Traveling Places… The Best Yet

As promised in yesterday’s Travel Series post, here is a snapshot of the places we’ve traveled to in the last ten years. While the list is mostly comprehensive, we may have left out a few short trips here and there.

At this point, you may wonder how we managed to travel to all these destinations as students and young professionals in terms of both time and finances. As I said previously, we live to travel, and will have done just about anything. Both of us worked as research assistants while also pursuing our bachelor’s and master’s degrees (in computer science & concurrently). I also kept my internship after my Junior year and as a result, maintained two jobs (35 hr weeks) and a full load of classes (3 graduate, 2 undergraduate and a master’s thesis). Virtually every penny earned went into savings until we decided where to travel to during our summer break. Some of my pennies also went toward my college tuition (a whole other post). Our approach to traveling finances were also very unique and creative. I’ll write more about what we call affordable traveling soon, but rest assured that everyone can travel on virtual any budget. Just like anything in life, you make a choice and certain sacrifices, and you can almost always meet your goal. My living room and dining room stand virtually furniture-free, my baths un-renovated … but we travel — a cognizant decision.

Anyways…. if you haven’t had an opportunity to travel as much, but want to start soon, here’s a list of some of our favorite places. They are in no particular order and they are some of our favorites not just because of the destination, but the experience we had there.