
Having travelled to all seven continents and close to a hundred destinations, this is a question that I am asked frequently.
While each time I try my hardest to reply with one amazing, life changing destination, the truth is, each time I'm asked this, I still stare blankly and mumble something very incoherent, while thinking;
How can I ever choose between Paris and Sydney?
How can watching a lion stalking prey in South Africa be better than watching the northern lights dancing over Reykjavik?
How can standing on the Great Wall of China be better than standing on an overwater bungalow in Tahiti?
However, I don't feel that every travel experience is equal either. Let me share what I have discovered.

I have come to realize that certain destinations have given me favourite moments in life.
You know the ones I mean.
The moments you never forget.
The moments you will tell your grandchildren about decades later.
The moments that pictures just can't capture.
For example, I can't say that Athens is my favourite city
but there was that moment …
when I woke up in the middle of the night and looked out my hotel window and there it was in front of me, the Acropolis, beautifully lit up, sitting high above Athens and I thought;
I can't believe I'm actually here, in this place - right here, right now - looking at something that was built over 2000 years ago.

I can still see the picture in my mind - the moment - that is now a favourite memory.
That's probably why when I heard Carson say this line in an episode of Downton Abbey, I immediately jumped up, grabbed a pen and wrote it down,
“The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end, it's what we are left with."
Carson said it when speaking of a love from a long time before but I think it better applies to the precious memories we acquire when we travel.
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