One of the most common questions that people ask me when I tell them I’m a travel blogger is, “What’s your favorite place that you’ve ever been to?” My response is always the same. I laugh and say: “You know, that’s the worst question ever.” Because every single place is different. There’s no one thing that makes me fall in love with a place; it’s a combination of things. It’s the feeling I get when I see something truly beautiful; it’s the mixture of the sights and sounds, and even smells, I experience; it’s the people I meet along the way; the adventure I have while I’m there. It’s everything.
Travel allows you to learn more about other cultures and to see how other people live. It’s important we use this privilege to better the world. It’s all too easy to rush off to some beautiful place you’ve seen on the internet to snap the most Instagrammable photo you can. But that neither enriches your life nor the place you’re visiting.
Though I’m sure this book will inspire you to visit gorgeous, colorful places around the world, I also hope it fills you with the desire to learn more about these places. Take some time to learn about the history of an old European city; find out why houses are painted the colors they are; talk to a local and see a destination through their eyes. This is the true joy of travel, because while a picture tells one thousand words, your memories will tell you one thousand more.
I first fell in love with travel while living in Florence, Italy: eating pasta, meeting new people, and watching pastel colors paint the sky each evening. After Italy, I moved to Thailand to teach English. I spent my weekends visiting ornate temples covered in millions of pieces of sparkling glass and snorkeling in crystal-clear water with vibrant coral reefs. It was here that I realized the influence color had on why I visited new places. And so my blog, Travel Colorfully, was born.
Over the next few years, I ventured to far-off places. I wandered down the streets of Havana dotted with colorful vintage cars. I explored cities such as San Francisco and New York, where vivid murals and street art can be found everywhere you look. I wandered far and wide on a hunt for the bold and the beautiful. This book gives me the opportunity to share some of those places with you. Use it as a guide to plan your next adventure, or keep it on a coffee table and flip through it to find something to brighten up your day.
I hope The Rainbow Atlas brings you as much joy to rifle through as I have had writing it; that you learn about new places, as I have learned from my fellow contributors: from pink lakes in Mexico and Australia, to buildings that look like a set of Lego bricks in Denmark.
The world isn’t black and white. It’s a rainbow filled with cotton-candy skies, azure oceans, and trees in every shade of green. So enjoy this book and the adventures it leads to; share it with your friends and family, and remember, always travel colorfully.
Taylor Fuller, Lead Author
@taylor_fuller
www.travelcolorfully.com
