Louis Armstrong was so right when he sang those lyrics. I have long been fascinated by our wonderful world and her citizens. Now, I am on a journey to share my vision of traveling in the world. My goal is to share my travel posts and either get you inspired to travel to new places or allow you to vicariously visit and learn about different parts of the world from your home.

We all know we learn while we are traveling – not only about our destination but also about ourselves. I started learning the lessons of travel in January 1994 when I did a one month study abroad program my senior year at college and departed the great state of Texas to visit Europe, with our home base being in Switzerland.

My lessons started on the flight over when I was chatting with a European man about the baseball strike and he said “only in America do millionaires go on strike”. It was one of the first times I had heard someone not fully in 100% support of America and was starting to see our country through an international lens. It was a bit of foreshadowing for the coming weeks.
While in Europe, we were trying to stay connected to the happenings in the United States and were watching CNN International, where they were showing snippets of the Lorena Bobbitt trial and the attack on Nancy Kerrigan. Surreal does not begin to describe it!

At the same time, we started exploring our “home away from home” and made our way around our host city of Interlaken, with the Alps as our backdrop, into Bern (the capital of Switzerland and home of the bear pits, where the city got its name according to 12th century folklore) and Lucerne (with its 600+ year old Chapel Bridge).

One weekend, a group of us went to Paris where I was gobsmacked by seeing all the sights I had only experienced in the pages of a magazine or on a screen – the Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysees, Pere Lachaise. The little cars and cafes and learning the Metro as well as hostel staying where towels are not a part of the amenities (I learned I could dry myself just as easily with a turtleneck). I felt so alive and buzzing with the sights, smells, and sounds of traveling. And the lessons!

I can remember as clearly as it if it were yesterday standing at Notre Dame de Paris and reading (as best as I could in French) the plague commemorating the beginning of construction in 1163 under Pope Alexander III and during the reign of Louis VII in honor of the Virgin Mary. I stood there and imagined all the people over 800 years standing where I had stood and what their lives had been like. My mind was reeling thinking about all the history and inventions and revolutions and renaissances that one spot where I stood had seen.