Charming Memories with PANDORA: The First Holiday Alone

Every day is the chance to make a new memory.

While the first job, first car, first holiday is a different experience for every woman - we’ve all been there. We at Her.ie have paired up with PANDORA to take a look back at some of our favourite memories – whether sweet, funny  or ‘I can not believe we did that…’, we’ll be sharing our stories, and we’d love to hear yours too.

This week we’re looking back at an important rite of passage – the first solo holiday abroad…

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Rebecca:

After finishing secondary school I went to Paris for a week with the girls but seeing as we were doing it on the cheap, we ended up staying in a two-star hotel on a rundown street close to the city’s red light district. So as well as spending a whole day lying on the grass at the Palace of Versailles, climbing up the Eiffel Tower and enjoying a lovely meal at the Moulin Rouge, we also got to see half-naked ladies dancing in plastic boxes in the street, be propositioned by random men and hassled by the hotel manager Mario! (Like, who actually has that name in real-life?) Still, it was one of the best weeks I’ve ever had and when I meet up with the girls, the conversation inevitably comes back to Paris…

Naoimh:

Over ten years ago now during the month of July my cousin and I backpacked around the South of France. We were still teenagers (in fact Iona was just 16-years-old) so I don’t know how we charmed our parents into letting us swan off to a foreign country for three and a half weeks. I celebrated my 19th birthday in a campsite with a cheap bottle of plonk and in the company of one of my closest friends – we spent the night rolling around our little two-man tent laughing hysterically. It’s definitely one of my most memorable holidays as it was a summer of firsts – drinking champagne in the VIP area of a nightclub in Saint Tropez, dancing at a beach party in Nice and generally getting up to lots of mischief!”

Patricia:

My first big travel adventure was when I moved to the Czech Republic to study for a semester in 2011. Although I had travelled on my own before, embarking on the trip with a few girls from college was really exciting and our first few weeks were spent exploring the wonderful cobbled streets of Prague and taking posed photographs throughout the city. Thinking back, it was all such a wonderful adventure and a really great opportunity to make so many new friends from all over the world. Getting on that plane and knowing that home really was no longer a bus journey away was of course a bit daunting, but I enjoyed myself so much on the trip that homesickness was never an issue. I had the time of my life and the stories and memories are ones that will last me a lifetime.

Aoibhinn:

It wasn’t my first holiday away from my parents but having lived at home while I was in college, my J1 to Ocean City in Maryland when I was 21 was my first long-term trip away. Looking back it was crazy... I worked six days a week in an all you can eat seafood buffet restaurant so stank of steamed crab claws all the time, ate my weight in Wendy’s so gained about two stone, went out every night so permanently had the shakes which resulted in several trays of drinks ‘mysteriously’ toppling over and drenching customers (I am possibly the worst waitress known to man) and can honestly say I’ve never been happier! 

Denise: 

Popcorn all over the room, empty food packets and bottles everywhere, undressed beds and an unusual smell we never quite got to the root of… but this was PARADISE. The sun was shining, the pool was filled with multi-coloured lilos, the exams were over and the monotonous part-time job had paid for a week’s holiday in the sun. A few nights out, a few days on the beach and a very small budget to work from: this was our first time being abroad by ourselves. Our biggest worry was if we could all manage to get the same coloured top for a themed night out or if we could afford enough natural yoghurt to put on a friend’s burnt back, in the end she just had to make do with what she had! Memories of this holiday abroad make me laugh, it was our idea of independence and we loved it. 

Amy:

The first time I holidayed alone involved one of the worst hostels of all time. I was heading to London with some friends and we booked into a place that looked clean and respectable. When we arrived the lobby was amazing but the rooms? Eh… the rooms were a different story. The bed sheets were dirty, there was no head on the shower and upon check in the hostel informed us that the ONLY toilet in the building was broken. Not a fantastic start to things. We lasted in said hostel for two days until we were woken up one night by a man bursting into our room and asking us if we had seen his pants anywhere (the answer was no). We promptly admitted defeat and checked into nicer (and safer!) accommodation. It was traumatic at the time, but it’s become one of our favourite holiday stories.

Michelle

My family tended to just do staycations somewhere in Ireland when I was young, so my first time ever even on a plane was a flight across the Atlantic to New York, completely solo. I had some friends there on a J1 for the summer, so I spent a week in the Hamptons with them (either on a beach or in a bar), then two of us moved on to New York City for a week. I’ve never fallen in love with a place so fast in my life – the lights, the energy, the action, Broadway, the *shopping* - I was in heaven. So much so that I returned to spend the full summer there the year after, and again when I finished college. It’s still my favourite place in the world and by now it holds a million, very charming, memories for me.   

 

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