Born to travel! (Day 9)

Travelling. This is a really easy topic for me to write about as it is one of my biggest passions. I don't like sitting still and therefore the simplest answer is to move, moving means traveling and with a big wide World to see I will simply never be bored and forever striving to find ways to spend as much of my time exploring this glorious planet.

One of our trips to Bournemouth as little people!

With the post title 'born to travel' you would be forgiven if you thought I was perhaps a forces baby (always living in different places) or from a really wealthy family that took extravagant holidays throughout my childhood. Not true in either case. I was however privileged enough to be born and very well brought up in Hertfordshire until I was eleven. My parents had both worked hard to set up their own businesses (Mum was a busy hairdresser and my Dad had a very reputable building business). Being married to a builder now I would imagine that time out of work was perhaps the difficulty when it came to taking a trip further afield, so in the time we spent in Herts we had two holidays out of this Country (Portugal and Spain) and other than Bournemouth to visit my Grandparents and London on a few sightseeing jollies, I'm pretty sure the only other place outside of the Home Counties that we visited in the UK was Cornwall, where we went almost every year for our family holiday. And let's face it if you live in the UK and a staycation is your bag then Cornwall is a pretty awesome place to choose! (even if going to the same place over and over again is totally against my own made up religion!) However, we stayed in a different place each time, most visits with another family that we used to be very close to in those days and another time with my lovely Nanna. We had some awesome adventures and to this day Cornwall is still up there on my 'favourite places in the World' list! 

When my Mum, Brother and I moved to Norfolk I was just starting year 7 and my Brother year 4. I know it was a really tough decision for Mum to make but from what I know it was the only way she could make ends meet as it so much cheaper to live up here, although she still ended up working three jobs to make ends meet. Superwoman that lady! Anyway, we all settled in pretty well but Mum decided she wanted to treat us to a trip of a lifetime for the upheaval and at 32 years old, with not a lot of traveling experience under her belt and completely on her own, she took us to Florida and Jamaica on what was probably a very daunting for her, but seriously exciting for us trip! I can remember it so clearly, from the flash convertible sports car that she hired on our arrival in America to make the occasion all the more special (if that was possible!!), to the amazing fun we had at each of the famous parks and the tropical splendour that the Caribbean had to offer, climbing the Dunn's River Falls (remember the waterfall scene in Cocktail, well this was the place!) oh and we mustn't forget the machete fight that almost broke out between some of the local ladies over braiding my hair.  Real life scenes! Is it a wonder Mum had several jobs again! 

The following year I started High School and thanks to the Ma not wanting us to go without, by the time I finished at 16 I had been on school trips to Belgium for a few days, the South of France on an activity holiday for a week, Spain with my Spanish class and Bulgaria on a skiing holiday. Plus my Dad took me on a holiday to Gran Canaria for my 15th Birthday, so it was safe to say that by the time I started Sixth Form I had got the taste for seeing more of the World and before long me and one of my best friends, Debbie, were planning a massive trip for between our A Levels and starting Uni. We decided we wanted to take a gap year and in between study time we ended up in the pub planning our trip to Australia... It's the best place to plan you know!

If you've known me for a while or you used to follow my blog you'll know all about that trip already, but if you don't then rather than repeat myself here's a link to the blog I wrote a few years back about it.

Barcelona 2009

As you can imagine after a trip and life changing experience like this at just 18/19 the travel bug was fully implanted and my 'live for the moment' ethos was officially born. I was doing it from now on for two of us and nothing was going to stop me. So over the past 15 years I've gone on to explore the following places (some mentioned are Countries where we've covered a lot of ground and others cities or areas where we holidayed. The list is not exhaustive, it's just what I can remember off of the top of my head)...

Singapore
Australia (5 times, well it's a big country!)
Ireland
Tunisia
Thailand
Rhodes
Lanzarote
Egypt (Sharm, Luxor, Cairo and in between)
Holland

Kerala 2010

Turkey
Prague
Tanzania

Marrakech 2013

New York
Dubai
Paris
Venice
Barcelona
LA
Vegas
San Francisco
New Zealand
China
Hong Kong
Macau
Malaysia
Laos
Vietnam
Cambodia
Santorini
Mexico
India
Morocco (Fez, Marrakech and Agadir)
Sitges
Croatia
Cape Verde

It looks like a long list but for me it's still just scratching the surface and there's heaps more places to get to. The clock is always ticking and the experiences are out there waiting for us, whether it's in this Country or another. I hope I've inspired some of you to explore a bit more, even if it's just hopping to a different County when you've got a couple of free days. Do it and tell me what you find!!