Eyes wide with ambition

This blog is where I will pour all my travel aspirations and - hopefully this time next year - my travel experiences. I'd say that's when I'll begin my very first journey out of Australia since I was 2-and-a-half. It'd be a sickeningly romantic thing for me to arrive in Egypt on my birthday, May 9. I'll be 25.

Almost a quarter of a century, I've been alive. But I don't know if I could really call myself an almost 25 year old. Age is such a concept. Years alive doesn't translate to maturity. My father, for instance, 45 and still claiming to be a victim of circumstance and the malicious intent of the people around him.

I think travel is definitely a maturity accelerator. Even my brief trips over the years to non-Sydney locations have made me realise that Sydney is not the most important city in Australia, and that beautiful, interesting people can spring out of the most unassuming places, like the inland town that insists it's a city, Wagga Wagga. My best friend, a complex and intelligent girl, spent her whole life in the suburbs of this town/city, and has decided to stay there, at least for a little while longer, resisting seductions of the big city she got a taste of for a year. I can only imagine how mind- and soul-expanding my trip is going to be.

I suppose now is a good time to tell you where I'm going. Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, France, the UK, Spain, and Portugal. Here is a picture of me, just so I can test out this thing.