We travel as tourists, to have experiences, to have fun. Going to new places invigorates us; it's exciting.

On the road, we get more out of our lives — seeing our first Michelangelo, exploring our first castle, savoring something straight from the sea, reaching for high-altitude thrills, being enthralled. Of course, travel is fun — relaxing with abandon, not acting our age, going for broke, joining the party. Travel is also sensual. We see like an artist…we listen like a poet…we taste the unfamiliar — we celebrate with all our senses. Travel heightens our emotions. It makes us really feel — deeply — the beauty, vividly — the power, and thoughtfully — the humanity. This enhanced experience changes us; it stokes our appetite for life.

Travel is also about people; relationships. We savor conviviality with old friends and with new friends. We laugh with abandon. Shared experiences become lifelong memories. My earliest travel experiences — captured on the road decades ago in journals and postcards — remain some of my most treasured memories. The writing kept telling the story of how travel makes the world your friend.

Journal entry: June 3, 1980, Dingle Peninsula. I really didn't know where I was going. I just stuck out my thumb, and whichever direction the car was going… 1981, July 7, York. The evening was spent enchanted in the church, listening to a Bach Mass in B minor… …after a second day of drizzle, the landlady looked out the window and cheered to me, saying "Ah, another day of soft weather!"… …is precarious, but I have a strange, almost cocky optimism — a feeling that things will somehow work out for the best.

Travel can change our perspective — we discover there's more to life than increasing its speed. As we experience new things, we pause, we reflect; we let the experience breathe. With less hurry, we're able to appreciate nature — to be overwhelmed by it; to notice its power, its richness, the sweep of the weather, the roar of the river, the freshness of springtime. We notice the light — we savor it. We marvel at the beauty it creates. Every sunset is a devotional, reminding us that life is good. Travel engages us in every sense. This is why we travel — we travel for the experience.