Disclaimer: I tried to not make this a 5,000 word dissertation, but I am a work in progress. If this blog is too long for you, please feel free to visit my Instagram and see the 5 curated & themed posts about this trip for a much shorter visual snack. That’s the family-friendly, ‘don’t piss anyone from the trip off’ version. If you want the more unfiltered (but still not totally unfiltered) version, keep reading.

Now onto the big solo adventure of June. This beach writing retreat was planned by an actress who splits her time between LA and NY and still has family in this area of Greece where she’s from. I found her on Instagram. Before you say YIKES that’s sketchy, please know that I already know that. I did everything I could to fact check this situation before just trusting the universe and 2025 being my mf’ing year and zelle’ing large sums of money to a woman I only know via the ‘gram. She had done several retreats before, and this one in particular was featuring an NYT bestselling memoir author to teach the writing workshops. After much back and forth about booking this trip or a different one with a Barstool Sports blogger, I ultimately decided to go with the author I didn’t know so that I could visit a country I’ve always wanted to visit. I mean, I was literally asking my dad at 13 when he was going to take us on family vacay to Mykonos. To which he replied, “what is it that you think I do for work?” We went to the Jersey Shore instead. 

Anyway, I figured workshopping and making connections with other writers would be more than I’m doing now (avoiding further rejection and instead just word vomming all over this blog.) I also set a lofty goal to re-write my book from 2020 and self-publish. After doing some research on what an editor would cost, it seemed to be around the same amount as this trip and I thought the experience would be more rewarding for me. So, I venmo’ed the deposit, then bought the author’s memoir and read it for the first time. What I thought was a comedy memoir like my book draft, was the exact opposite. Her story covered years of drug addiction and trauma, which is a far cry from my tales about my tummy probz. The book was incredibly dark and I wondered exactly what type of writing we’d be doing in these workshops, but that was for future Ju to deal with. I was excited to A. call myself a writer and B. tell anyone who sniffed near me that I was going on a writers retreat to Greece because how creative chic is that?!

Here’s what I already knew about me going into this trip: 

• I connect more with individuals in quiet settings and small groups where I can actually get to know them. 
• I want to be spontaneous but I actually love routines, schedule, and control. 
• I enjoy looking up things to do in the places I’m traveling to and creating a detailed itinerary. 
• I’m a social butterfly on borrowed time, meaning I need ample recovery and recharging after social interactions or situations where I’m exerting a lot of mental energy. 
• My stomach is a literal friggin disaster and only gets worse when I travel. 
• I get overstimulated by noises very quickly.

Here’s what I learned from this experience: 

• Group trips are not for me.

Alright, here’s the deal, I’m going to add nuance as to why I came to that conclusion, but unfortunately due to legalities, I cannot get into the sordid day to day details of this absolutely bonkers trip. That sounded super official, right? I’m a writer who has legalities. Nah, for real, this is a public forum and I’ve built it upon punching up at celebrities who deserve to be mocked. If I were to really spill the beans on what went down on this trip, I’d be punching down in a big way, which I’m not stupid enough to do on the record. If you want the VH1 Behind the Music version, buy me a cocktail and I’ll regale you with stories that’ll have your jaw on the ground. Simply put, there were several moments on this trip where I wondered if I was on a hidden camera show or part of a human experiment where the humans were actually animals let out of their cages for a week. And given the fact that this was organized by creatives, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if a book, movie, or both are made based on this true story. If White Lotus season 4 just so happens to take place at a Greek resort…I better get a hefty payout.

That being said, I’ll give you the glaring red flags leading up to the trip, plus how the very first day went, and then we’ll all wrap around the campfire for some reflections and bay at the moon. I don’t take big decisions lightly and as a real penny pincher, anything that costs a large sum of money gets even more thought. When I finally decided to put the deposit down for this trip in November, I had a surge of adrenaline and something to look forward to. Having not traveled internationally on my own since college, I was eager to get my flight booked as soon as possible to secure a good rate and also make this feel real. I even got a credit card with travel points hoping that the sign-on bonus would be enough to cover the flight. To take it a step further, I was cocky enough to think I could treat myself to first class and really make this a dream come true. I figured a flight to Europe costs about $1000, so how much more could first class be? Oh baby, what a cold hard slap of reality it was to see that dirt-level economy flights to Europe are in the $2500-3000 range and thus just business class was hovering around $6K. Poor people seats it is! Having not heard anything from our trip planner, I reached out to get a sense of if flights should arrive around a specific time for airport transportation purposes. She replied that I could book whatever I wanted. So I did.

All was quiet on the trip organizing front until I get a text at the end of February asking where the rest of my money is. Um, was I supposed to know it was due? Apparently, yes. She tells me to just Venmo her again. Folks, this trip was thousands of dollars. Would you feel comfy tossing that over Venmo to a stranger? I ask if she can do Zelle instead because it seems a scooch more legit and she obliges. I literally have to move funds around to get everything set to send only to find out even Zelle is like, you good, ma? You can’t send that much money to someone in one day. Which is actually kind of comforting that there’s limits. Could’ve really used an alert when I Zelle’ed a crackhead $25 for fake Eras Tour tickets, but whatevs. 

Once the money was sent and I was locked in for sure, I started to get even more anxiety when it was truly crickets about this trip. So far all I knew was the dates, how much I paid for it, and that there would be writing and beaches. I couldn’t even pronounce the name of the city we were going to so when people asked, I just showed them the name. Then they would inevitably ask if it was one of the islands and I would say, sure. It wasn’t until I got back and someone goes, “oh, so you were in Northern Greece,” that I actually knew where the hell I was. In fact, while I was there I said is Macedonia a region or a country? Truly thought it was a country. Geography’s not my strong suit. Neither is math. Neither is booking a trip through Instagram. At one point last winter, my fellow organized traveler of a friend asked me rapidfire questions about my trip that I didn’t have answers to and I had to politely tell her to stop inquiring or I would fall in to a panic spiral and be forced to face the cold hard truth: I paid for something that could be fake. This was also around the time my dad started referring to the trip as Fyre Fest.

In March, I finally emailed and asked for ANY details like lodging, itinerary, transportation, and who else might be joining. The reply had a “rough” itinerary with each date listed and ‘breakfast, workshop, lunch, dinner’ written underneath, copy/paste style. I DID get the name of our resort and was able to see that it had good reviews and looked nice. So, at least we weren’t staying in FEMA tents masquerading as luxury villas. TBD on if this “resort” would serve styrofoam containers of government cheese on bread for our meals. I also was told I’d be connected with the other travelers soon. Throughout March and some of April, both girls were still advertising open spots for the trip on their IG, which was sus as hell. It also looked like our trip leader was in a different country every week. The story I began to tell myself and others to romanticize the situation was that she’s a European easy breezy beautiful cover girl and not an American uptight wad like I was. I reframed my thoughts to tell everyone this is actually a lesson in letting go for me and trusting that it’ll all work out. Let the records show that I’ll tell myself any fairytale I need to in order to justify my decisions.

One month before we were due to be in Greece (my birthday), we receive an itinerary that is almost identical to the one I got in March, listing that we would be fed 3x a day, which SEEMS LIKE A GIVEN on a trip where three meals a day are included in the price. All of the girls were on this email, and if I really wanted to put on my detective hat, I could’ve pulled gov names from each email and looked them all up, but at this point I didn’t want to find any further damning information about this trip that I couldn’t back out of. We were 3 weeks out and I still had no clue what we were doing other than eating meals and going to a beach. The author followed up with an additional email saying “you’re probably wondering what to pack!” YA THINK? And said light clothes and comfy shoes. She also told us some tech items to include in our suitcases, including her favorite products, which she couldn’t remember the names of and couldn’t find on Amazon to link to. Both useless emails full of typos did nothing to give me more confidence about what was to come.

I tried so hard to be casj cool and only control the things I could (booking a ride to the airport, taking weeks to meticulously pack outfits into compression cubes not knowing what the F I was wearing said outfits to, buying backup battery packs and converters, creating first aid kits, etc.) One day before I travel, despite having sent my flight info several times and asking to be linked with anyone on the same flight, I still have no clue how I’m getting from the airport to the resort (a 2 hour drive I was already dreading due to my severe motion sickness). I messaged the Billy McFarland of retreats and said, “Do you have any details about the airport pickup?” There are several appropriate responses here that would adequately answer my question such as, meet at this spot, look for this person, look for a sign with the resort name/retreat name/your name…and yet the response I got was, “We will be there to pick you up not to worry, we will find you.”

I’m already a high-strung babe and doing a global trek solo dolo, understandably, was a nerve-wracking thing for me. Add in the drama of my flight not showing up on the app and then my name being “wrong” because I didn’t include my middle name, so how could they possibly know it’s me?! I had to call two separate airlines because even though they operate each other’s flights, they can’t possibly communicate with each other. Needless to say, I showed up to the airport ready to run through a brick wall and also shit my pants. My suitcase was 10 lbs overweight. When I asked what I was supposed to do about that the airline attendant said, and I may be paraphrasing here, “you can scoot your bulky suitcase over to the floor of shame, open that bitch up for everyone to judge how much you hideously overpacked, and move 10 lbs of outfits you won’t wear to your carry-on OR you can pay the overage.” Since I’d rather die than be judged, I said, “what’s the overage?” She replied, 250. As in TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS. I turned heel, wheeled my phat suitcase out of line and started extracting, I cursed my need for multiple clothing/shoe options and the fact that I only brought a shoulder bag carry-on thinking I would fill it with souvs for the way back and it would be basically empty on the way there. 

Well, I filled that bag right up (after two rounds of the luggage scale perp walk because I got the cranky airline employee who wanted to be a stickler for two pounds over) and had to schlep it through Newark airport. By the time I got to my gate to see if it existed, I had pit stains down to my ankles and full swass. I got a well-deserved $35 Ketel Soda to cool down and cry about the fact that I now was riddled with this American Eagle duffel bag overflowing with clothes and shoes for the rest of my 15 hour travel day. *Note: I wore everything I packed except for the rogue pair of jeans I threw in with several top variations for potentially cooler nights, which there were none of. So suck it, airport Judge Judy.

Despite carrying a boulder on my shoulder, everything went swimmingly with my travels and if I pat myself on the back any harder for how well I navigated that, my hand would fall off. To the group of malákas who mercilessly mocked and berated me for asking where to find my train last summer during an NJ Transit snafu, LOOK AT ME NOW! Made it across the Atlantic Ocean and through Germany all by myself without once asking a fellow traveler a question for fear of being publicly stoned to death. And God Bless the Munich airport for having shopping carts. I got to drop my 800 lbs of carry-on onto wheels and cruise on over to the window for some natural light and self-care.

Even as a solo traveling champ, it was still a full day of sweating, not sleeping, eating the highest of sodium microwave meals (and one particularly dicey cream cheese relish sandwich), smelling airplane farts, and being touched by strangers because even the smallest human does not fit in what they constitute as an airplane seat these days. 

When I landed in Greece, I had fuzzy teeth and BO. And wouldn’t you know…they did NOT find me. I walked slowly out of baggage claim looking for signs, or a group of girls, or really anything that indicated I wasn’t about to be stranded in a foreign airport or snatched into a Euro human trafficking ring and NOTHIN. I don’t mean to always be right but IT DOES SEEM TO HAPPEN A LOT. I had 2 emails in my inbox, one from the group leader and one from a girl who will end up becoming a friend asking me where I am. I then get a call asking me where I am. As if I have magically ethered after getting off of a plane in a very small airport that I was told it was impossible for them to miss me because there’s only one way in and one way out. BLOW MY BRAINS OUT. I’m told I gave the wrong flight info, which I surely didn’t, and then to stand still and someone will find me, something I was already actively doing. Finally, I am found. It’s a real Amazing Grace moment. And I meet 5 other girls, most of whom were on the same exact flight that I was. Wouldn’t it have been GREAT to meet some of my fellow group mates in the Munich airport when I had 3.5 hours to kill, thus also creating a buddy system for when I landed?! Just a thought. Seems rational thoughts were not a part of this trip as we all roll our oversized suitcases and 2 carry-on’s each to a sprinter van that will be taking us to the resort. The trunk of this sprinter van opens up and there is room to comfortably fit one large suitcase. SUPER!

At this point I’m loopy and I just have to laugh at the absurdity of not accounting for luggage with 6 women on a week-long trip, but also expecting jetlagged greasy babes to problem solve this pickle that we did not get ourselves into. As we stepped back and watched the chaos ensue, I learned via some side commentary that everyone was as concerned as I was about sending money to a stranger and receiving no details about this retreat in advance. So at least it was comforting to know that we were all duped as a unit. The final solution after 20-30 minutes of suitcase Jenga while we almost get hit by cars in the parking lot is two stacked in the trunk, two stacked in the front, and the remaining 20 bags to be shoved on laps and at feet throughout the van. We pile in and start rolling and immediately realize that the only source of airflow is in the front and being blocked by suitcases. We try to open windows and by pure luck, the one closest to me will not budge. I’m in the back row of the van and I tell these girlies that I’ve met five minutes ago, “this may be an opportune time to share that I get car sick, so I just wanted to give a head’s up that I’ll be closing my eyes and disassociating for the remainder of this three hour tour.” Someone asked if I might throw up. Only time will tell, girlypops!

We stopped 4 times on this drive straight out of my nightmares. Stop # 1 was because the double decker suitcases in the front were getting in the way of our driver shifting gears, and there was a dicey moment when both almost went free falling out of the front window, which was rolled all the way down in hopes that a morsel of fresh air would make its way back to the bowels of this van. God Bless my seat mate, the same pal who emailed me, for suggesting we put the suitcases in the back and Ju up front since she’s probably going to ralph everywhere. I then got to take the Queen’s throne where I hung my head out the window like a dog and let that sea breeze smack me in the face while my legs were in a full contortion pretzel on the dash. I love my legs, they are my greatest feature, but boy do I wish I could chop them off while traveling because they quite literally never have a place to go.

Stop # 2 was to fill up the ole tank. Because of course when you rent a van that is just for transporting people to and from the airport, you wait until it’s full of people with suitcases digging into their side wanting to die to gas ‘er up. Stop # 3 was for goats crossing the road. This was the only stop I would’ve allowed (it was mandatory) and I got a front row seat for animal cuteness. I’m sure my homeslices suffocating in the back did not enjoy this as much. 

Stop # 4 was 15 minutes away from the resort when two women insisted they wouldn’t make it another second without peeing. As someone with a strong bladder and lots of pee anxiety, I can hold my urine for a minimum of 5 hours, maximum of like 10-12 depending on the situation and how much I’ve had to drink. We all peed before we left the airport and knew it was a 2 hour drive and I don’t believe anyone was slugging water on this trip because in Europe water is not readily available and we basically spent a week dehydrated. So why we had two almost oopsie pee pants moments from women who have not birthed children and thus have not ruined their pelvic floor yet IS BEYOND ME. We pulled over on the side of this back country road where there’s a cliff down to the Aegean Sea and the rocky dirt becomes their toilet. One tucks herself behind a tree and takes care of business, the other stands directly next to the car and just lets it all wizz out, fully erect, no squat, no removal of skirt and/or underwear, if there was any. As my window was down, I saw and heard the thicc cascading waterfall of pee, and if I really wanted to, I probably could’ve reached out and touched it. And there is…no recovering from that. It was the most wild thing I’ve ever witnessed. The goats crossing the road wouldn’t have even pulled this maneuver. And that was only hour 3 of being in Greece.

This hot start was most obviously an omen for the trip. It was the equivalent of driving up a winding road to a creepy haunted house and there being a dead-eyed old man holding a sign on the side of said road that reads TURN AROUND in blood. Should I have seen what I needed to see at the airport and split in a cab for a week of solo trolling around Thessanoliki? Probably. But then I wouldn’t be able to write this blog and WHAT FUN WOULD THAT BE?! 

Alright, time for reflections. As it turns out, putting 17 women in a room together may be ABC’s dream to create drama for a reality dating show, but IRL, it’s overwhelming and overstimulating. I can confidently say, and this may be a hot take for some people, but big groups of women do not bring out the best in each other. I’m not one of those girls that’s like oh I get along better with men, actually. I get along with plenty of girls. I love that girlhood is complimenting each other’s outfits and becoming best friends in bar bathrooms. But I also think too many girls trying to out-personality each other in a confined space is what purgatory looks like and there were several moments when I wanted to chop my ears clean off my head. Knowing that I bond better in smaller circles, cutting that group in half would’ve been very beneficial to girls who don’t thrive in attention-seeking environments. We also reealllly could’ve used some Big Dick Energy in this pack of she-wolves to balance things out. 

Although there was no detailed itinerary for our week-long stay, there was no down time either. The only moments I was alone was when I was showering or sleeping, and oftentimes I was showering at warp speed to make it to dinner on time after staying at the beach later to enjoy it as much as possible. In order to get my family souvenirs, I had to literally skip dinner one night to go shopping instead. I’m honestly shocked I never went full irritated bitch mode and snapped at anyone due to a depleted social battery and only getting about 4-5 hours of sleep each night, although I’m sure my face showed my every gripe on more than one occasion. If you know me, you know I must sleep a tight 8-10 hours every night and also get my daily late afternoon cat nap or I turn into the Beast when Belle refuses to join him for dinner. This is probably why I’ll never have children. Unfortunately, my body rejected the time zone in Greece and never adjusted. It was like it knew I didn’t belong there. 

Also, as it pertains to my bowels and overall potty anxiety, I learned that flushing toilet paper in old European cities is a hard no. Tell someone who has IBS that the ancient pipes LITERALLY can’t dissolve thin tissue paper and watch them panic right before your very eyes. The good news is I was perpetually dehydrated and existing solely on carbs and one water bottle per day that I greedily filled up at the beverage station each morning at the breakfast buffet (to many dirty looks of course.) It was the perfect recipe for constipation. Sure, I looked like I was in my first trimester, but at least I didn’t have a tummy emergency that shut down the whole resort.

Three hours later…I think you get the gist of why group trips go against every fiber of my being. But much like Coldplay taught me in 2005, “if you never try, you’ll never know.” I tried it, I turned it into a story to make myself laugh / hopefully entertain you all, and I know that the next time I travel it will be with people who pee in a toilet preferably behind a closed door. This retreat wasn’t a lesson in letting go of control, it was a lesson in raising my hopes to Jupiter for something and not crying when those unrealistic expectations are not met. Can confirm that I did not cry about any of my disappointing solo events in the month of June. And that’s on growth, baby! (TBH, I did cry on the last night pre-hot dog but it was because I was read for filth by the Greek Billy McFarland and those were justified tears and not wah wah my life sucks tears. BIG DIFF.) I won’t beat the “two things can be true” theme to death but obviously this blog was heavy on the things that went wrong on this trip and if you want to know what went right, go to my IG/FB and see me rave about becoming one with the sea, boating/beaching like a champ, and bonding with two girlies who were equally as horrified as I was at any given moment. #TraumaBond. I would say the takeaway here is to never book a trip on Instagram, but honestly I booked my airport ride on Instagram with a guy named Vinny and that was a 100/10 experience, so I’m gonna keep rolling the dice on socials. You win some, you lose some. 

After ALL of that, traveling back in a total haze of overtired crankiness, I spent my 9 hour return flight furiously journaling everything I saw and heard on this excursion, with my gangly legs stretched out into the middle seat because the Lord took pity upon me and left that seat open, giving me a place for my greatest asset to belong. And as the aisle seat and I were waiting in line for the potty (matching potty times is super polite plane etiquette), he asked if I was a writer after noticing me nearly ripping the page with my pen velocity. I told him how I was just returning from a writer’s retreat (I’m telling you, it makes me sound SO LEGIT), and we ended up chatting for about 20 minutes. He published an academic book and shared stories about that process, including a juicy C&D he received from Julie Andrews for using her photo on the cover. He was easy to chat with and casually brought up his husband almost immediately, which I LOVED. The gays have an uncanny knack for immediately letting you know they’re an ally and not a predator. And since I’ve been preyed upon several times in the past month by gross old pervs, I very much appreciated knowing right out the gate that this man would not be cornering me for my phone number, making me want to swan dive out the emergency exit. In fact, he gave me HIS business card and told me he would connect me to his neighbor in publishing. I told him that clearly I was meant to meet him because he just gave me more writing advice and contacts than I got all week. He told me I was funny, so obviously I would die for him. And THAT’S what you get for trying!