveling you know fulltime or you know they're away for a while and they just want to get some work done like some of these places have like free food showers it's like you have to be travel obviously but you could get there like half you know half a day early and crank out some work super nice if you have a long layover actually now that we're talking about it I think it might be I have to pay like a certain fee like maybe $50 but I think that includes your food while you're there too so yeah I forget but I know they just changed that rule so it's like people were all upset about that so I was like okay maybe I won't be getting into those lounges but oh well so you don't have kids but you do have two dogs right yep so what would you say to someone who wants to travel but has pets and are worth that's too much of a commitment what would you tell them how do you manage it yeah so I have a couple points on this so first of all yeah I do have two dogs so it can be a little bit bit of a barrier when I'm trying to travel it makes it a little bit harder to do last minute trips because who's going to watch the dogs you know they can't just be home alone um so first of all thankfully we do have family that are so obsessed with our dogs that they'll be like yeah like we'll take them and they get so excited so sometimes they stay with them but also I don't always just want to like dump our dogs on our family you know everyone has busy schedules too so we do board them as well and I feel like just dog boarding has really come a long way in the past couple of years like I remember as a kid when we used to board our dog she didn't really like it because she was just like in a kennel all day but these dog boarding places are like little mini Resorts now they have doggy playtime and like they get like walks and everything so I'm like okay I'm basically taking my dog on vacation while I while I go on vacation so that's really nice too um and then I'll also say like we like to take our dogs when we can um travel especially when we go to Northern Michigan we definitely bring our dogs along and I think they have more fun than us when we go honestly like they love being up there so there's I feel like there's a lot of opportunity nowadays to take your pets with you my my fiance and I just took a trip to Chicago not too long ago and when I was looking up hotels I swear all of them were like dog friendly and I feel like you wouldn't have seen that like five years ago like I don't know I was like wow like all these places are dog friendly not that we were planning on bringing our dogs but it was nice to know that that is an option nowadays so definitely just like do your research there's really cool places you can take your pets with you one word of caution I will just mention because we just took a trip to Florida and we had our dog scheduled to do the daycare we were boarding them and we got a message like I don't know like a week before and they told us that the puppy Co Kettle cough was going around we ended up having someone that just we paid her to stay at her house so there's always fallback plans like Rover um there's different things you can do too so I guess the word of advice would be to just have some sort of fallback plan and they do get pretty pricey right how much typically are you spending to have your dog be boarded we've been because we've moved around a lot in Michigan so we've seen a lot of different um kennels and they can be pricey some of them have been $50 per dog so when you have two dogs that adds up a lot um but sometimes they give a discount on the second dog which is nice but our recent kennel that we just found um really comes out to $30 per day for dog so that's way more reasonable so you just have to kind of do your research I feel like dog doggy daycares and kennels are popping up everywhere so just do your research and you might be able to find one that's not too expensive but again if it is maybe you just take a shorter trip so you can kind of balance out that yeah 30 bucks they must not have the balcony and the hot tub in their sweet for that price right all right awesome we'll transition we'll start wrapping up a little bit here what has been the coolest experience you've had while traveling so that is such a hard question because I feel like oh my gosh there's so many I could choose from but I think the one I want to talk about is a recent one I've had so in September of 2023 I went to bamp National Park which is like in the heart of the Canadian rocky and it was our first day there and we had signed up for horseback riding and we were riding these horses literally through the mountains I mean you couldn't have pictured a more beautiful place and I'm on a horse I feel like I'm living the cowgirl dream and it's like it was like a pinch me moment like this can't be real the beauty and just the experience was just like so awe inspiring and it was like that moment I was like yep I'm in love with this place like this place is so cool and just to like kind of do an Excursion instead of just like hiking the trails being on a horse was like really really really cool so let me ask you this and I think I know what the answer is going to be but would that experience be a contender if there were no horses involved do you think well I think it would still I mean maybe because it was also my first day so I was just still like whoa like with these mountains cuz I I'd never seen mountains like that before and the lakes and we even walk the horse through like a river so I was like oh my gosh like this is so cool I felt and also at the time I was watching Yellowstone which is like a huge like cowboy show so I was like okay like I am totally living living the dream right now but yeah just it was like one of those like Pinch Me moments for sure yeah I guess I asked that because we had a similar experience we did Cody Wyoming we went horseback riding completely different terrain it was red rock and we were in the in the woods but yeah if we had hiked it it wouldn't have been the same as just you know going I me we don't ride horses regularly that was like I don't know your first time right riding a horse and I think like my third time so just doing that just makes it so I guess my advice would be if you're looking to do something like this and there's like a horse back riding option available for the family look into it it's GNA be something your children your guys are going to remember for a long time it's it makes that moment just that much more special yeah I totally agree with that I mean it would have been cool on foot as much but like to be on the horse and I it's just a different experience and just added added a little something extra to it yeah everything you shared from that looked amazing and I think every single person that probably saw your post were like okay that's got to be a a bucket list travel next year so you've been traveling pretty much your entire life what is one thing you've learned that you can't live without while you're traveling and one thing you learned that you don't need okay so things I can't live without I have to mention two things first has to do all with packing because I love packing I love like I feel like that's just as exciting as going on a trip it gets me so excited to go and once I discovered packing cubes I swear it changed the packing game for me I just love it because it organizes your stuff I swear you can pack more stuff with them because it kind of like compresses it and I feel like it just makes traveling so much easier and again more organized especially let's say you're going to Europe and you're doing a couple countries in one trip just like kind of having everything in one spot is so nice and then the second thing I have learned is you always always should wear good comfortable shoes because nothing ruins a trip than blisters or sore feet like I I tell you just find the most comfortable shoes you can wear because whether you're going to the theme parks out on a hike or walking the streets of Europe like you should have good shoes it's going to like make your trip so much better and then the thing I realize that I can live without I feel like I I've learned that you know you don't have to have a new outfit every day of your trip I feel like for girls or anyone on Instagram like we always get this pressure to be like okay like we have to like pack all these things so that we have the best trip and the best photos but that's not really what it's about like I feel like I used to get into that like mindset that it's like oh I should you know have the perfect outfit for this perfect photo or whatever but you know what be an outfit repeater it's cool to do no one really cares and just it's that's not about what travel is travel is being there in the moment yeah such good advice now do you have any recommendations on shoes oh yeah um okay so one pair of shoes I love is called All Birds they are extremely comfortable shoes I love them I've worn them on so many trips and then the second pair of shoe that I've recently discovered are vessie shoes and what's really cool about them is they are 100% waterproof but they're like a tennis shoe and they're knit material so it still like gives you that nice comfortable tennis shoe feel but I mean I I can dump a bucket of water on them and water is not going to get through so I've worn those to Disney World in Orlando where it can rain at any moment and then I did wear them to bamp just because I wasn't sure and honestly they were great hiking shoes too I kind of had like this tennis shoe boot style from them and I love those shoes they're just so comfortable so those definitely those two Brands I really recommend we fit an insane amount of things in our van that I thought was not going to fit and then somehow she stuffed everything in the cube and we had like room to spare so packing cubes invest in your Footwear and it's kind of similar like an analogy is like your mattress you spend a lot of time sleeping you spend a lot of time on your feet know Splurge there because your body's going to thank you you know 20 30 years down the road you've been traveling your entire life did you have any YouTube or other influencers that influenced you to travel or maybe people have recommended books too yeah I think really I dove into the whole YouTube travel Community um especially during 2020 cuz all I wanted to do was go somewhere and I couldn't so like that was my escapism was to just like watch people go on trips um on YouTube so I would say a lot of those were Disney YouTubes because I was just missing Disney World so I watched um Disney food blog is a great Channel they have so many great tips on Disney World um there's another she's also like life style but Rogan Tate on YouTube is awesome she does a lot of travel um in Europe and also to Disney park so those are like two that I love to watch and just give a lot of tips from so we'll link those channels in the show notes below and while our audience is checking out those channels where can they find out more about you yeah so I am on Instagram and YouTube both erica. Adventures AA spelled e r i c Ka um and yeah that's where you can find me I have travel Vlogs a little bit of Lifestyle Vlogs too on my YouTube channel and a lot of travel content on my Instagram great Erica thank you for coming on thank you so much for having me this was so much fun