One Girl and a Big World

Welcome back to the part two of Sofia freaking out on travel trips.

This week’s blog consists of three different locations where yours truly had a fear of heights moment.

First on the docket is Salisbury Cathedral, England. On this particular trip to England, one of our stops on a day trip was this cathedral. It is a beautiful church with a towering steeple as its crowning glory. The inside of the church is held up by pillars that seem to reach the heavens. The church is home to the world’s oldest clock and the only surviving copy of the four original 1215 Magna Cartas.

After a tour of the inside, those who wanted to, were allowed to go through a little door that led to the staircase to the steeple. At the beginning, it was not too bad. Stone steps surrounded by stone wall created a rather secure impression for the climber. The steeple, built in the early 1300s and to this day the highest steeple in England, soon began to take a shape not altogether pleasing. The higher one went, the scarier it got. Near the top of the steeple, stone steps turn into wooden steps. Oh yea, there are no walls around the steps, as in, YOU CAN SEE STRAIGHT DOWN.

The height was just a little to much for me, and I must admit that I cried from sheer panic near the top. Luckily, the view was worth it. One can see for MILES the English countryside. I did, however, stick as close as I could to the outside walls of the steeple. Although the climb down was none too pleasant, at least we were going down and not up.

The second location made an appearance on a Mission Impossible film: Burj Khalifa, aka, the world’s tallest building located in Dubai, UAE.

In January of 2020, on a trip to India, we stopped in Dubai for a couple days. Dubai is a beautiful city, full of night life and a great atmosphere. It is also home to the Burj Khalifa, a towering structure surrounded by man-made waterways with massive fountains and a huge mall. Tourists are able to enter certain parts of the tower. To do so, you need to take an elevator ride up to the allowed level.

The first moment of dread came when we entered the elevator. In order to reach the allowed level tourists are permitted to visit, it takes a couple minutes ride within the elevator. You cannot see out of the elevators and to prevent nausea since it is a high speed elevator, the elevators flash with lights to distract the brain. After what seemed like an eternity stuck in a metal flashing box, the elevator stopped and you walk out. There are multiple elevators running at the same time to accommodate the huge flow of human traffic. As such, the level we exited on was packed with other tourists. As the line progressed to view the city from the sky, I got more and more nervous. We were VERY up high. I prefer solid ground.

One of the first things we got to do was to sit in this little nook surrounded by glass walls and look down at the city below us. I was forced to take a picture, but as soon as I was done, I had moved away from the glass wall. As you made your way around the building, you could see for miles and miles around. Airplanes were just above us.

As much as the view was impressive, I was ready to make my way down to solid ground and when my dear mother had FINALLY gotten all her pictures and her souvenirs, we joined the line back down the tower. Would I ever go up the tower again? No, once was enough haha. It was a cool experience, but it was a one-and-done type deal.

The final story took place rather recently. After I got back from Ireland in April, my boyfriend and I went hiking in Hanging Rock State Park, North Carolina. The day we went was beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, temperature was just right, and school was still in session so the amount of people at the park was minimal. The hike up to Hanging Rock wasn’t easy. After all, we were hiking up a mountain. My boyfriend found himself a branch and turned it into a walking stick and off we went. After a 45 minute hike, we made it to the top. The view was pretty extraordinary. At the peak, we could see miles of North Carolina mountains. Blooming trees created a sea of deep shades of green.

Hanging Rock is a cluster of huge rocks that extended beyond the mountain. There are no guard rails. Everyone hikes at their own risk. I could not approach the edges of the mountain much. Each time I did, my heart would just drop. My boyfriend, on the other hand, made it his life’s mission to make me panic and he decided to get as close to the mountain side as he could. It would’ve been a funny sight for a fellow hiker watching me, freak out as he walked the rocks, and my boyfriend perfectly at ease trying to calm me down. In the end, it was all fine. We ate apples and goldfish at the peak and watched as birds soared above us and down into the valley again and again.

My boyfriend did scare me one final time when we hiked to a waterfall in the park and wanted to get as close to it as possible. This waterfall could only be viewed from another rock edge. But it’s fine… we’re still alive and we can say we hiked a mountain!

For a little view of my travel height panic attacks, here is an Insta reel of me freaking out in Gatlinburg, Tennessee 🙂