My Favorite Travel Memories (Part 2)

When it comes to travel, I'M STILL LIVING IN THE PAST, GUYS. Next week (and probably for the foreseeable future) I'll have all sorts of tales about my Lake Placid adventures (have I mentioned I'm excited about this trip? Because I'm pretty excited about this trip), but for now I'll relive my past trips. For the umpteenth time. I know. But hey, I feel pretty lucky that I can keep reminiscing about old trips and continuously come up with more things to talk about. I've had some amazing travels! (For part 1, click here.)

+ When I went to Israel, I went as part of a birthright group and we traveled with a handful of Israeli soldiers. Not for protection or anything; Israel has a mandatory draft so they were our age, and they essentially use the trip to see their own country through the eyes of foreigners. Pretty cool. But anyway, we spent one night in a Bedouin tent in the Negev Desert, and the next morning we got to ride camels. I shared my camel with one of our soldiers, Dafna, and at some point during the ride she casually mentioned that she's ridden camels before but never ridden a horse. What?! Cultural differences are so fascinating.

+ Probably one of the most gratifying moments I've ever had was visiting Copenhagen and seeing Nyhavn (that famous canal lined with colored buildings) for the first time. I'd wanted to go to Denmark since doing a school project on the country in fourth grade. For so much of my life it had been a sort of pipe dream, and finally being able to realize it over a decade later was simply indescribable.

+ I studied abroad in London in the spring of 2012, and on my last day in the city I spent the afternoon wandering my favorite routes by myself. I started at Westminster to see Big Ben, made my way to Trafalgar Square, swung by Chinatown for a bubble tea, and then spent some time just sitting in Leicester Square. Leicester Square was the site of my very first outing to central London at the beginning of my study abroad experience, so that was a particularly cool moment of coming full circle. I still can't really articulate how much I love this city, and saying my final goodbyes was impossibly hard. I'm so glad I decided to head out on my own and take some time to be reflective and get closure.

+ I don't even know if this technically counts as a travel memory, but while I was studying abroad, my friends and I camped out overnight for the first Hunger Games world premiere. It was March. In London. It was cold. The ground is really hard. None of us slept much, if at all. But there's no bonding experience quite like sleeping on the street with people in the name of fandom. (The red carpet and getting to watch the movie immediately afterwards didn't suck either!)

So what about everyone else? Can you relate to any of these? What are your own favorite travel memories? :)