For those of you who are not aware, I have spent the last five months saving up for my travels to Rome, and the time has come. Here are some details about my travels.

For those of you who are interested in traveling, but are on a budget, I have a couple of tips on how to save a lot of money and to make your travels a lot easier:

- Research your flights. I looked around for about two months before picking out my flight. CheapOAir had some of the best options that I have seen for travels abroad. The extra booking fees are a lot less than sites like Travelocity, Expedia, or other well-known booking sites. Know what you want to spend and stick to it. You're bound to find something, no matter which site you go on.

- When flying abroad, start in Canada. I recommend this to anyone in the west coast at least. The Amtrack is pretty cheap to take up to Vancouver, but be prepared to spend a lot of time through customs and prepare your budget for a taxi to the airport. The Vancouver train station is about a 20 minute drive (It'll cost about $30, and they take USD). Despite all this, I am pretty open to say that I saved approximately $500 by doing this.

- Give yourself a lot of time in between the train and the airport. I wanted to state this again because I made the mistake of not giving myself enough time, and it was very stressful. The conductors were very understanding of my situation and let me go through customs first despite me being in the back of the train and a low priority, but I don't know if I would be that lucky again.

My travel was quite the adventure, since the way I booked my train and plane tickets did not give me much time to run around and find my terminal and gates.

Starting on June 19th at 7am, I hopped on the train from King Street Station to Vancouver. It took me until a few hours before my train departure the night before until I realized that I would only have an hour to go through two different sets of customs before being able to find my flight and before its departure. While I was on the train, I had a lot of difficulty staying calm about this, not knowing what customs was like in Canada versus the United States. I'd only heard stories, but didn't trust them.

I tried calling four or five different taxi companies while I was on my train. I either found myself calling companies in Vancouver, Washington or the cab companies were rude and angry at me or left me on hold for a half an hour. I decided I would just find a cab when I was there, which added to my nervousness.

There were cabs waiting for me after I rushed through customs, thanking God I didn't have a three hour long line to go through, since I definitely didn't have time for that. As I mentioned, the conductor understood my situation, but I had to endure a bit of scolding before he helped me. Luckily, I was not the only one who had to catch a flight that departed soon. A young high school teacher named Madeline was spending her time off in Thailand and we were able to split a taxi.

I made it to my gate without much trouble. It was laughable how kind everyone in Canadian customs were. I've heard about the stereotypes of Canadians, but never wanted to believe them until I saw for myself. As my bags were getting checked, not only were they efficient, but employees were full of joy and life and were very kind and understanding. Thanks to them, I was able to make it to my flight.

I met an Iranian writer while waiting for my flight who invited me to dinner at her house the next time I'd find myself in the city so we could talk about writing together.

I know I am not the only one, but I do not do well by sitting still for very long, so a twenty hour long plane ride is a lot to handle. Dealing with chronic pain, my body tightens up and severe migraines kick in when I have no choice but to sit still for hours and hours. I have gone through multiple methods to release the tension in my body, from taking unhealthy amounts of ibuprofen (Advil) and acetaminophen (Tylenol) to taping up my entire body with kinesio tape- and I mean to the extent that when I go through customs, TSA believes I have attached drugs on myself rather than assumes I am an athlete trying to find pain relief.

Just recently, I discovered a new pain relief cream, the only one that has worked for me to not only bring circulation and warmth back into my body, but to actually relieve some pain. Based with arnica, this organic and herbal formula warms up the muscles and tendons to allow them to circulate properly rather than allowing them to tighten up, which is something even 2000mg of ibuprofen fails to do for me today. Without having the damaging long-term effects, Moon Valley Organics's Muscle Rub helps me be able to move again after being stiff and still for a long time. Not to mention that a portion of their profits goes toward helping the bees.

My first flight ended up landing later than scheduled, and my next flight was not only on the other side of the airport, I had to take a ten minute shuttle to even get inside the closest terminal, and had about twenty minutes to catch my flight.

This was impossible of course because I had to go through customs and run across the entire airport to another terminal. France has also become much stricter in customs since the recent terrorist attacks, and my flight was gone before I could even make it to my gate.

Apparently situations like this happen enough to the point where AirFrance gives out complimentary stubs for meals and transfers flights over without a struggle. The one problem I had was that I had to wait all day in the terminal for the next available flight. By the sixth hour of waiting the air-conditionless, glass wall and ceiling terminal practically suffocated me. It was hotter in there than outside.

I was so happy to get on my last flight and I was able to catch a little sleep most of the way.

Lesson learned. Give yourself plenty of time to run through customs and from terminal to terminal if needed.