My other passion...

... One passion you know all about by now.... Les Mills, sports, especially BA & BP.The other one is traveling. It already started when I was a little kid. My dad had to travel quite a lot for his job and every time he was about to leave, I grabbed the worldmap and had him point out where he was going.. I loved geography in school, learning the countries, cities, rivers all over the world. My dad used to work for KLM as well, so flying is something I have been able to do for most of my life. I'm very much aware that's something quite exceptional, as a lot of people are not in the position they can do that. My very first flight was one of the rare domestic flights we have in Holland, from Schiphol Airport to Maastricht in the south. I do not know my exact age, but I think I was about six months or so. My mom went went to visit her sister and she took me with her. At a very young age I also traveled a couple of times to Canada as my dad's sister lives in Sarnia, Ontario. I don't remember a lot of those trips, except for the fact that I saw my cousin in Canada do synchronized swimming and from that moment on I wanted to do that as well.One of the first trips I really remember was to LA, California at the age of 5. Mostly by pictures, but still memories are there. Most of the trip was about visiting theme parks like Disney, Sea world and Universal Studios. But it was great. One thing I will never forget was the shark (Jaws) at Universal Studios. It scared me so much, that you could see my fingers and nails in my mom’s neck. About 12 or 13 years later I was there again, and I had to laugh so hard, that the thing had scared me so much. We also went to a water park with slides, and it was so cool. I still love those water parks with these enormous slides. Of course we also had our holidays closer to home. I think up to the age of 4 my parents had a boat when they sold the boat they bought a caravan. Every year we went camping during summer for 3 weeks. Either in Holland, or in Belgium or France. That was always great. The possibility to be outside with friends all the time, swim, be out on the water surfing, or go out for walks with my mom and dad, along rivers, into caves, old cities, going to castles. Of course at that young age the lakes, sea, swimming and playing was the best part, but I never mind going to the little towns or other sights in the surroundings of where we stayed. In spring we usually went away for a week by plane. That could vary from Tunesia, Greece, Malta, or some other places in Europe. Then by the age of 14, I started swimming on the Junior National Team and vacations started to be different. Mostly training camps followed by a competition. The last time we were actually able to go on holiday over summer was when I was 15, 3 weeks to the south of France. Camping and a friend of mine stayed on the same camping with her parents so that was fun. I think we spent most of the time at the beach and shopping. At that age that was just about all I was interested in.During my swimming career I have been able to visit a lot of cities all over Europe and some of them even more than 1 time. Rome(3 times), Milan, Loano and Bari in Italy, Barcelona and Sevilla in Spain. Vaduz in Liechtenstein, Vienna in Austria, Wuppertal and Bonn in Germany, Odense in Denmark, a couple of cities in Belgium, Paris in France, Athens in Greece, Zurich and Lausanne in Switzerland. Kharkov in Ukraine. But also Atlanta in the USA, Calgary and Edmonton in Canada and Perth and Toowoomba in Australia. That last training camp and competition in Australia were followed by a pretty cool vacation.
The next couple of posts I will try to tell more about my trips and why I love it so much.