When the newest issue of National Geographic Traveler, Budget Travel, Conde Nast, Travel and Leisure, Explore, or Canadian Traveller, comes out, I’m already there. Wherever ‘there’ is. What I love the most is reading about a place I hadn’t previously had on ‘the list’. The problem is, I haven’t found many places that don’t make me want to haul up my suitcase from the storage room and look up flight options.

My love of travel started at a young age. Every spring (and here I’m aging myself),  the mailman would press dozens of tourism and hotel brochures through our mailbox in response to my mother’s inquiries. She would pour through them in search of a new Florida destination for us to spend our family’s annual two-week summer vacation. The memories of those trips are forever ingrained in me and the excitement of discovering somewhere new has never left me.

What I love the most about travel is the unexpected experiences that invariably make the trip so memorable. These are the stories we enthusiastically share when we’re asked, ‘how was the trip’? These are the stories we remember long after the rainy weather, bad airline food, or poor service, is long forgotten.

The stories you’ll read here are the experiences that brought another dimension to the destination and gave life to a plane ticket or hotel brochure.

Enjoy the reading, and happy travels.