Travel Series...coming soon

"Travelling is a bug I can't be cured of.
And why would I want to be?"

I've travelled a lot, seen many amazing places, and I want to share my experiences with you! I intend to start a series here on my blog which will achieve that purpose. First though, I want to give a little introduction and/or background. I've been travelling since before I was born. Yep, my parents were far from home when I was born. There are a fair few countries I've never seen with my own eyes, but have technically visited while I existed in some form. But don't worry - I'll be confining my travel entries to places I've actually laid eyes on.

A great source of inspiration for me is the world trip I took in 1998 with my father. I was 17 and just out of high school. Instead of going straight into university as most people seem to do, I took a year off. Most of the first half of that year was spent on foreign soil, getting to know the world and my father in a whole new light. While there were a great many stressful moments, as there are bound to be if you're travelling with my Dad, there were more than enough amazing moments to compensate. I look back at those months with no little awe at the sorts of things I saw - breathtaking landscapes, insides of homeless shelters, bars where Al Capone hung out, Swiss glaciers... Sometimes we were at rock bottom, clawing our way up again. Other times we were in 5 star hotels eating pizza. I can't thank my father enough for giving me the chance to see these wonders (and sometimes, horrors) with my own eyes. I think every teen (or even adult) should be so lucky.

So, that was World Trip #1. But wait, there's more! In 2004, I booked another round-the-world ticket. This time I travelled alone, and my fifteen-stop ticket took me to thirteen different countries. I'll be mentioning some of the places I visited during 2004 too, later on in the series. There are also the shorter trips I've taken, which may merit talking about at some point. For a start, though, I'll focus on the 1998 trip, starting with the Australian leg which took my father, uncle and I across Australia from west to east (approx. 4000 km, or 2485 mi). And we'll see where it goes from there.