Annette White - Bucket List Adventures: 10 Incredible Journeys to Experience Before You Die

INTRODUCTION

What is keeping you from experiencing something truly incredibleturning a wondrous travel dream into reality? For some it is the obstacle of time, while for others its the dilemma of limited funds or simply the fear of stepping out of their comfort zone. But, there is a place beyond those hurdles, a place where each morning you wake with inspiration in your heart and a fire in your belly, ready to tackle a goal with passion. Only a small fraction of people will ever live like this, but I have learned that most people can. You can find that place where your wanderlust runs wild and your diligence puts you on a journey that quenches your desire Bucket List Adventures can show you how.

I am fortunate to be one of the few, a person who is living my ideal life. For more than eight years as a travel writer, blogger, and new experience collector I have been following my passion of checking the world off my bucket list, one incredible adventure at a time. It is a life where one day may be spent eating fresh Ladure macarons in Paris, while the next will have me playing a game of hide-and-seek with the Sri Lankan children on the streets of Colombo or floating in the salty Dead Sea in Jordan. This lifestyle was not borne out of privilege: my family is not rich, and in fact are Italian immigrants who came to the United States with very little money. Rather, it is what can happen when you are determined to design a life that you are thrilled to be living, thus saying no to fear, and turning your I cants into I cans.

It hasnt always been this way for me. Before following my calling for exploration, I instead followed in the family footsteps. My husband and I borrowed every dime to open a little Italian restaurant in my hometown. We settled into a beyond-full-time work routine that ate up over seventy hours a week of our lives. It left little time for anything else. Though the restaurant was rewarding and the food business is in my blood, there was also something else tugging at my heart. It was an urge to explore and try something for the first timea lot of somethings. But, I too had countless anxieties and obstacles that prevented me from taking strides toward living an intrepid life, one that would take me away from the daily grind to travel the globe.