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Friday, April 8, 2011

scratching an itch

Since I was a young girl dreaming of princesses and fairy tales, I have wanted to travel and see the world. Despite growing up in a rural area, I was blessed to travel in the U.S. during high school through church youth trips. In college, my traveling was limited because of work and classes - and a lack of funds! Now, I save money and deal with hand-me-down furniture, so that I can scratch my travel itch.

Traveling has given me such a broader worldview. Seeing how others live, the multitude of different normals and the variety of people and cultures God created never gets old. Each trip I take, whether domestic or international, I learn something new. If you've looked at my list (see the link at the top of the page), you probably notice that most of the things I want to do involve travel and seeing famous sites. But, some of the best travel memories involve the minute details of travel - sitting in a coffee shop with Big Ben right outside the window in London, eating the best garlic bread in the world in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Otavalo, Ecuador, drinking tea in the car on a ferry in Ireland.

Here are a few quotes I've found about travel:
  • The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. ~ St.Augustine
  • I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. ~ Mark Twain
  • Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.  Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.  ~Mark Twain
  • To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. ~ Aldous Huxley
  • Without travel, I would have wound up a little ignorant white Southern female, which was not my idea of a good life. ~ Lauren Hutton
  • Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. ~ Helen Keller
  • Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. ~ Miriam Beard
  • When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money. ~ Susan Heller
  • Two of the greatest gifts we can give our children are roots and wings. ~ Hodding Carter
  • Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.  ~ Mark Twain 

I love almost all aspects of travel (security checkpoints do get old, as does unpacking!). But, I love making a schedule, researching things to do, planning must see adventures. While you're traveling, there's an unexplained adrenaline - a high, if you will - that makes anything seem possible. Yes, I can travel all night and immediately spend the entire day sightseeing (been there, done that - Ireland 2009!). A few months after returning home, you look through photos and wonder why you planned the day like that and how you ever did it, not to mention claim that it could never be done again. But, a few months later, you get a travel itch and need to scratch it...and start making an agenda that might involve flying for hours and then immediately jumping with both feet in to a day of adventure.

Yes, Vietnam, here I come!

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