Travel is a mystical experience that spirals you into new dimensions
of awe and wonder.

Cinque Terre, Italy

Travel is a celebration of life’s exuberance and of the mind’s wildest
dreams, to leap beyond the normal and into a world full of surprises
and amazement.

Travel is connecting with the world beyond our community, Travel is
interacting with others and learning their lifestyles, values, and surroundings. Our mind broadens with greater awareness and we
learn to absorb our surroundings. I am awed and humbled by other
lifestyles.

Travel is walking the quaint streets of Italy and seeing how unique
and simple one can live and knowing they appreciate all that they have.

Travel is the beauty of Greece sitting on the blue Aegean surrounding
the white stone buildings floating so serenely before us.

Travel is what takes us farther from our private corner of the world
and opens up our lives and senses. It fills our heart and sight with
all that is beautiful.

Travel is seeing the Santorini caldera from Oia, and having it take your
breath away.

Travel is the offering of more choices and open doors to history,
culture, and understanding. Reading about Greece is not the same
as standing on its streets or sitting surrounded by the beauty of a
Temple, Synagogue, or Mosque, regardless of your religious beliefs.

Travel is overcoming our preconceived ideas about other people
and other cultures. It helps us to understand how varied we can all
be and the infinite ways in which people use their imagination and
resources to create a life that sustains them.

Travel is tastes, sounds, smells, and textures, it is a time and place
unlike home. Travel is experiencing the images that make up our
world; the peppers, spices and curries of the world.

Travel is getting to a new place and experiencing it with all your senses.
Why go there unless you yearn to touch it, hear it, taste it, and smell
it and see it in its infinite dimensions?

Travel is an experience in perseverance, stretching you in ways you
could not have envisioned before you started out. Travel compels
you to pause in life’s sameness, to venture out beyond life’s familiar
boundaries and begin a journey of discovery.

Travel is standing in absolute arm pinching awe at a famous European
Cathedral, the hills of Tuscany, or on the grounds that the ancient
Acropolis standing before us and chanting, “Am I really here?”.

Travel is the “I Love Lucy” scene in a small italian inn, translating the
menu from English to German to Italian so everyone could eat.

Travel is a late September afternoon in the south of France, sitting
at an outdoor cafés, sipping wine and basking in the sunshine and
beauty around you.

Travel is the beauty of landscapes, from the winding road of the Amalfi
coast, the silent curves leading along the mountainous roads with the
Sea below you, and arriving at the most beautiful town that will take
your breath away, Positano.

Travel is an Italian shopkeeper cheerfully welcoming us in his business
and offering you a glass of Limoncello on a warm afternoon.

Travel is going there only to discover with amazement that what you
see there is often so startlingly different from what your mind imagined.
Travel changes you and helps you discover that you can do things
you never thought you could do.

Some people live their entire lives in one place, not only physically
but emotionally. Their block becomes their world. Travel offers
choices and opens doors to history, culture and understanding.
Abroad, you will come into contact with national pasts much deeper
than our own. We need to make an effort to bond and exchange
information with fellow travelers and locals. We often fail to capture
the foreign moment because we are to busy with dials on a camera,
worrying about tipping, being shy of a foreign tongue, or perhaps
being intimidated by a waiter.

Travel can be anything you want it to be as it broadens our life’s
horizon. It keeps our world from narrowing, as we grow older.
Travel is returning home with a changed and renewed vision of
the world and it’s people.

This is what Travel Is to me.