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Have I mentioned lately that I’m going to Paris?

Well, I am. In ten days. I’ll be traveling with a friend and colleague who has never been to Europe before. We will spend the first half of our February vacation exploring the (exceedingly cold) City of Lights before taking a train to Barcelona for a (slightly less freezing) celebration of art, architecture, and octopus. (I hear they eat octopus over there. I’m down with that. I’m not sure if Eileen is.)

Have I mentioned lately that I’m really, really looking forward to this?

My love affair with travel began in the summer of 2007 when I took my first tour with American Music Abroad. For nearly a month I journeyed across western Europe with three busloads of high school musicians and their teachers. We performed at the American Cemetery of Normandy, climbed the Eiffel Tower, ate moules-frites in Belgium, and chased Austrian dairy cows with our cameras. It was my first experience with extended travel. It takes considerable stamina to keep up with an active AMA itinerary, and it requires a certain independent streak to leave one’s life behind for an extended period.

I absolutely loved it.

Ten months later I returned to Paris. I took the trip on two weeks’ notice – I needed to get out of the house, and I remembered liking Paris an awful lot. It also happened to be a period in my life when I felt compelled to prove my autonomy. I had never traveled alone before, and the prospect terrified me. I remembered very little of my high school French, and I didn’t have a clue how to get around the city without an AMA tour guide. I spent four days getting lost, eating crepes, avoiding the lecherous leers of the local lotharios, and discovering the kind of confidence that comes from doing everything wrong and somehow surviving anyway.

Having checked off the goals of traveling alone and traveling for extended periods of time, my vacation hobby quickly developed into an obsession with personal one-upsmanship. I’ve spent the last four years exploring ever further beyond my comfort zone. I have wandered the streets of Paris at 3 am. I have explored the excavations beneath Vatican City. I spent a jovial night with friends in the cargo hold of a bus where we were serenaded by an accordion-playing Tyrolean driver. I have been kissed by an overly attentive Italian waiter. (I caught his eye by ordering the octopus, FYI – and I escaped his advances by beating a hasty and ungraceful retreat out of the restaurant.)

It has been seven months since I last touched down on American soil, and while I love my life in Massachusetts, I am itching for another adventure. Travel has a way of flushing the extraneous noise out of my cluttered brain. It reminds me to keep seeking inspiration, and it offers proof that I can roll with the punches (and often come out with a few hilarious stories to boot.)

What’s more, I’ve learned that my priorities here at home come into sharp focus when viewed from a few thousand miles away.

So, yes. This trip is exactly what I need right now. Paris m’appelle. I must answer.