Adventures in the Great Wide Somewhere // Why I Love Traveling {1}

This is a serial post I've been wanting to do for awhile. I love to talk about travel--obviously--and I'd love to be able to expand and talk a bit more in-depth of what it is about traveling that speaks to me on a deeper level. So I thought the perfect first topic would the reason I keep booking plane ticket after plane ticket. That reason? The feeling.

I'm completely contradicting myself when I say I want to talk more in-depth about why I love to travel and here I am talking about abstract feelings. I can't help it! The number one reason I love traveling and keep coming back for more is the feeling I get when I'm in a new place. When I book a plane ticket to a place I've never been before there is this feeling of euphoric adrenaline and excitement that I just can't describe. 

It's that incredible feeling of knowing anything is possible. The unknown might be scary to some but it's a comfortable feeling to me. Not knowing what a place actually looks like until I walk in it myself is a rush I'll never get sick of having. There's a certain energy I feel when I first step foot in a city I've never been to before. It's electric. It's addicting. It's fulfilling. It's a feeling I can't stop trying to recreate and come back to, I feel it every trip. 

Stepping off an airplane in a brand new location is indescribable. Walking down the street in a place that is foreign and has history is unlike anything I've ever experienced. I sometimes wonder if this feeling is what it feels like to fall in love. I think it has to be and it's the reason people keep chasing after that feeling and get into relationships. For that rush of adrenaline. That feeling of being untouchable. 

There's also the added bonus of being a lover of history and seeing places in real life that I've read about for years. The entire city of London is something so special to me for this reason. A place I've read about for years coming to life before my eyes is amazing. It's incredible to me to be in the same places my favorite historic heroines lived and breathed. It's something that no other experience has been able to touch. 

When I travel I find myself becoming extremely quiet and introspective. I don't like to talk. I don't like to be interrupted. I like to take things at my own pace and really be in the moment. In a world of always being plugged-in to some form of social media, nothing makes me happier than turning my phone on airplane mode and saying bye to all the bullshit. It puts me in this mental bubble where I feel safe and able to not worry about anything else except my surroundings. I'll find wifi and update an Instagram photo because I love taking photos and sharing beautiful images--a post for another day--not because I feel the need to keep the black hole that is social media updated.

To say traveling is addicting would be an understatement. Traveling to me is a state of mind. A part of your soul. It's not about checking ticks on a bucket list or tweeting about everything you do. It's about the experience and the feeling of being in the moment and knowing you are living out a dream you've worked so hard to achieve. Traveling is who I am not just something I do because it feels like a living part of my soul. I feel more like myself when I travel and can see things through the eyes of a different culture, a different time, a different way of living. 

All of what I said above comes from that feeling I get when traveling. It's a religious type of experience for me. It's communing with this beautiful world that God gave us and appreciating the different ways of life.

So why do I love traveling? It's that certain je ne sais quoi.