2006: Introduction

For those of you new to the TravelGirl blog, welcome! For those of you who have been there, done that, and are STILL with me, Thank You!

There are several reasons why I decided to put together a blog, and they remain the same (mostly) as they were during the many years of previous travel: to edumacate the young'uns, and to offer a different perspective on the world at large before current political and religious fervour changes everything for what I believe will be worse.

However, I've discovered a third reason: documentation that reminds me of those traveling days, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the weather, the people, the architecture natural and manmade, the animals, and the fascination with being in a foreign land and experiencing life in person.

Going through my previous writings (which I will make available to anyone who wishes, time-permitting) brings back the memories I hold dear but don't always think of day-to-day: the grandeur of York Minster and Salisbury Cathedral, the sadness embued in the church courtyard of Malo and the history-stained rolling countryside of the Battle of the Bulge, the mellow wonder of Belgian hazelnut chocolate, Trappist Westmalle beer, and late-night chess, the laughter of the people who watched me photograph different church interiors on my back (then did so themselves moments later), the eeriness of hearing children at play (and not seeing them) while standing on a very cold January afternoon before the memorials at Pere Lachaise Cemetaire to those who died in the concentration camps of World War II...

I find of these and more am I made, and gladly so.

So, without further adieu, I want to invite everyone who wishes to join me once again for adventure, for knowledge, for perspective. Our trip will start on 09 May, from Seattle-Tacoma Airport in Washington state, and will end on 08 August, same place. In between, who knows?