The Travel Bug...
A smooch from Betty the Giraffe in Nairobi, Kenya.
Dromomania = (def) an uncontrollable impulse or desire to wander or travel
I came across this word the other day when I was reading the Sunday paper and thought "Oh my gosh! I suffer from
this!"
Here's a bit of a re-cap from when it began...
It's hard to say exactly when it happened, but for a long time I had a huge desire to travel. I remember being in
college and having conversations with a friend (who was a couple years older than me and did a semester abroad)
who was urging me to go abroad for a semester. She could tell I had it in me. The unfortunate thing is that I wasn't
as aware of that desire at that point. I felt I would be missing out on the 'college life' if I left for a semester. Believe
me, I could kick myself now when I think that I didn't take advantage of an opportunity to live in Europe for 6
months.
At the point that I graduated from college, my travels took me to various places in the U.S. (including annual trips to
Hawaii), Mexico, the Caribbean and London.
And then came the year 2000. As far as family trips went, we typically stuck with cruises. It allowed an easy way for
my mom to do what she wanted to do and for my sister and I to do what we wanted to do. After some disagreement,
we decided on a family trip of a one-week cruise to the Mediterranean (I wanted to do the 10-day that also went to
Turkey and Greece --I lost that battle) directly from my sister's graduation from her graduate program at Emory
University. To make the most of the distance from home, we decided to stay in Barcelona for a week before our
cruise departed (since that's where our cruise was departing from). This trip was one that someone such as myself
could only do on the family's dime. We stayed at the Hotel Arts on their club level and got beyond pampered. To
date, that remains one of my top three luxury hotels of all time. We had an itinerary on that cruise that took us to
Mallorca, Provence, Florence, the Amalfi Coast and Sardinia. Three different countries. This was all it took to whet
my appetite to want to see more...
It has now been just over 5 years later and I have drastically expanded my overseas experiences: I have now been
to Europe more than 10 times, the Middle East once, Africa once and I'm about to embark on a trip to Japan. Each
trip has been a unique experience with something different to be learned each time.
It's become more evident over time that, for me, this is the most important kind of learning. Experiencing different
cultures firsthand. Experiencing different locales firsthand. Experiencing language barriers firsthand. Overall,
experiencing the world firsthand.
List of my past travels - this is pretty much a time line of where my travels have taken me over the past 5+ years.
Everywhere I've been - this is a slightly more extensive list that shows everywhere I've been dating back to my
early teens.