About Me

I started traveling when I was less than a month old. One very long car trip from Connecticut to North Carolina. From then on, a few times a year, I'd make this trek to visit family. I never really minded the hours spent in the car, my Mom made it as fun as possible.

Speaking of my Mom, she's one of the biggest reasons I travel like I do. She always made sure I was able to visit new places and have new experiences. We went to New York city lots of times together. She loves taking people on their first NYC visit, so it seemed we always had someone new with us. By the time I graduated high school I felt comfortable enough to take new timers in myself; navigating through the grid-like streets, catching subways, and hitting all the famous landmarks. Mom and Dad also took me to California, lots of east coast beaches, and everywhere and anywhere around our home.

After high school is when I really started to hit the road, and air ways. My first trip unaccompanied by a parent was to Gatlinburg, Tennessee for a week. Yeah, thought I was hot stuff. That was 2004. It took a few years for anything else travel wise to come about, mainly because I was putting money into school. So let's say my real knack for traveling kicked off in 2007, with a trip to Las Vegas.

I put so much time into planning every last detail, booking tickets, and making sure it would be a trip to never forget. I loved the experience of planning. I bought a planning notebook back then that I still use today. And the trip was grade A amazing. And Melissa, my best friend, was my perfect travel companion. That's important. Because committing murder while out of town on vacation isn't really a good move. For the record, neither is committing murder in town.

2010 was the next big travel stepping stone - leaving the country. A different friend, also a wonderful travel companion, and I went to Italy and Switzerland. I planned this one as well. Most of it anyway, with input of course. This was a week long, train hop across four Italian cities, ending in Zurich Switzerland. Train tickets, plane tickets, foreign hotels, landmarks, tours...on and on. I had us running everywhere (read my article "The Dangers of Traveling with Me" for more on that). But it was another amazing trip, that I will never forget. And it gave me the confidence to go anywhere. So since then I've been steadily racking up cities and countries. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Orlando, Knoxville, Nashville, Lexington and Canada and Mexico. There were others, but rattling them off isn't that easy.

There is a feeling I get when I'm in a city (or anywhere) for the first time. It's hard to describe. Just a feeling of pure joy and excitement. I want to see everything possible, do everything possible, experience everything possible. I'm also a big recorder...photos, albums, journals. Travel has become such a central part of my life. From the planning of the trip, to the time I write up my final blog.

Now, if I can just figure out how to get paid to do it.