Van Life Is Tough On Our Relationship // Europe Ep 5

van life has been taking a toll on our relationship i'm ryan and i'm louie we spent the first four years of our relationship traveling the world full-time and now we're back on the road we're pausing our road trip through the us down to costa rica and we're taking on europe for the summer after reuniting with louie's family in the uk we bought a van to drive down through france and italy and across to bulgaria to visit my family we're vlogging almost every day of our trip subscribe so you don't miss any of it good morning from cinque terre italy brunch is served we've got some avocado toast on rice cakes for me on bread for louie and some delicious salad so we actually drove into italy late last night but our first destination is cinque terre which are these amazing beautiful seaside villages and we've parked up in la spezia i think and that's where we catch the train to get to these villages because you can't really drive there so we've parked up the van on this street and i've just noticed all of these trees are like citrus trees i think oranges oh wow look at these huge oranges i think i need to pick some whoa look at them all oh my gosh they look like grapefruit almost i found a juicy orange let's see how it tastes oh i think it is a grapefruit wow i've never been here before i'm so so excited this is like one of the most picturesque probably one of the most famous areas in italy i'm sure you've all seen photos of it and i cannot wait to go see it and just yeah spend the day exploring also we're in italy i am so so happy we were gonna vlog us crossing the border into italy um and we honestly were a bit nervous about it again just making sure we have all the right forms and we took a test got our negative results we were ready and there wasn't even a border we just drove in there was no one asking for anything yeah it was wild so we're in italy and i'm so so happy we didn't pre-book anything we just showed up at the train station and the tickets to all five villages and back which i guess are just open throughout the day to jump on and off was 16 euros each which i think is pretty good so we just jumped on the train and i'm hoping for some pretty spectacular views [Music] all right just looked on happy cow and found an amazing vegan cafe we're gonna grab some sandwiches and some lunch [Music] i think we're gonna eat on these stairs have a little picnic so ideally we would have wanted to sit down at a restaurant but it turns out in italy there's like a little afternoon siesta time where they close for eating so we did find this place and i'm pretty happy we did we were just chatting to the woman that owns it and she opened it in 2017 and it's been kind of a struggle just that a lot of italians don't really um understand veganism or like are excited about vegan food but i'm really excited that we got to support her and um also it is so much cheaper if you sit at one of those restaurants with the view obviously you're paying for the view so you're paying like at least 20 euros for just like pasta and tomato sauce but we paid four euros for a sandwich so i'm really happy yeah unreal and we found a pretty cool little picnic [Music] spot [Music] we've got an apricot cookie and a piece of lemon pie before we continue i'm having a cheeky little coffee italian coffee [Music] yeah it looks good now i can protect my face because i got a bit sunburnt yesterday [Music] so we're leaving the first town in cinque terre which is rio majori and we're walking now to like a 20 minute walk to manarola which is the next little seaside village it's closed oh it did stay temporarily closed but i didn't believe it this looks like it's permanently closed i know it looks like maybe there were some landslides or something but oh this would have been such a nice walk ah it sounds like there is another way but it's 40 minute walking now let's just take the train i think we just missed the last the next one but let's we can wait yeah every 10 [Music] minutes we managed to get a seat on this side of the train the next leg and the window is much clearer the other one was kind of misted but we're gonna get good views [Music] all right we're on a mission to find some good views looks like the footpath is open here so we're going to walk up this little hillside and get a view of the town we found a pretty good view point how's your hair sorry we've got a pretty good viewpoint and um we're gonna keep walking up i think there's like a little restaurant we might be able to go up to wow also kind of random but i have a puzzle of this exact view so i'm like looking at all these windows and i know them because i've like studied each tiny piece of this picture that's so funny so apparently this is a no drone zone and i was really bummed out because i forgot to charge my drone battery but it looks like i probably wouldn't have flown it here anyway this was feeling really cheeky ryan's picking out a dress oh yeah i think that's the one [Music] i was just saying to louie on the train that i really love supporting small businesses and little women run boutiques um yeah i mean i've always loved supporting them but ever since my mom opened up her boutique and i worked there for a couple weeks with her i just know that every sale makes such a big difference and if like every other day i message her i'm like what did you sell and it's just so exciting so i love knowing that my new dress and hat helped brighten someone's day yeah i think whenever you can when you're traveling support local small businesses over big corporations and chains wow we found this secret little cave to the beach well us and everyone else here [Music] how beautiful is this town this is amazing i think this is my favorite so yeah so this is the only actual beach i think you can see behind me that we've seen so far everywhere else people just been laying on the rocks so if you want to come and have a full beach day then this might be the one for you [Music] all right we've just cut down some of the back streets to try and find our way up to the castle oh this is so cool wow look how steep these stairs are whoa it's crazy thing that people live here and i was saying like people whose families have lived here for generations before it was touristy i can imagine growing up here i can't so we got our tickets for the castle two euros each i feel like i came here and i was here with all the youtube boys back in like 2014 or something this place is so beautiful stunning how beautiful is this guys so so good and we came up to this castle [Music] it's been such a lovely day oh my gosh it's so beautiful here and i think we filmed quite a lot of b-roll but we haven't been able to chat to you much because it's been quite crowded and very windy but we just wanted to sit and chat to you a little bit there's been some things coming up that we've kind of just not really shown in the videos and i think it's important that we share all sides of what's the realities of van life and what's going on and it's honestly been really tough van life has been taking a toll on our relationship definitely we felt the downsize from the bus to the van there is no time alone yeah i remember cara nate telling us when we were in their van they were like there's no personal space like you you can't separate and like someone be in a different room which i knew kind of what they were saying but now we know what they're saying you know also we've never shared a channel before we've never like run a business together we've always done our own videos and our own channels not having a full plan wanting to vlog for you guys but then also wanting to be in the moment it's kind of this whole it's a recipe for just a bit of stress and tension and i feel like i've been falling into the habit of like if things aren't going right like blaming raya which i'm sorry for obviously we are so freaking grateful and blessed and like this is not us complaining we just want to share this side of it too because i don't think it's fair if you're watching people online their lives are just perfect and happy and beautiful all the time and then if you are like get into a fight with your boyfriend you're like oh why you know why can't i have a perfect room exactly like no this is this is real life yeah and we are in like one of the most beautiful places in the world ryan's favorite country it's pretty high up on my list too and also there's imperfections in life it isn't this instagram perfect life that we live in and it's a mixture life's not always like perfect perfect perfect we've learned so many tools along the way and i i just think we got so wrapped up in like vlogging and editing and traveling and that we haven't taken the time to just connect um and i think we we did that a little bit last night which is why i think we're feeling so much better today but a big thing that we talked about last night is reminding ourselves that any issue that comes up for us it's not about us versus each other it's always us versus the problem so if something goes wrong like not blaming the other person and then like oh you caused this problem now it's me versus you in this fight it's just like there's a problem and we're a team so we're here to solve it together so it's you have to just move on like whose fault it is or whatever just that that does not help the situation anyway to just move on and be like okay here's the problem how do we team up and help each other fix it and i feel like that's really helped we haven't traveled in so long so we're just so excited to be traveling and traveling together and we're engaged and all these things but when we come into each day with different expectations and then something comes up that goes against what you're expecting then it's just gonna end up aggravating you and i think that's happened with both of us where we just haven't really like had this make the time to come into alignment with what our expectations are for the trip and i think whether you're on a trip or not as a couple it's super important to align your expectations just in life and yeah just make sure that you're on the same page yeah and how are you feeling today overall today's been good i feel like as a sunset this whole thing of expectations of like i kind of wanted to find if we could rent a kayak and then we were going to go on a boat and then the boat rentals aren't happening today because the sea's too choppy but like you said if you don't have to set your expectations and hold on to them too much um then you don't get disappointed you don't get frustrated because you can just go with the flow things change if you can't do things you wanted to it's like ah okay well let's do this now and not getting stressed so that's something i really need to practice a bit more and you know we've tried to do this thing when we're getting a bit frustrated or stressed it's just like taking a few breaths together calming down being like okay what we have what what are we grateful for what are the good things about today so no overall today has been really really amazing so cool to see cinque terre cinque terre cinci cinque terre i think it's cinque terre cinque terre it's been so cool we are butchering most the italian names i'm so sorry if you're italian but we're trying but yeah anyway it feels like italy is a fresh start i'm kind of seeing it that way like there were ups and downs for us in our relationship and our van life with videos everything is it's been a tough couple of days but we're starting fresh we're in italy my favorite country in the world and yeah the next couple weeks are going to be magical and we are going to be doing a q a yeah in a few videos time we've been playing it for a while if there are any specific questions about stuff we talked about today or anything about van life how we travel as a couple please ask them in the comments below and just in general i think we'd love to share we did it a little bit in the beginning of this channel i don't know if you've seen our older videos but um we just want to share more about our relationship and tools we're learning and um yeah kind of like relationship advice and the ups and downs that we're experiencing and just like sharing our vulnerable stories so if you want more of that as well let us know in the comments down below okay should we go find dinner yeah [Music] i think we found the most epic restaurant check this out oh wow oh wow [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so i was just thinking to share with you guys we kind of touched on it before but our main tool that we use if we're having a low moment which we're not right now but um we always say a couple things that we're grateful for and a couple things that we love about each other because no matter what's going on if we can just focus back on gratitude and love then just defuse the situation so you wanna do that yeah okay i'm grateful that we're sitting literally off the coast of italy looking over the mediterranean having a romantic meal we're about to have a romantic meal together we'll probably put the cameras away for that um i'm grateful that i'm here together with you and yeah especially grateful as we haven't been able to travel much over the last year and a half and then finally yeah i'm just grateful for the position we're in in life and that we're pursuing our dreams and on an amazing path together um ditto to everything that louie said and i was thinking i'm really grateful to all of the artists that i have created like that have made italy so magical everyone that's worked on all these buildings and i mean truly these villages like are like paintings and i'm grateful for all of those humans that made that possible and i'm grateful to mother nature just looking around all the green and the mediterranean and yeah just just so grateful to be surrounded by such beautiful nature um and i'm grateful for fresh produce we've had such good fruit we went to a farm the other day and picked like all this organic fruit and vegetables and i'm very very grateful for that just being in europe in the summer prime time mediterranean food is unbeatable and just wait till we get to bulgaria and show you my grandparents garden oh my gosh okay and then let's just do like two things you love about each other um i love your positivity and that you pull us back in when we're having a bad time you don't hold a grudge or feel bitterness and that you're easy to forgive and mend that yeah i was going to say the same for you just i think we like we come from each other really well where if one person getting super stressed even if the other person is also stressed it's almost like we'll like calm down and be there for the other person to be like hey what are you waiting for right now let's try to solve this and it feels like we're we're like we balance each other out really well so i'm afraid i love you for that so you just do yeah and then i also love your kind of passion for travel and your spirit of adventure and that we can do these things together because some of our friends don't enjoy exploring the world they just want to stay at home and i feel like that could have easily been somebody we would have ended up with or maybe not but like i just love that we love doing this together and yeah like that we're trying to slow down but we both are just so excited about road trips and seeing the world so much that we like need to tame each other a little bit um yeah i just love i love how giving you are there's just so many moments where ah grazie it's just finished that thought and then we'll show you what we got for dinner um yeah just louise you are just so giving and generous and um yeah i mean i've just seen you like walk past someone that most people would just walk past and you go out of their way to help them so that'll be so much fun okay what did we get for dinner so the classic italian vegan meal that we're just used to getting is just spaghetti with tomato sauce and a side of grilled vegetables they didn't have the grilled vegetables here so we just got a salad but um yeah this should be just like fresh and delicious oh yeah [Music] we are back at the train station we're going to head back to the special now where we parked the van we made it exactly on time yeah good thing about these trains is they seem to run really regularly so we haven't really timed and planned any of the journeys we've just shown up and it's worked out [Music] we are back at the van thankfully it's safe wasn't broken into we always have this slight feeling if it's parked in a city anywhere there's a risk but anyway we're safe we are now going to start making our way to a little spot that ryan's found but before that we're going to try and find some showers because we are both dripping with sweat and we don't have a shower working here a lot of these service stations these 24-hour service stations have showers available so that's the plan this is the second service station we've pulled over at and they don't have showers but ryan just found out on google that this service station on the other side of the motorway has showers but it's a 20-minute drive to get there because we have to go off to the next junction turn around so we're gonna walk a five-minute walk to get to that service station i think it's just like under a little path or something uh have our showers and then come back this is classic van life this has got really weird guys we had to just walk through a gate connected to like where all the rubbish is and we're on this tiny track now it's like we're in a horror movie we're in the middle of a cornfield or something this is a horror movie yeah oh it's so loud this is where apparently we can somehow cross the highway i have no idea how this is terrifying that we have to walk into that this is actually pretty scary yeah don't worry that will protect us [Music] imagine there's no showers now after all of that we found this apparently for truckers can i have some soap [Music] um [Music] you

Channel: Raya and Louis

Views: 122,409

Keywords: rayaandlouis, rayawashere, louiscole, funforlouis, louisandraya, raya and louis, louis and raya, van life, van life couple, van conversion, conversion van, living in a van, travel couple, travel vlog, van life build, van living, tiny home, off grid, van life vlog, travel video, vanlife, camper van, van life tour, conversion van camper, uk van life, europe van life, europe road trip, van life taking its toll, couple van life, van life problems, relationship problems

Id: Qyd-FMALSfo

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 08 2021