Ahdom Smith Travel Blog

  SALISBURY We had an early cross-country train ride from Scotland ahead of us, our first stop: London, England. Somewhere along that long ride, Dad decided it was the perfect time to unload our Scotland photos and videos onto his computer. Big mistake. He managed to save a few, and then—poof—the computer ate the rest. A tragic loss. I buried my grief in my travel journal while Sal sulked. At one stop, Dad got up to use the toilet, and when he returned, a young woman had slid into his seat. “Did I pinch your seat, love?” she asked sweetly. Dad looked around, puzzled, and muttered, “I don’t think so,” taking her question literally. He smiled before awkwardly sitting beside her.    Eventually, we rolled into London, where chaos awaited in the form of the Underground. Whoever designed that system clearly had a grudge against tourists. One wrong hop and you’re stranded. Add in the hypnotic chant of “Mind the Gap” echoing at every station, and it felt like some sort of claustr...

I was standing on the brink of what could only be described as a marathon of a weekend. First, there was the birthday party for my soon-to-be three-year-old son, Liam. Pulling that off alone already had my nerves doing cartwheels. Add to that a Kings of Leon concert on October 3rd and, oh yes, a flight across the pond the very next morning. The plan? Stay up all night and trick my body into UK time. The reality? Sitting in the airport terminal, diary in hand, running on fumes and Braum’s breakfast, waiting for a plane that was late, while my eyelids staged a mutiny. We first flew to Minnesota for our layover. I practiced a bit of sleep under a bench until our flight to Amsterdam was ready to depart. I was so completely spaced out. After our long, sleepy flight to Amsterdam, we landed and got to our terminal to Manchester. We decided to exchange our currency for Pounds. Then, we were off to England. Eventually, we stumbled into a café by the train station, where the automatic door h...

     Anticipation hung in the air like a bad cologne as we shuffled through the security line, bleary-eyed and barely awake. Seriously, we were running on fumes—less sleep than a college student during finals week. The night before, we had strutted into Starbucks, caffeine-fueled and boasting about our epic adventure. There we were: my dad, and my two friends, Adam and Frank, practically vibrating with excitement like kids after a sugar rush.       To prep for our adventure, we’d stocked up on energy drinks for the drive from Oklahoma to Dallas, convinced we’d need them to survive the flight. So, naturally, while standing in line, we cracked open a couple of those bad boys—Redline energy drinks, no less. Nothing says "smart travel decision" like guzzling caffeine on an empty stomach. By the time we boarded the plane, we were practically doing interpretive dances in our seats, full of energy with no outlet.       As we taxied down th...

One of my greatest passions in life is travel. I mean, who doesn’t want to hop on a plane, train, or magical carpet to see the world? Most folks in their 20s dream of globetrotting, ticking off places from their bucket list like it’s a scavenger hunt. In my case, I hit the travel jackpot during the summer of 1997, just before heading into seventh grade. My grandma decided it was a good time for a mission trip to Tula, Mexico—yes, you heard right, a mission trip! My dad thought it would be a brilliant idea for me to gain some “cultural experience,” so he whipped up a permission slip faster than you could say “¡no hay problema!”, and off I went with my great-grandma, my great-uncle, and my uncle Chris, who is slightly younger than I am. Now, Chris and I have been buddies since we were in diapers—literally. Lucky for us, I had a smattering of Spanish under my belt, courtesy of my elementary school (which I suspect was taught by a pair of mismatched socks). We piled into a white Dodge van...