My dad used to tell my family and me during our family vacations to "enjoy it now because it doesn't last". I don't think I ever understood that there was wise truth in those words and he wasn't just saying it a million times a day to be annoying.

And when I came here to Spain, the phrase, "live in the moment" became my travel motto. However, despite the truth in the words of these two phrases, they consist of a tint of sadness that, to me, takes away from the moment.

To live in the moment is much easier said than done when you know "it won't last" as my dad always says. No matter what you do, you can't win a race against time. Trying to live in the moment sometimes feels like walking down a dead-end street: no matter how slowly you walk to enjoy the path, every step you take gets you closer to the end.

This had been playing loudly in my mind for the past few days. But this weekend, my friends and I traveled to northern Spain to two incredible cities: Santander and Bilbao; one city was hidden in the center of mountain valleys and surrounded by these amazing snow-capped peaks and rolling hills and the other was a beautiful beach town by the bay with the most majestic cliffs overlooking the turquoise ocean.

There were so many moments during this trip where I realized I was truly happy--not bittersweet, trying to enjoy the moment while being haunted by worries of the future, but truly existing in the moment without pressuring myself to "enjoy it while it lasts".

I also realized that it is the people that make traveling worth it. While I agree that the idea of traveling alone is a beautiful concept and it is something I will have to do before I leave Europe because I know it will be a great way to have my own time, think a lot, and reflect on my life here and back in the US, I don't feel the need to do it anytime soon. For me, travel is nothing without the right people. All of these moments during the trip are things I could re-do alone and revisit when my friends leave Spain, but they would be worlds different.

It also makes for moments to smile back on--moments that you look back on, re-imagine them in your mind, and laugh out loud--moments like us sitting in the parking lot devouring Chinese food, cracking open a six pack on the street and strolling onto the ferry with them in hand, sprinting through the crowded night streets of Bilbao to desperately find a taxi, being loud and annoying on the deck of the ferry when we had it to ourselves, climbing the rocky cliffs by the ocean and trying not to fall (though some of us were not that lucky), asking a local Basque sushi vendor to speak Vasco for us just so we could hear the language, or stumbling upon a carnival by the river of the city and screaming more on the ride than the little kids.

There will always be beautiful things to see and amazing places to go, but you won't always have the right people with you. And they change everything; they change everything for the better.