When you are a kid, everything feels so big and full of wonder. This is what I remember when my dad took me to London for the first time around 6yrs old. My father always tells the story about how I had horrible air sickness on the flight over and threw up all over the seats, but I don’t remember any of it. I suppose the good memories over shadowed the bad experiences I had. I remember walking the streets of London and feeling like I was in a different world; the crowd, the tall buildings, the unknown.
I remember my dad taking me to McDonalds for the first time and this became our special place – a big mac and a strawberry milkshake was my idea of heaven at the time. It’s amazing how certain memories stick with us and triggers a passion that I have yearned for my whole life. My dad instilled in me a sense of wonder, he made me want to know what was out there, he showed me that the world was a big place just waiting to be discovered. He also made me see that even 15000 miles across the ocean, there was another living world unbeknownst to me and the beauty of diversity. My father gave me a taste of this magical experience called traveling that has never left me to this day.
When I step into a new city, a new country, I hear a different language being spoken, the air smells and feels different, the history surrounding me; I get a feeling of excitement that I cannot explain. A curiosity for the unknown, the gift of adventure and learning. I close my eyes in a strange place I have never been to before, and I feel happy, safe and it feels like home.
The musings of an introverted solo traveler 