If you find yourself on foreign soil and want to read about local perspectives or just need to feed your wanderlust, graphic designer Anne Ditmeyer's Prêt à Voyager is the site to visit. She regularly features interviews with characters from around the world and "the creative ways people travel" in her Boarding Pass series. As a Paris resident (who hails from the United States), she also shares her own wealth of tips and info about visiting the city. But Paris is not her whole world as she's been seriously hit with the travel bug herself - Anne has currently visited 29 countries along with 47 of the U.S.' 50 states! Check out her slide show about the things she's learned from her travels and read on for her thoughts on roaming the world and discovering that there's a story to tell no matter where you are.
The tagline of my blog is "travel is not about where you go, but how you see the world." That pretty much sums up my approach. Often times I'll email interesting people, who will respond, "but I don't go anywhere exotic and I'm not a mega traveler." Good, that's not what I'm interested in anyway. Travel can happen where you live. Having lived in Paris two years now (three if you count my two prior stays) I'm on a mission to constantly discover new things in the city. I'm not necessarily looking for the "next big thing," but rather something that is new to me. This summer I ran my "Tour de France" series looking at the 20 arrondissements of Paris through the eyes of various local bloggers. It was highly inspiring for me to see my city through different eyes, and I learned about so many wonderful places I would never have know about otherwise.
As for exploring the rest of Europe, as far as I'm concerned you can't go wrong anywhere you go. In addition, a stellar network of trains and public transportation makes it easy. I remember going to Geneva years ago. A friend and I went for a weekend, and typical of most of Europe almost everything was closed on Sunday. However, by chance there happened to be a fantastic chocolate festival happening in the streets of the city – it made everything better. Last summer I went to Amsterdam for an Urban Arts Festival where I realized I could not only go to a city I loved, but two lovely designers who I had been in contact over the years would be there and I was excited to finally meet them. In fact, more often than not where I travel is dictated by who I know there rather than anything else – it makes for a fun, local twist for wherever I'm going.
Next up? Still to be determined, but I'd really love to take advantage of zepass.com or trocdestrains.com and buy a cheap last minute ticket to somewhere I've never been...
Image: courtesy of Anne Ditmeyer