{"id":17199,"date":"2014-06-25T14:58:46","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T14:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.expedia.com\/stories\/?p=17199"},"modified":"2021-10-28T16:39:00","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T16:39:00","slug":"turning-wanderlust-into-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.expedia.com\/stories\/turning-wanderlust-into-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning wanderlust into reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a small fry, my dad surprised our family one Christmas with a Macintosh Classic II computer. None of us expected it (I was pining for neon scrunchies). This was the late-1980s; a time when at-home desktop computers were just breaking into popular culture.<\/p>\n

The screen was the size of my hand and the keys clicked like crickets. I\u2019d only worked on one these magical boxes at my elementary school in a once-a-week computer lab session during which I learned typing and music composition, so I wasn\u2019t sure if my parents were grooming me to become a 9-to-5\u2019er or the next Beethoven.<\/p>\n

Growing up into the world\u2019s next iconic composer did not work out, but, the family computer did succeed at awakening another educational pursuit: Travel. Along with the magical box, my dad got us Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego<\/em>, a geography- and adventure-themed computer game in which kids could follow a female heroine (Carmen) as she trekked from Toronto to Tokyo\u2014all while wearing her signature trench coat and wide-brimmed hat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking back, this is my first memory of the width, breadth, and depth of the Earth. After Carmen, I gleaned our planet is so much more than the pull-down map suspended over the green chalk board in my third-grade class. I realized it is a real place begging to be explored.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n

Chasing Carmen in Seattle<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Life of Carmen<\/strong><\/p>\n

To say I wanted Carmen\u2019s life is an understatement. I played the inaugural game religiously until my parents bought me the next edition. I wanted to travel on planes, trains, and jumbo jets. I wanted to scale the Eiffel Tower and descend into the depths of the Grand Canyon. I wanted to get to know the world as a savvy super hero.<\/p>\n

A few years later, tween life set in and I became more concerned with which frosted lip shade I\u2019d wear than my nightly meet-up with Carmen and her henchmen. Gradually, my normal-teen experiences began to incorporate international travel, taking me to rural Mexico to build a much-needed clinic (captured in this Find Your Calling<\/em> Expedia video<\/a>), as well as to New York, the Dominican Republic, and China for study-abroad university classes.<\/p>\n

Armed with a touch of post-graduation income from my first job in marketing, I realized my faux<\/em>-wood desk would never grow jet propulsion engines or dole out fresh-baked croissants, so I quit and went to Paris (twice). A stint working on a cruise ship followed. Finally, my travel dance card was inching closer to Carmen status.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

A storybook story<\/strong><\/p>\n

In early 2014, Expedia launched its\u00a0“storybook” campaign<\/a> centred around turning travel ideas into reality. In conjunction with this, each of the Expedia Viewfinders was asked \u201cWhat\u2019s your travel storybook?\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought about the answer for a long time\u2014even toyed with recreating the scene where I fell in love with my husband on the Great Wall of China (true story!).\u00a0Then it hit me. I had to give credence to Carmen, since she played an early role in my wanderlust.<\/p>\n

Following in her footsteps, I made a video<\/a> (with my own signature twist on Carmen’s classic chapeau)<\/em>. The short reel recreates my early years of \u201cCarm-chair travel,” showing how my love of the game propelled me into a life of “trip-styling.” It then charts some of my recent adventures to San Francisco, Napa, Cannon Beach, Seattle, Canada’s Sunshine Coast, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Bali, and Mexico.<\/p>\n

The video is about as personal as I get. While travel has a different impact on each wanderer, if I distill my cross-cultural adventures into one truth, it\u2019s this: Carmen-style curiosity is not quenched in a single country or trip, but in the stories we live along the way. A magical box, a game, and my parents’ wise move to forgo the neon scrunchies I put on my list for Christmas 1989 (in lieu of a computer) are part of my travel story. What memories or artifacts are part of yours?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Trip-Styled travel<\/strong><\/p>\n

The last scene of the video is shot in Mexico’s Riviera Maya at one of my favorite hotels, the\u00a0Banyan Tree Mayakoba<\/a>, an all-villa resort where each abode comes with its own private plunge pool. Having had my eye on this resort for the past five years, I wanted to share the love with the world explorer in all of us. Hop over to TripStyler.com<\/span><\/a>, my travel blog, to see how you can enter to win<\/a>\u00a0a three-night getaway to the Banyan Tree Mayakoba, plus a US$750 flight voucher toward your trip from Expedia.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What early influences inspired your fire for travel?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following in the footsteps of a childhood hero: Carmen Sandiego<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1789,1786,1809,1777,1778,1788,1843,1879,1776],"tags":[241,638],"authors":[2232],"class_list":["post-17199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure","category-company","category-culture","category-family","category-features","category-interests","category-solo","category-technology","category-type-of-vacation","tag-dream-trip","tag-storybook","authors-trip-styler","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTurning wanderlust into reality | Expedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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