I don't even know where to start with this one. I booked this trip two weeks before I left. No itinerary, just a feeling. And I came back feeling something I'm still trying to put into words. Gratitude is the closest thing I got.
Denied in the UK
We started in London for New Year's Eve, which already felt surreal standing there watching fireworks over the Thames at midnight. But the real story in England came from the football.
Growing up, football was Saturday and Sunday mornings with my dad, waking up early just to watch the Prem together. My dad is from Abidjan, the heart of Ivory Coast, so Drogba wasn't just a player in our house, he was everything. So yeah, growing up I was a Chelsea fan through and through. The Emirates wasn't Stamford Bridge but being inside one of the biggest stadiums in England, at one of Chelsea's biggest rivals no less, still hit different. We got to meet Perry Groves, a genuine Arsenal legend, who took us on a full tour.
Also tried Nando's for the first time. I understand the hype. That's all I'll say.
Bonjour
Paris felt the most like home out of everywhere I went. The energy, the streets, the way people moved, it reminded me of NYC in a way I wasn't expecting. Helped that I could actually throw out a little French here and there too.
We caught a PSG game and seeing Dembélé score in person was something else. I used to watch his highlights in the back of class when he was going crazy at Dortmund, then watched him struggle through everything at Barca, the injuries, the drama, all of it. And now he's a Ballon d'Or level player. That's crazy to see.
Versailles was a full circle moment too. I remember sitting in 10th grade AP World History learning about the Hall of Mirrors and the French monarchy like it was some distant thing. To actually walk through it in person was surreal. School makes history feel like a story. Being there made it feel real.
But none of that is the story I keep telling people about Paris.
The story is Waly Fay.
Me and the guys wanted to eat something that felt like home, specifically thiep. For anyone who doesn't know, that's thiéboudienne, a traditional Senegalese rice and fish dish, and honestly one of the greatest things you will ever eat in your life. We found a Senegalese restaurant called Waly Fay and went in.
The server came over and we just started talking. I asked where he was from. He said Dakar. I asked what part. He said Wakam.
I stopped.
My mom is from Wakam.
So I did what any reasonable person does in that situation. I called my mom right then and there and handed him my phone. They started talking in Wolof (a language I'm still learning, I promise I'm working on it) and I'm just sitting there watching two people from the same neighborhood in Dakar connect in the middle of Paris, 4,000 miles from home. Turns out their families actually knew each other. Not loosely. Actually knew each other.
He treated us like family for the rest of that meal. The food tasted even better after that.
That moment hit me in a way that's hard to explain. No matter how far you go, your roots follow you. And sometimes they walk right up to your table and take your order.
Somewhere in the Alps
Then from Paris we headed to the French Alps. Saint-Gervais. And that's where things got interesting.
Ahmed and I had never skied before in our lives. I tried snowboarding once at American Dream in Jersey and after that I said never again. So pulling up to a ski resort in the middle of the Alps, in a small town where everything opens and closes at weird times and the dinner options were basically just pizza, I was not exactly calm.
The pizza was surprisingly really good though.
But the skiing itself, once I got past the fear of the lift and the general concept of strapping two planks to my feet on a mountain, it clicked faster than I expected. We had an incredible instructor and by day two something just opened up. I fell once in three days. For a first timer in the Alps, I'll take that.
I want to go back. That's how you know something is real.
Milan, 11pm
Italy was three cities and each one gave me something completely different.
Milan was where I got one of the best haircuts of my life from a barbershop run by Ivorians and Malians. Which sounds normal until you find out this shop had cut Kessié, Pogba, and a handful of other pro footballers before. The walls basically told the story for them.
But what made it special was the conversation. AFCON was going on, they could tell I had both Senegalese and Ivorian blood, and they immediately hit me with the question, which country do you go harder for? (I'll keep my answer to myself on that one.) We talked football, talked about home, talked about what it means to carry two cultures at once. In a barbershop in Milan. One of the coolest hours of the whole trip.
After that we were just exploring the city when we randomly ran into a group of models and a stylist from Switzerland at a gelato spot. We ended up linking up and spending time together, and what started as a random encounter turned into a real conversation. They had dreams of coming to New York for modeling, wanted to know what the city was actually like, what it takes to make it there. And I remember sitting there listening to them talk about NYC with this kind of reverence and thinking... I was born there. I grew up there. The city they're dreaming about is the city I'm from.
That hit me different. I've lived in New York my whole life and sometimes you get so used to it that you forget what it actually is. Talking to people halfway across the world who are working toward a dream that starts with just getting there made me genuinely grateful in a way I hadn't felt in a while. I still keep in contact with them to this day.
Venice and Como were more about just absorbing. Walking through Venice feels like being in a place that shouldn't exist, water everywhere, no cars, this whole city just floating. At some point we ended up linking with some younger kids and just started playing football with them until the sun went down. No plan, just ball. We ended up talking to them about school, life, what they wanted to do. Little moments like that you can't plan for. Como was quiet and beautiful in a different way. Some places you don't need a story from. You just needed to be there.
All Roads Lead Back to ..
ROME. If you grew up on Percy Jackson you already know. I'm currently on The Dark Prophecy, book two of the Trials of Apollo series (shoutout Balla for that one), so pulling up to Rome felt different for real.
The Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, ruins just sitting in the middle of the city like it's no big deal. It genuinely felt like walking through a history book.
But the moment that really stayed with me wasn't any of that.
Near the Colosseum, a guy came up to me and Ahmed selling bracelets. He could tell we were African before we said a single word. He asked where we were from. Ahmed is Sudanese, I'm Senegalese. Something just clicked between us. We started asking about his story, why Rome, how he got there, what his journey looked like.
He ended up giving us the bracelets. No charge.
There's something about meeting your people in unexpected places that just resets something in you. A nod that means more than any words. I found a brother on the street outside the Colosseum. That's a sentence I still think about.
Ankara Messi
Last stop. Barcelona.
It rained every single day. I mean every day. But the city still had an energy that nothing could kill.
Senegal was playing Morocco in the AFCON knockout stage while we were there. Spain is close to Morocco so Barcelona had a heavy Moroccan crowd, and the atmosphere was real. There was genuine tension in the room, people who had actual stakes in the outcome.
Senegal won. And regardless of the score, we are family regardless. Every single one of them came over and congratulated me. That's just how Africa moves.
People talk about African unity like it's an idea on a poster. I felt it in a bar in Barcelona in the rain after a football match. We're all one. Africa is one. And watching African teams compete at the highest level in a sport people used to say we couldn't play, that's something bigger than a scoreline.
Reflection
This trip didn't change who I am. But it confirmed something I needed to hear.
That the world is bigger than the block you grew up on, and it's also smaller than you think. That your roots follow you everywhere, to a restaurant in Paris, to a barbershop in Milan, to a street corner in Rome, to a bar in Barcelona. That the city you sometimes take for granted is someone else's dream destination. That growth is not always comfortable, but it is always worth it.
Gratitude is not just a feeling. It's a responsibility. To keep going. To keep showing up. To remember where you came from every single time you step somewhere new.
3 weeks. 9 cities. One trip I'll be talking about for a long time.
Alhamdulillah for all of it.