Travel Junkie

I am a Travel Junkie.

When I get off of an airplane and see something I've never seen, I feel euphoric. I take in the new streets, the odd buildings, the foreign smells, and the strange food. I hear languages that are sounds without meaning to me.  Even the trees, grass, and pavement are different everywhere. I swear the sky even has different blues and grays in every country in the world. In this heightened state, I find myself having this constant need to get lost on purpose.

I understand when people say that they have their fixes. I know people with usual addictions: food, coffee, alcohol, ... the occasional high from taking drugs. I know people with odd addictions like exercising and cleaning.

But I'm pretty sure I am the only one I know (of the people I know) that gets high from taking an all night plane to foreign places and trying to figure them out. Solving the puzzle of figuring out how to order a simple coffee is intoxicating. I will go anywhere, with anyone, or alone. If you invite me to visit you in a place I've never been, I will come. If you plan a trip and don't have a travel companion, I'm your girl.  If my job needs someone to go alone to hotels to check out venues,  I volunteer.

I know there are junkies worse than me; people who have never even grown roots in a place; people who have lived out of their hikers-packs for longer than they can remember.  There are people who are always chasing that next trip, that unseen place, that next big rainbow.  But I seem to be able to leave my highs to settle into the middle... at least for now.