"The World's Fastest Growing Tourism Destinations"

For todays Monday Travel Motivation I wanted to share a quick video from Afar Media. It’s short and sweet and tells some quick facts on the fastest growing tourism spots (ahem, the title of their video and this post). Here’s a quick quote from their video as well,

To discover the places that only in-the-know travelers are visiting, we dug into the data to find the countries that saw the largest percentage change in international arrival growth between 2017 and 2018. Some spots like Vietnam, Nepal, and Egypt topped the list of fastest-growing destinations once again. Others like Comoros, a small island nation in eastern Africa, truly took us by surprise. But the most shocking addition to this year’s list is the country that took the number one spot.

Please, have a look at their video and leave some thoughts and comments if you feel so inclined.

Are any of your travel destinations this year on their list? Personally, two locations from my past are on the list (Egypt and Turkey) and I highly recommend a visit.

Thanks for reading/watching. I hope you feel some inspiration for the start of your week.

Something to Quickly Address

It has been some time since we last met here. Recently I was advised to not just start writing again as though nothing had happened and no time had gone by so reluctantly, in some sense, here I am. I won’t drone on or bore anyone because I know a lot of you have been active on my other accounts and social medias (thank you for that and all of your support). As far as this site goes, I haven’t made a lot of my articles live recently and I apologize for that.

I feel like many people at various times in their careers have these moments where they step away and maybe come back and fourth etc etc - so this must have been one of those times for me. I’ve moved, I’ve struggled with some massive health scares, and my life has started to take a different shape lately. Not that this means I am any different to the things I’ve spoke upon before or that I’m a radically different human - I just went through some life things and that’s ok.

Please, if you feel like commenting or reaching out to me do not hesitate. I love that I can share so much yet keep things personal when need be. Talking about my passions and connecting with you all is one of the most special aspects of my life. I look forward to moving forwards so let’s get to it, shall we?

Grand Teton National Park Summer 2018

MTM: People Watching in Athens

This MTM is coming to you a day late this week because I was all fired up talking about millennials marching. That's a lot of "m" words flying about... Anyway today I want to talk about the art of travel people watching. It's a different kind of breed of people watching than the people watching you could be doing in your own hometown from the local coffee shop while catching bits of gossip and banter. This kind, obviously, has a broader spectrum with different locations, languages, and much more detail than when you're location locked at home. Technically, you could live in a very diverse area and this may not particularly pertain to you as much as others, but nevertheless when you're traveling about country to country there are bound to be differences. 

Sonder is a huge player when you're traveling and that's so blatantly one of my favorite things abut it. Here, pictured above, are two siblings that I ran into up on the Acropolis of Athens. They were talking in a language I did not know, but were being very sweet to each other and seemed engaged in not only the surrounding architecture but little things they were finding that were overlooked by others. Picking up tiny rocks and pointing out other sites and views set them apart from others. As travelers we can always learn from the youth because their imaginations can be quite different from our own. Seeing what they notice or recognize, watching their expressions when they see architecture they've only looked at through books, and listening to their exclamations about historical events can be very intriguing. 

I'm not saying that you have to have baby fever to appreciate what little kids are talking about and I'm certainly not saying that you have to interact with children either. Simply see if you notice anything when you're people watching about the youth and take a moment to take data from it, so to speak. 

You may be inspired or lose faith in parenting skills, who's to say. 

-CS

Traveling soon? Here are some things you may need and a place or two to do bookings. Safe travels and if you ever want to share something you found you know where to find me.