Throughout my life, traveling the world has become one of my favorite things to do. I’m extremely fortunate that my family is able to travel a lot. Travel and experiences are also something my parents value, so they try their best to fit them into the year.
However, there have been a couple places I’ve been that have stood out as my favorite trips, and this status is due to a variety of reasons.
Paris and Italy definitely are at the forefront of my favorite trips. Visiting large cities and places such as the Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa really gave perspective as to the scale of their location and how much effort was put into building them.
The small towns that were situated on the Italian Riviera and French rivers also stood out, contrasting the bustling streets of Rome and Paris. I visited these during the same trips as the large cities, so they were refreshing to visit after the chaos of the crowded cities. These places also had incredible local shops and restaurants, making the experience much more localized.
Hawaii also stood out among the variety of climates that this small island had. The hotel was located at a typical tropical climate with warm temperatures and flat, sandy beaches. However, if you drove 20 minutes into the mountains outside of the city, the climate completely changed to over 30 degrees cooler with strong winds. So much variety in such a small space really surprised me when I visited Hawaii.
Another trip that exceeded my expectations was visiting the national parks last summer. The difference in landscape and natural landmarks was also exciting to see. There were flat prairies, deserts, dense forests, and even red rock formations all within a couple hundred miles, which was so different compared to the east coast.
Additionally, Las Vegas was also a crazy place to visit with its exotic culture and vibe. It was cool to see the lavish buildings and casinos lit up at night in different colors, and this gave me many great photography opportunities.
I’ve also been to some motor-sports events in attention grabbing locations. By far, my favorite event was the Rolex 24 hours at Daytona that took place in January. This event was a continuous race for 24 hours, so it was an amazing event for people with time on their hands. This race was particularly magical at night when the cars were just blurs of light and the thunderous sound of the Cadillac kept me up.
All of these trips stood out because they were in different places, however, traveling has always been more than vacations for me. With my kart racing program, I’ve also been lucky enough to have raced at tracks all across the East Coast. Recently, I raced at the Stars Championship Series in Charlotte, and that was a week of driving, testing, and racing.
Traveling has also been a huge part of my life because of my family. Other than my direct family, all of my other relatives live in North Carolina, so traveling down there to see them has been a frequent occurrence in my life. It has also been something I’ve done for my whole life, so this annual trip made me accustomed to traveling since I was young.
Through all of my travel experiences, I’ve found a few key takeaways that carry over to everyday life. The biggest one is expanding a person’s scope on how society differs across the world. People live different lives because of many different reasons, and it is really important that someone understands how people live differently in order to respect their choices.
This realization also carries over into the professional world as well. For a research paper I wrote about business management, I interviewed a former manager at a large food additive company. He stressed the importance of understanding and respecting other people’s cultural differences in order to form productive business relationships, have strong teamwork, and ample communication.
He also emphasized the importance of listening to everyone’s opinion because different people provide new perspectives to the argument. He explained that by accounting for as many perspectives as possible, the best decision that benefits the largest number of people can be made.
These virtues are also expressed in organizations I participate in at school, such as student council, where leadership is a critical value that drives the council to represent the school and successfully hold events.
So by traveling, the experiences you have and people you meet influence your life. And I’ve found that influence to have extended outside of vacations and shaped me into the person I am today.
