If you’ve been following along on my social media for a while, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, you’ll have seen we had a very busy week back in August. We decided to pack our bags, rent a car and take our dog on a little tour of Northern Spain, somewhere we’d been talking about going for years.

Now, in no means are we finished with exploring Spain. We still have a lot of places both up North and down South that we want to visit and some little quaint places in between, but we did manage to tick off a lot of places we wanted to go. We finally got to watch the lights dance across the fountains in Barcelona, we finally got to walk the famous promenade of San Sebastian and we finally got to see the legend that is the Pilar in Zaragoza. Alex also got to visit Madrid for the first time, and that wasn’t all!

Now Christmas has passed, it’s got me thinking about past travels and upcoming travels. Travels that I should write about, future travel that I should plan for. It’s unbelievable to think that when this gets published, I’ll probably be sitting in a little corner cafe in Edinburgh with my mum admiring the Edinburgh Castle. Somewhere else I’ve always wanted to go. Travel makes you richer in knowledge and emotional awareness.

If it looked like we’d been planning our Summer 2018 trip for ages, then that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, it was only Saturday that we decided to go for it.

Do you ever have those afternoons where you’re bored, so you just plan a holiday? Well, it was one of those.

We have always talked about taking our dog on a trip. We’ve always wanted to see if it’s possible to actually see places with a dog and Spain is probably the perfect place to try it out. On the whole, Spain is so dog-friendly but it took a lot of phone calls on Saturday afternoon.

We decided renting a car would be the best way to do it. We’d have the flexibility to go where we wanted to go at the pace we wanted to do it at. It would also be so much more comfortable for our dog and us.

We rented our car from Enterprise, which I wish I could say was sponsored, but it really wasn’t! I mean, is it really paying if it goes on plastic? That’s a problem for future us to deal with, right?

Enterprise in Benidorm closes at 14:00 on Saturdays so at 13:30 I was running to a taxi to deliver Alex’s driving license! Who’d have thought driving licenses would be essential for hiring cars? Please pick up on this sarcasm.

It was then back to pick up essentials and pack what we’d be taking and actually book a route! So far, we were £250 down with no actual plan. Life is for living though!

You forget just how easy having a car makes things. Day to day, we don’t necessarily miss a car, but when you have one, you wonder how you ever coped without one.

What we packed for our road trip to the North of Spain

We decided on Barcelona. We’d stop off in La Seu and finish for a night at Zaragoza, whilst doing a few day stops on route. Though, we didn’t end up finishing in Zaragoza!

The North gets cold. Especially inland, so it meant packing a bit more sensibly. Well, Alex packed more sensibly, I thought that 17 degrees wouldn’t feel too cold, how wrong I was.

Clothes:

• Hoodies
• Sandals
• Trainers
• Two dresses
• Three shorts
• A t-shirt
• Four tops
• A bikini

Alex was really good at writing a list for what we would need for Rio, our dog. He was super organised at getting everything together, things that I don’t think I’d have thought of, or things we’d have forgotten about if we didn’t check them off. There’s so much to pack for a dog, it’s almost like having a baby on board!

Dog essentials for a road trip

• Bed
• Toys
• Dentastix
• Food
• Bowls
• Treats
• Blanket
• Lead
• Collar
• Seatbelt or pet carrier
• Sheets to protect the seats
• Pet passport
• Proof of up to date vaccinations
• Dog towel

We tried to pack light, having less to have to carry to hotel rooms every night, so light that we forgot the snacks that we’d bought for the journey!

Why did we do it?

There’s something so exciting about going on a trip that you’ve not scheduled for. There were no months of countdowns and no overthinking. Given the time, we’d have most likely dropped out of the idea. We’d have talked about it and decided to save the money. But, we didn’t have time to do that. It had to be done now.

Benidorm goes very quiet in the winter and we spend a lot of time working in the winter. Summer was our time. We always go on a summer holiday and even though we had a few days in Mallorca and we had holiday time in Benidorm, it wasn’t a full trip. You can always make money, you can’t always make memories.

Travel is one of those things you can buy that brings you things that money can’t buy.

Memories that last a lifetime. New experiences. New memories. Moments where you laugh so much that your sides ache. Things you’ll never forget. There are always new things to see and new people to meet. There is always somewhere new to visit.

We love creating our photobook with Truprint and each year we love to have travel incorporated in some way or another. Each year has features from new trips and we didn’t have anywhere new to add to our Truprint book, so we certainly had to change that.

I was watching my one second everyday and every day was the same. Coffee and dog walks. Things that I love about my routine, I love everyday normalness, but I just wanted that bit of adventure to come to life in my video. Summer certainly brought it to life. It has certainly made my one second everyday video for 2018 a lot more interesting.

I knew that booking to go now and sorting the details later worked for us. We had worked out a budget and knew how long it would take for us to fix it. This worked for us. It would not work for everybody.

We booked our hotels through Booking.com and I’ll cover the places and the hotels in more details soon. We even booked a hotel for the next day and it only cost us 35€. If you want to book through booking.com you can use my affiliate link to get 10% off your next booking here: 10% Discount Accommodation Code

Have you ever done a last-minute trip? Where did you go?

Hasta luego,