About Me

I was raised in Bancroft, Ontario. Growing up, I used to say that we lived in a hole in the middle of nowhere, and felt completely justified, given that to leave town you go uphill in all directions, and the closest city is an hour and a half away in any direction.

My parents met and married in Hamilton, Ontario, and apparently shared a dream of living in this little town which I now recognize as a jewel in one of the most beautiful geographical areas of the world.

(On a side note, the more I travel, the more I understand the phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”)

Despite being raised in the "middle of nowhere" and being the eldest of seven children in a single-income family, a love for traveling, an acceptance of other cultures, and a fairly adventurous attitude towards food was instilled in me.

As a child, my family went on roadtrips fairly often. A sample of our trips include PEI, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Texas, Louisiana, Washington DC, Ottawa, Quebec City, and Haiti. We were a host family for a Canada World Youth exchange with Pakistan twice, and I spent at least 2 weeks in Quebec every summer from the time I was nine until I was 15 and had to start working. In grade 12, I did a three-month exchange to Germany, and my appetite for European travel was born.

Coincidentally, that experience also marked my decision that I was not cut out to be a backpacker or budget traveler, and so I work for a living, and travel as often as I can.

Other things about me that might be pertinent to understanding my thoughts about travel:

• I like making lists. I have lists for just about everything, and they are in constant flux. For traveling, I have a list for the places I want to see, the places I have been and want to go back to, and the places I have no interest in going to.
• I don’t like crowds of people. This leads me to avoid a lot of places that I know are beautiful and well worth seeing, and/or planning my trips during or very close to “off-season”.
• I am a single female, and I generally travel with other single females. This leads me to avoid places where I feel that I or my travelling companions would not be safe. Also, any place that is or has recently experienced wars or large riots tends to be on my list of places I have no interest in seeing.
• I write the way I talk. My thoughts tend to go on tangents, which are obvious in my writing. If I notice it, I usually try to give advance warning for anyone that wants to skip the side topics that might pop up frequently.