Thank Yous, My Travel Journey, and a Sneak Peek for Season 2

EPISODE SUMMARY:

This week on Travelling Through Life: A Podcast on the Go is a wee solo episode. I sit down with you for a quick chat to say thank you, share a bit of my travel journey over the past 13 years, and to give you a sneak peek of what's in the works for Season 2!

Travelling through Life: A Podcast on the Go is a fun & quirky show from Travel with TMc that delves into all things travel & adventures from the road, in the air, & in between here and there. Make sure to subscribe for weekly updates!

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CHAPTERS:

00:00 Welcome to Travelling Through Life: A Podcast on the Go
00:06 Reflecting on Season 1
06:32 A Brief Look at Tara's Travel Journey Over the Past 13 Years
17:42 Looking Ahead to Season 2

Transcript

Tara (Travel With TMc) (00:07)
Hiya! Welcome to Travelling Through Life: A Podcast on the Go. I'm your host Tara and the founder of the blog Travel with TMc which is where this adventure all began. Travelling Through Life: A Podcast on the Go is a fun and quirky show that delves into everything travel and adventure, whether from the road, in the air, or in between here and there. On the podcast, I chat with people who are travelling in all sorts of different ways.

at different stages in their lives. And the whole point of the podcast, the reason why I started it, is because I wanted to show how travel can be relatable. I find so often nowadays with Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, travel seems like this aspirational, ⁓ unattainable, out of reach thing, activity. ⁓ And I don't think it's that way. I know how many different ways there are to travel. And I want you to share your stories too.

The other reason why I started the podcast is because I hope that you'll be inspired to try new ways of exploring as well. So with the variety of guests, there's bound to be somebody who travels like you and bound to be a few more who don't. Subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen.

and make sure to leave a 5-star review and a comment with who you'd like to hear in future episodes. This week on Travelling Through Life: A Podcast on the Go, the guest is me, yours truly. ⁓ I wanted to wrap up season one with a little thank you, first of all, and I'll get into those in a moment.

And ⁓ introducing myself a little bit more to you. I ask a lot of questions of my guests and I've heard from a few listeners that they're like, who's this person interviewing all these other guests? So I'll give you a little bit of background on who I am as well. And then we're going to talk about what's next for season 2, which I've already started recording and I'm super pumped about. The guests this time are just as phenomenal as season 1. And I can't wait to introduce you to them. So

I've got to admit, I'm a little nervous for today's podcast. I love asking other people questions. So I do have my little board here with some talking points just to keep me on track and getting through to you what I want to share.

Of course, I want to start by saying a massive thank you to all of my guests who came on the show. We have my mom, was in the first episode, Jessica Off from Guess Where Trips, Jamie and Lisa from the Van Life Community Canada and A Van de Groot ⁓ communities. ⁓ We've got Sim and Kartik from The Brown Vanlife, Katie and Dan from Katie and Dan in a Van.

also Juanita Metzger from Stroll Walking Tours, my friends Hannah and Emmett who are a wonderful couple. He's from Ireland, she's from Canada, so we've got a bicultural family story there. My friend Lindsay who's a travel blogger from I've Been Bit. Kevin Adams, ⁓ so energetic and enthusiastic. He is the owner of Walking Food Tours in Dublin and of

course, the last episode last week, if you listen to it, each season is going to wrap up with some very special guests who are young. ⁓ I wanted to demonstrate travel like I said, from different points in our lives and Kinsie and Coral ⁓ in the episode that was filmed a year ago were in grade seven and grade nine. And it was such a joy. If you heard their episode already, you probably with the giggles were smiling yourselves the whole way through. So

We will have a young voice in season 2 as well to help share that perspective. So thank you so, so much to all the guests for coming on, sharing your stories and giving us your time there. It's been really awesome to connect with you and I know other people have loved hearing and learning more about you as well. The other people that I wanted to say thank you to were my friend Katie Steckly.

Katie's a multi-talented woman. She is a podcaster, a vlogger. She runs a business. She helped her husband build a van. Katie has been an awesome person to learn from and to figure out which equipment I need to do all this podcasting. So if you're looking to do a podcast yourself, I'm going to put Katie's website in the show notes so that you can get all the information from her. She's the go-to on that.

I also wanted to say a big thank you to my family and friends for listening. think anything when it's starting up, that's who our audience is. And that can be both intimidating and it can like put you at ease to know that there are ears on the other side of the screen. And it's really been heartwarming and

affirming and wonderful to hear your comments and your feedback, both constructive and in support of the podcast. So thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. And then the other thank yous, gosh, the most important ones would be you guys, the ones who are listening on different streaming platforms or watching on YouTube. That's right, we're on YouTube as well. You can watch the podcast. ⁓ But thank you, especially if I haven't

met you before, because I feel like that's the one step outside the circle. And that's been so cool to see on the Buzzsprout app that I used to host the podcast. All the different countries and cities that people are listening in from. It's kind of blown my mind. Actually, I'm going to pull up the app right now. And we're going to see how many. So today is May 11th of 2025.

And up to this point, we have had 533 downloads of the podcast. That doesn't include YouTube. And that has been with 30 countries. Is it 30? All time? 30 countries total so far and over a hundred different cities around the world listening, which is wild to me. So thank you so much to everybody listening. Please share it with a friend.

a family member, a colleague, a fellow traveller in your life, on your socials, wherever. That's how we can get the word out about this and yeah, and keep the project going. Okay, I guess we'll dive into a little bit about me, which feels weird to do, but I don't know. When I listen to other podcasts, I like to know a little bit about the ⁓ presenter or podcaster as well. So I am...

the eldest of four and I grew up in Canada, in Ontario, and had the good fortune of going on a lot of road trips with my family growing up. My mom really loves travel and has travelled internationally a ton. My father is the person who loves road trips and he'll talk to anybody on the road. So I've pulled a lot of skills and interests from both of them. And when I was 14, my parents did a very brave thing and they took their four kids to Europe.

for six weeks, which is mind boggling to me now that I'm in my 30s. I'm so grateful that they did this trip. yeah, we went to Europe to see countries that are part of our heritage, which were Ireland and Italy. And we also went to France and passed through Switzerland, which for a 14-year-old was truly life-changing in so many different ways. So that was my first foray out of North America.

And since then, I've just wanted to get back out into the world and have been fortunate to do that time and time again. I stayed in my hometown for university, did an undergrad and ⁓ a post-grad in linguistics and languages.

And then right after I did my post-grad, I hopped across the ocean and moved to Ireland for a year. And the joke with this is, is that when I went on that trip with my parents at 14, it had rained for 15 of the 17 days (in Ireland). And pretty much everybody in our family swore that we'd never go back again, because the weather was so miserable. And as a kid, it didn't, there wasn't a lot at that time that like really pulled our attention, I suppose.

And then ironically, the first place that I moved to is Ireland, the place that I swore I'd never returned to. But a friend of mine was moving there for law school, and I was in a bit of like a downer part of life at the time. And she was like, you should just come with me for the semester. And so I literally just bought a plane ticket, booked 2 nights in a hostel, and that was it. Like there was no plan. There was no excitement even. There was no thought. just.

did it. And I'm very grateful to that friend for inviting me along with her and to myself for just diving in and not thinking about it too much. So yeah, I went to Ireland. The plan was just to be there for four months and then to come back and quote unquote figure out life. ⁓ She went home when her semester was done and I stayed for another eight months. And I've been going back ever since. I think this September will be my 12th.

or 13th time going back to Ireland. So if you ever want any Irish travel tips, let me know. I'm definitely the person to go to for them. ⁓ And then after Ireland, I moved home. My visa was up. I had a working holiday visa at the time and I needed to find work. So even though I came home with money, which was really unusual at the time, I needed to...

fill the purse a little bit, so I ended up getting a job in Toronto that was in tourism. I worked for a company called EF Tours, Education First Tours. I met a ton of phenomenal people there. I had a great time in Toronto, and the irony with that is I said I would never live in Toronto as well. I thought it was all about, you know, suits and showing off how much money you made and all this other kind of stuff and...

life kind of put me in my place and showed me that Toronto has a lot of layers and tons of different neighbourhoods and nooks and crannies and I fell in love with the city. So had a great time there, still wanted to move abroad again, but then life threw a twist my way. I had in the back of my head, I had thought about

teaching as a career at some point, but I figured it would be like when I was in my 40s and ready to not live in different places around the world. But at that time, the colleges, the universities were changing Teachers College from a one-year program to a 2-year program. And given that I had already been to university a couple times, I was like, there's no way that I'm spending 2 years in Teachers College of all things. So I figured, why not? I'll apply if I get in.

I'll go and if I don't, c'est la vie, I won't be a teacher. And as somebody who applied for being a French teacher, I think perhaps I had better chances than many at the time who were applying and I did get in. So I ended up moving to a different city for teachers college for the year, grinded my way through that and then as soon as it was done, I took a job at a, they were pegged as an international school but they weren't an international school.

It was on a small Korean island called Jeju or Jeju-do. Do means island. So I did a ton of research prior to living there and packed all my things into very stuffed suitcases and I moved abroad for what was supposed to be a year again. And unfortunately that was not a very positive experience. ⁓ I won't go into the details here but basically I quit that job at Christmas time.

is the short, very short version of that story and came home like pretty tapped out at that point and needing to reset life and thankfully my parents said, okay, you've got a place to rest here and I ended up taking a teaching job in Ontario but it was great because it also gave me some stability and of course income and ⁓ helped.

to set me up for the things that I was gonna do next. So a couple years later, my then partner and I quit our jobs and we took off around the world for a year. We travelled around the world for about four months and we car camped in different countries, which is the catalyst to another part of my travel journey. And after travelling for four months throughout Iceland, Croatia,

Vietnam, Laos, Australia, New Zealand. We lived in New Zealand for eight months. New Zealand was phenomenal. That was always a bucket list place of mine that I wanted to live. So that was super cool. I would go back in a heartbeat, did not have enough time there. And then we came home. And so that was in 2018, end of 2018. We came back to Canada, back to my hometown.

and with the intent to get back out into the world in about three to six months time after we had kind of figured out what was next again. And that didn't happen. Life threw a few curve balls once again, including a pandemic a year later. So yeah, I spent a lot of 2019 with a home base in Ontario again and did a lot of international solo travel for the first time.

which kind of blew my mind because for years I had said I have zero desire to travel by myself. I always wanted to travel with others. I found after living in Ireland that it could be quite isolating at times if I didn't have my friends to chat about the experience who had also experienced Ireland with me. ⁓ There's only so many times friends and family members want to hear about that.

time in Ireland, which I still do to this day and now they put up with it. ⁓ yeah, that was my hesitance around travelling by myself. But by the time 2019 came around, I really wanted to travel and friends from back home who I wasn't as close with at that point, they, you know, were getting married and having kids and house poor and all the rest of it and

My partner at the time wanted to get into a bit more of routine at home and I thought, heck, I just need to get out there anyhow. So it was a bit out of, not necessity, but a strong desire to do something that I just said, screw it, I'm going. And yeah, I travelled in 2019 throughout North America, Europe, Asia, by myself. I returned to Korea and to the island that I used to live on just to kind of...

layer that place with a more positive experience than what it was when I lived there. And that was great. And that actually ended up being my last trip before the pandemic hit. That was in November, October, November of 2019. And when I came home, I took a teaching job at my old middle school with my old gym teacher and then the pandemic hit.

And I transitioned to teaching gym online for the pandemic for that first year anyhow, ⁓ until the end of that school year. So yeah, I guess that's the long and short of the international travels. I mentioned earlier that there was a bit of a spark on the round the world trip and that was with car camping, which was a steep learning curve. I did not grow up camping with my family.

I didn't really do any camping with friends, but I was very well versed in and comfortable with road trips. And so as my partner then and I were going on all of these trips in little Yaris's sleeping on the sides of roads and in random places, I got into a rhythm and started to enjoy it more. And I thought, okay, this is cool. I want to do more of this, but I want to be more comfortable than sleeping in the front seat.

in random places. So I started learning about van life and gosh, for the next five years, that's pretty much all I watched on YouTube. And in 21 or 2022, gosh, I think it's 2021. I bought my camper van, Betty White, and I have been exploring and learning how to renovate a van, uh, for the last four years. So

That's been an adventure in and of itself. And I absolutely love travelling that way. think van life is now one of my favorite ways to travel and to live and to experience different places at the pace that you want to go at. So yeah, I guess that's not so short, but the short version of my story and travels for the last 12 years, let's say. In terms of what's next for the podcast.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I've already started recording for season 2. I've already recorded three or four episodes, so I'm very excited about that. You guys are gonna love these guests. There will be a variety of people, again, with different travel experiences, a mix of a bit of van life, bit of international travel, some people who are living abroad, some people who are working in the industry, people who are travelling with pets or kids, and of course,

Kids themselves will be rounding out season 2 as well. always open to new guest ideas if you have them, please send them my way. You can send me a DM on Instagram. My handle is @TravelWithTMc, which is spelled T-M-c. Or you can send me an email if you're not on socials. My email address is  Connect@TravelwithTMc.com. I'll put those in the show notes for you as well.

And the other thing for the podcast for season 2 is I want to include more of the listeners, more of you guys in the podcast. So I've been brainstorming some different ways about how to do this, whether it's with travel tips that you have that you want to share with other people who are interested in travel, or if you have questions that you yourself would like answered, maybe getting you to send those in and we can answer them on podcast episodes or.

Perhaps it's sharing travel anecdotes where you send in a voice recording or a video recording of a travel story that you have that you love or that makes you laugh that you want to share. ⁓ So those are the things that I'm toying with right now. There might be a couple others, but I think that's all I'm going to say for now for season 2. ⁓ Other than that, I think that's it.

That's enough of me talking. We're at 20 minutes, guys. I think it's time to say thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for subscribing and sharing and commenting on the podcast, for the DMs that you've sent. I, like, anytime I hear that somebody has listened it kind of blows my mind and it makes me so happy that you are enjoying and that you are connecting with people's stories or learning something new, too. So please keep that coming.

and we will catch you in season 2. I think that's it. Thanks so much. Bye.