Where The Wanderlust Began

Although my trip to Europe doesn't officially start until I fly out to Naples on October 17, I got to thinking about my love of travel, foreign food and climbing cliffs and towers and it reminded me of my first international travel experience. I decided to start this travelogue from where the wanderlust began.

Those who know me may think the trip that started my 20+ years of travel was the one I took as a senior in high school to the Soviet Union with my classmate Marcia and about 12 educators and administrators. That was an eye-opening, life-changing event, for sure, but my first real exposure to eating, sleeping, and experiencing a foreign culture was on the rocky beaches of the shrimping village Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico.

I traveled the 4 hours down to Puerto Peñasco in the back of a camper - summer - no air conditioning. My friend Alice and her family had made the trip before and so we set up camp at the same Playa de Oro RV park as they had in past summers. The sea breezes were heavenly and the beach peddlers offered everything from tamales and woven blankets to "100% real" silver jewelry and coconut Popsicles. I was free from parents and free to wear my swimming suit all day, every day. The beaches had little sand, mostly pebbles and sea shells. At low tide, you could walk out as far as the eye could see along the reef for a bit of "sea shelling". It was like nothing I had ever experienced on the lazy, sandy beaches near my grandmother's bungalow in Seal Beach, California.

Growing up in the desert, my only experience with fish was the fish stick variety and the occasional popcorn shrimp. So when we stopped by the local market to pick out fresh shrimp for dinner, I was accosted with the sights and smells of the daily catch. The bluish bug-eyed things staring back at me from the plastic bucket looked nothing like the yummy pink shrimp on the posters. I hid my disgust as best as possible as I followed my friend's lead to de-vein and de-leg the creatures. Once boiled, I was pleasantly surprised at the now-pink meaty flesh and happily indulged.

I was changed. I enjoyed my new experience and set my sights on the next one. Little did I know it would come the following year when I found myself visiting Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev as one of the only Russian speakers in the group...it is amazing how much you don't know after 3 years of high school Russian, but it was enough to order ice cream, buy some trinkets and get myself out of trouble. But that story is for another day.

So as I make the final touches to my travel itinerary and get ready for another kind of beach experience on the Amalfi Coast and the Italian Riviera, I am thankful for my sense of adventure and love of cultures that began many years ago on the rocky shores of Mexico.

First stop: Sorrento, Italy - October 18, 2012.