so let the wind blow us to wherever it says we are suppose to go

Quito, Ecuador

Bocas del Toro, Panama

Cozumel, Mexico

Lagos, Portugal

Chefchaouen, Morocco

Travel is an intensified feeling—maximum thrills per minute and one of the last great sources of legal adventure. Travel is freedom. It’s recess and we need it… Connecting with people carbonates your experience. Extroverts have more fun. If your trip is low on magic moments, kick yourself and make things happen. If you don’t enjoy a place, maybe you don’t know enough about it.  Seek the truth. Recognize tourist traps. Give the culture the benefit of your open mind. See things as different, but not better or worse. Any culture has plenty to share. Of course, travel, like the world, is a series of hills and valleys. Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. If something’s not to your liking, change your liking. Travel can make you a happier American, as well as a citizen of the world. Our Earth is home to six and a half billion equally precious people. It’s humbling to travel and find that other people don’t have the “American Dream”—they have their own dreams. Europeans like us, but with all due respect, they wouldn’t trade passports. Thoughtful travel engages us with the world. In tough economic times, it reminds us what is truly important. By broadening perspectives, travel teaches new ways to measure quality of life. Globetrotting destroys ethnocentricity, helping us understand and appreciate other cultures. Rather than fear the diversity on this planet, celebrate it. Among your most prized souvenirs will be the strands of different cultures you choose to knit into your own character. The world is a cultural yarn shop, and Back Door travelers are weaving the tapestry. Join in! –Rick Steves, Europe Through the Back Door

Kiev, Ukraine

Venice, Italy

Bavaria, Germany (Neuschwanstein)

Innsbruck, Austria

Zurich, Switzerland

Toledo, Spain

"I wait for something under a streetlight. It won't be long because it's dark, it's cold, it's one of those nights where something out there keeps me alive. But I don't know where to go. So I think I'll sit and stay here a while til I figure it out. So, let the wind blow us to wherever it says we are suppose to go. 

When you WANT something but can't name it.. it's something you've never seen before- OPEN THE DOOR! It's something you've always been afraid of.. and now all you want is more." -Joshua Radin

"With every sun that sets, I am feeling more like a stranger on a foreign shore with an eroding beach disappearing from underneath. 'Cause I'm a man that hides from all that binds in a mess of fading lines. I always fall in love with an open door with a horizon on an endless shore as I look around at the ones standing right in front of me. And then my mirror speaks with irreverence like a soldier I can't command that sees a frightened child in the body of a full grown man." -Death Cab For Cutie