i left nyc to travel the world

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

hello from the madrid airport we were just traveling for 15 hours i decided that it would be really sick if we could bring along a really incredible videographer so i actually put a feeler out on my instagram and i met this really cool girl named christine and now she's gonna be traveling the world with us she arrives at the madrid airport like now so i met her once in the person stage meeting for the first time she's super sick i'm off to a great start by the way i already told the first spanish person i interacted with mercy so hello and good morning from madrid oh my goodness i can barely believe i'm saying that i did it i left new york for two months not forever it's a little clickbaity and i'm traveling the world with my sister this has been a lifelong dream and we specifically decided to do this to kind of create this travel series together essentially highlighting really badass women and kind of telling their stories and highlighting the culture and the history of different parts of the world circling the mediterranean that there's not as much like youtube content about and it's really special to get to travel with my sister we're four and a half years apart so we honestly haven't gotten to live together that much of our lives so it's very exciting to get to do something like this together i feel like if i've learned anything with a pandemic and just how life has been the past couple years it's like you never know what's going to happen you've got to live your life now it always will be some excuse to not you know do the thing that you're excited about or like follow some dream or passion or project obviously in this case this is not a cheap venture there was a lot of saving that came into this i stubbed up my room out in new york so i'm gone for two whole months at least so i think i'm gonna grab sage and we'll explain a little bit more about what we're doing um and then let's go see madrid i'm hiding see us there hello howdy how are we doing so the title's a bit dramatic but you know what it's kind of true i did indeed pack up my life in new york to travel the world with this one little sister trip we started talking literally last july when we were in like dc with my mom i was like you guys should plan a really big trip together ch graduates college in may and i'm an international relations major i've studied the mediterranean and like middle east a ton and i was like elena what if we like circumnavigated the mediterranean certain parts of it are super accessible but then there's this whole other half of that mediterranean loop that isn't as well like documented i think from the youtube social media side of things i'm super interested to see the mixing like cultures and languages the borders are like temporary and controversial and a lot of these regions even 100 200 years ago looked very different border wise and were interconnected and so it's super fascinating to see the culture in present day as well as like the influences of the past and how it all kind of ties together i think it's so fascinating we wanted to kind of take this idea of kind of going on this bucket list trip together but bringing a really female focused lens i feel like the travel space on youtube is still quite male dominated there's some great female travel youtubers out there and i think there's a lot of places that aren't as touched on as much on youtube that we find super interesting but also we really wanted to highlight learning from women and women's stories in each country and meeting locals and subscribers as much as possible in each destination really want to like hear what women are saying on the ground in each of the countries we're going to which range from like mainstream travel destinations places where women face different societal obstacles that we perhaps face in the states and so we're going to be talking to a mix of like i think we'll just try to be meeting up with local random subscribers as well as a few women who we handpick who have like really amazing stories that we're so excited to highlight and one of our goals is to meet as many of you guys as we can learn from y'all as we go hear your stories learn about the culture through your eyes we're going to spain greece turkey lebanon tunisia morocco and then back to spain we are fully planning this all on our own we're figuring out on their own i saved up to pay for it on my own and certain parts of the world i think it can feel really daunting to explore especially as a woman but we want to show you all is possible and kind of give our tips along the way the world is so big and beautiful and there's so many ways to go explore and see it i think in the us especially in like my subculture of california and your subculture in new york there's very much like a few set ways i feel like of what it means to be like a beautiful woman a successful woman an empowered woman a healthy woman whatever and i'm excited to see what that looks like in different cultures and different lenses like what does it mean to be all those things but in greece or in morocco or in lebanon so we're starting off in madrid today we kind of picked madrid last minute as a starting spot i think it just for one it seems like a really fascinating city it's a great way to kind of start our circumnavigation i'm super excited to see it we're just gonna probably be meeting up with a few local people here and there so on that note i'm gonna finish getting ready and let's go explore madrid great hello taking a little sweaty break here today sponsors better help i have been working with them for like most of the past year and i am such a huge fan i've been using them for years and so it's so incredible to get to include them in videos taking charge of your mental health is so important and better health is such a great service to help you do that it's basically all online therapy with over 20 000 licensed professional therapists to choose from better help is also committed to help facilitating the right match so you can always mix up and change your therapist if you need to it can be really hard to find a good therapist near you and it's often more expensive so doing online therapy is really helpful because it's less expensive than traditional therapy and it's just so accessible you can do it from the comfort of your home which i personally really love so if you are looking to potentially start therapy this is your sign you can join the over 2 million people taking charge of the mental health today by signing up for better health visit betterhelp which is help.com and get 10 off your first month so why are we in spain you might ask well why not spain we pick spain somewhat randomly but geographically it helps form the western gate into the mediterranean all right time for brief history if you've watched my other videos you know i love a history lesson so spain was once under roman rule which is when it developed the foundations of religion and language still common throughout western europe today then in the 8th century muslim conquest coming from north africa blew through this region largely taking over in literally seven years which is not very long with this a lot of islamic cultural influence rippled throughout the native populations and a ton of berber or amazigh people immigrated from north africa which further than mixed the cultures religions languages this is really crucial to the history of this region and why spain is the way that it is and i think is fascinating historically for the intertwining of the cultures across the mediterranean the muslim presence came to an end in 1492 with the rican quista but today the arab influence on spain is still really evident throughout architecture design food and language i got the ladies in the back that's safe behind christine we are currently headed to pez i believe i will link it down below to meet rachel she is a subscriber and she dm'd me on instagram and she was like hey i need a local tour guide and i was like yeah i do and so we are gonna go grab tapas with her and she's gonna show us around a little bit let's go get some food i'm hungry we're excited tomato basil and parmesan so what do you love about madrid specifically i would say like the terrace culture all the tables outside and there's these packs and people they're not there for 30 minutes one hour no they're there for five hours they're just ordering trains ordering food so much socialize yeah and i think that's the best part yeah this is the vintage shop street the best place to come into chopin i would say this one's actually one of my favorites player just had the most delightful little takeout in the park this park is what dreams are made of i swear there's like the moon off and the horizon there's so many different types of trees there's so many great people that people watch oh these are often my favorite ones all traveling it's just like sitting down a little spot people watching you know seeing what's going on with the locals um a very great way to spend our first like half day so today is our first holiday in madrid we're going to go out explore we really want to see some of the historical parts of madrid and they're going to meet with some spanish gals leader today too and um kind of hear what it's like and see some of their favorite spots as a local as well as go out and hit the town um also i'm very proud of myself i managed to pack for two whole months in one checked bag that is a accomplishment for me like i like a fit i like to look cute a little fashionable moment my biggest packing trick is packing cubes please get yourself packing cubes they make life so much easier that way when i get somewhere new because i'm changing locations every five days for like two months i can be where are my tank tops at where are my shorts at and they're all here squared away this is a lifesaver hi everybody my name is tour guide sage aka i spent a lot of time reading before we got here this is the palacio the main palace here used to be the site actually of a moorish or like a muslim era uh giganto castle fortress thing called the alcazar and was then built in the 1600s by prince king philip second third something along those lines and that's why i bring her along yes her resident history to her check this out it all the articles i was reading were like what's wrong with his complexion poor little at him poor tomato oh he's cute i feel like because i've been to many palaces and museums and such which is the case if you've traveled europe at all it's like you tend to see quite a bit and they kind of start to blend together but this royal palace is exceptional here we were blown away at how ornate the rooms are like it was so much more extra than i expected like this guy arguably more extra than like versailles yes which i was not expecting i've ever seen we're kind of like and we go in doing that and i'm really glad we did phillip's something something fourth he had quite the ornate taste that's for sure yes laughs there's christine that was a cute man right there hello sir goodbye we are currently on our way to go meet a girl named a subscriber who had lived in madrid for seven years and she offered to show us around and talk a little bit more about madrid so madrid has been short and sweet we ended our evening by beating up with two local spanish gals who reached on instagram andrea and anita our time in madrid is particularly short so it was really lovely to have some locals give us a tour you can find people like sitting on the ground like and we can walk a little bit yeah i hope you guys enjoy madrid we ultimately landed at a little outdoor terrace and ordered sangria as you do and asked them about what it's like to live here especially as young woman we learned they love of course it's bustling social scene the laid-back terrorist culture but they also shared the harder parts such as the low salaries while inflation and cost of living keeps rising i think it was really helpful to learn this too because it gives more of a nuanced light about what it means to be spanish and live in spain a lot of times us americans take a little summer european trip and have this dreamy idea of what it's like to live there without actually taking time to understand both sides of the spectrum madrid was a great very chill launching pad before we officially start our journey along the mediterranean we have got a long road ahead of us on this crazy endeavor for the next 40 days and i'm so curious to see how our time in spain compares to the rest you