Traveling can fill you with emotions.  The obvious ones: excitement, joy, exhilaration, wonder and so on.  I’ve tried to express here that, like life, it isn’t always roses. There are times of frustration, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and sadness. Traveling isn’t a ‘vacation’ and it becomes ‘life’ of a different sort.   But those of us that love it, love it all and know the benefits far outweigh any negatives.   These people tend to live their lives with the same positive outlook as well.

Through my travels I have directly and indirectly met dozens and dozens of people with this same attitude.  I have met them face-to-face all over the world from Hanoi to Ecuador to Egypt. But I also have met many people online through this blog.  Because of this little website – I’ve made contacts for jobs and made good friends that I’ve met in person and seen several times thereafter.

I answer just about every email I receive (except for those spammy ones – no, I won’t advertise your on-line gambling company).   About two years ago, I received a fun comment on a blog post about Ecuador from a girl named Reed in Hoboken, New Jersey (my home state!).   She had found me through a podcast I’d done with Chris Christensen on the Amateur Traveler about how I worked around the world.

We had some nice, easy emails back and forth and she told me she was working in New York City and at the same time ‘planning her escape into the world’.

Like I do with many of my new email friends, I saved her email as a reminder to try and meet up with her next time I was in New York.  I could tell that this was someone I wanted to know.   This was someone with whom I would most likely become friends and know for a long time.  I could tell she had the same attitude as me and was really living.  And this is what life is all about to me – making connections with people and sharing ideas and a lot of laughs.  A year later, I emailed her to let her know I’d actually be in Hoboken and hoped maybe she could meet up for drink prior to a dinner engagement I had.

The email I received back hit me like a ton of bricks:

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This month marks the five-year anniversary of LLworldtour — my first around the world trip and the start of this blog.  It also marks the fact that the last time I worked a full time job was also five years ago.  Holy cripes!  When I started blogging not only didn’t I even want to have a ‘blog’, I didn’t even like the word blog.  Blahhhhg.  Who would want that?  What is that?  It sounds like something you do after a long night of drinking.  ‘Oh, man I think I’m gonna blaahhhg.’

Like so many travelers I know, I just wanted an easy and fun way to keep in touch with friends and family back home.  Plus having a blog, gave me some structure, something ‘to-do’ as I traveled.  It gave me a home, a nucleus from which I could write and hone stories I would later pitch to publications.  It gave me some work which I like.   As a professional writer and television producer, I had already spent my career ‘telling visual stories’ and knew that travel, more than anything, would inspire me to write and share my photography with anyone who was interested.   Little did I know that this fun and easy project would become hard, at times, all-consuming, and would turn into my full-time work.

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As soon as you get off the plane, you are pushed through a tube into the gleaming and airy Vancouver International Airport (YVR, for all you airport code junkies).  Before even reaching immigration, you pass through a hall that is more like a virtual wilderness park complete with trickling streams, faux trees, and recorded sounds of birds and other creatures.  Welcome to Vancouver – one of the most outdoorsy, and, soon-to-be greenest, cities on the planet.

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The phrase “welcome home” really fits the bill at this cozy and friendly B&B.  The West End Guest House is fittingly located in Vancouver’s West End, a mostly residential area in between the glass tower lined downtown and the lush, huge, green Stanley Park.   Lovingly restored and run by Evan and Ron for the last twenty years, this is unequivocally the best B&B I’ve ever stayed in.   Now, granted, I don’t stay in too many, but there was just so much attention to detail here and little touches that won me over as soon as I stepped inside and was warmly greeted like an old friend.   They know how to do it right here and make you feel ‘at home’ from the start.

The house was originally built in 1906 entirely of cedar.   There are interesting bits of history scattered around the house about its and Evan’s family background.

The owner, Evan, says, “It isn’t a museum, but every once in awhile I find out something new about the first occupants, the Edwards Family or something else about early Vancouver.  It is because of this connection with the history of a relatively young city that is most meaningful to me.”

It was also nice to see that each Victorian-inspired room, still has modern touches like iPod players, flat screen TVs, fresh, clean designs, and even a furry stuffed animal to cuddle up to if you get lonely.

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