Tag: travel
103 Best Travel Quotes to Inspire your Wanderlust in 2023
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small fee from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.
For all those out there with hearts full of reisefieber (that’s German for travel fever), this post goes out to you. I’ve collected the 103 best travel quotes to fuel your wanderlust, caption your Instagram posts, and inspire your next adventure. I hope you enjoy.
This post was updated February 2023.
Quotes That Define Travel
1.”Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things—air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky—all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” -Cesare Pavese
2. “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.’” -Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
3. “Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” -Mary Ritter Beard
How Travel Defines Us
4. “If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet.” -Patrick Rothfuss
5. “So much of who we are is where we have been.” -William Langewiesche
6. “You get a strange feeling when you leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love, but you miss the person you are at this time and place because you’ll never be this way ever again.” -Azar Nafisi
7. “One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are.” -Edith Wharton
8. “The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.” -Shirley Maclaine
Quotes About Why We Travel
9. “I’ll never be content to stay forever in one place. I’m too madly in love with all the places I haven’t been, the people I haven’t met, the food I haven’t tried, and the streets I haven’t danced on.” -Brooke Hamptom
10. “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” -Robyn Yong
11. “We travel initially to lose ourselves; and we travel next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe where riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.” -Patrick Rothfuss
12. “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” -Bill Bryson
13. “We travel because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something inside our minds has changed, and that changes everything.” -Jonah Lehrer
14. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” -Jack Kerouac
15. “I travel because I’d rather look back at my life, saying ‘I can’t believe I did that’ instead of ‘If only I had…’” -Florine Bos
16. “I need to move around a bit. To shuffle my surroundings. To wake up in cities I don’t know my way around and have conversations in languages I cannot entirely comprehend. There is always this tremendous longing in my heart to be lost, to be someplace else, to be far far away from all of this.” -Beau Taplin
We were made to move
17. “I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question.” -Harun Yahya
18. “A ship at harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” -John A Shedd
19. “If we were meant to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet.” -Rachel Wolchin
Quotes About How Travel Changes Us
20. “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” -Ibn Batutta
21. “At its best, travel should challenge our perceptions and most cherished views, cause us to rethink our assumptions, shake us a bit, make us broader minded and more understanding.” -Arthur Frommer
22. “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes
23. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” -Gustave Flaubert
24. “Travel sparks our imagination, feeds our curiosity and reminds us how much we all have in common.” -Deborah Lloyd
25. “I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” -Mary Anne Radmacher
Travel Quotes About Home
26. “You will never be completely home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” -Miriam Adeney
27. “We are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. We are homesick most for the places we have never known.” -Carson McCullers
28. “A great way to learn about your country is to leave it.” -Henry Rollins
29. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” -Robert Louis Stevenson
30. “Wild hearts find a home in every place they roam.” -C. Churchill
31. “A man does not belong to the place where he was born, but where he chooses to die.” -Orson Welles
Proverbs From Around the World
32. “Your feet will take you where your heart is.” -Irish Proverb
33. “He who is outside his door already has the hardest part of his journey behind him.” -Dutch Proverb
34. “Don’t listen to what they say. Go see.” -Chinese Proverb
35. “Who lives sees much. Who travels sees more.” -Arab Proverb
On the Journey, the Road, the Destination
36. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” -Lao Tzu
37. “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” -Susan Sontag
38. “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” -David Bowie
39. “The best journeys are the ones that answer questions that at the onset you never thought to ask.” -Rick Ridgeway
40. “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” -Lao Tzu
41. “Because the greatest part of a road trip isn’t arriving at your destination. It’s all the wild stuff that happens along the way.” -Emma Chase
42. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” -Robert Frost
43. “There are roads left in both of our shoes.” -Death Cab for Cutie, Soul Meets Body
Travel Quotes About Tourists v. Travelers
44. “When a man is a Traveler, the world is his house and the sky is his roof, where he hangs his hat is his home, and all the people are his family.” -Drew Bundini Brown
45. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” -Paul Theroux
46. “The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.” -G. K. Chesterton
47. “Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what’s right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in.” -Andrew Zimmern
Travel Quotes From Explorers and Travel Writers
Freya Stark
Freya Stark (1893-1993) was a British/Italian explorer and travel writer. She traveled extensively in the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Asia. In fact, she was one of the first non-Arabs to cross the Arabian Desert.
48. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.” -Freya Stark
49. “Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” -Freya Stark
Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018), chef, travel writer and documentarian. This is a man who needs no introduction. He taught us about other cultures and countries, unapologetically examining both the good and the bad with raw honesty and respect.
50. “Travel is not reward for working, it’s education for living.” -Anthony Bourdain
51. “Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.” -Anthony Bourdain
52. “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” -Anthony Bourdain
Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer (1957–) is a contemporary British travel writer. He tends to focus his writing on often over-looked topics. For example, he examines the disconnect between local tradition and global pop culture, the cultural repercussions of isolation, and how travel can help us find a calm and stillness in today’s busy pace.
53. “A person susceptible to ‘wanderlust’ is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.” -Pico Iyer
54. “Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits.” -Pico Iyer
55. “And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.” -Pico Iyer
56. “Anybody who travels knows that you’re not really doing so in order to move around—you’re traveling in order to be moved. And really what you’re seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you’re sleepwalking through your daily life.” -Pico Iyer
Travel Quotes From Naturalists
57. “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” -Henry David Thoreau
58. “The world is big, and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.” -John Muir
59. “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” -John Muir
60. “Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.” -John Muir
Travel Quotes From Great Literary Authors
61. “To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, to gain all while you give, to roam the roads of lands remote, to travel is to live.” -Hans Christian Anderson
62. “For always roaming with a hungry heart, much have I seen and known.” -Alfred Tennyson
63. “Live life with no excuses, travel with no regret.” -Oscar Wilde
64. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” -T. S. Elliot
65. “It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.” -F Scott Fitzgerald
66. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” -Mark Twain
67. “Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.” -Kurt Vonnegut
68. “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all people cry, laugh, eat, worry and diet, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” -Maya Angelou
Travel Quotes From Books
69. “It is not down in any map; true places never are.” -Herman Melville, Moby Dick
70. “It is a big and beautiful world. Most of us live and die in the same corner where we were born and never get to see any of it. I don’t want to be most of us.” -Oberyn Martell, Game of Thrones
71. “Travel far enough to meet yourself.” -David Mitchel, Cloud Atlas
72. “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” -Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
73. “Would you like an adventure now or shall we have our tea first?” -Peter Pan
74. “Not all those who wander are lost.” -J.J.R. Tolkien
75. “It’s a dangerous business…going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” -J.R.R. Tolkien
Travel Quotes on Books and Education
76. “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” -St. Augustine
77. “I read, I travel, I become.” -Derek Walcott
78. “Of all the books in all the world, the best stories are found between the pages of a passport.” -Saber Ben Hassen
79. “With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.” -Sandra Lake
80. “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.” -Muhammad
Travel Quotes About Wealth
81. “Travel is the only thing you can buy that makes you richer.” -Anonymous
82. “I would rather own a little and see the world than own the world and see a little of it.” -Alexander Sattler
83. “Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.” -Alexander Solzhenitsyn
84. “To travel is to possess the world.” -Burton Holmes
Quotes on Adventure
85. “Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures.” -Lovelle Drachman
86. “If happiness is the goal—and it should be, then adventures should be a priority.” -Richard Branson
87. “Nothing adventured, nothing attained.” -Peter McWilliams
88. “You must go on adventures to find out where you truly belong.” -Sue Fitzmaurice
89. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” -Jawaharlal Nehru
90. “Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind.” -Marty Rubin
Travel Quotes That Offer Advice
91. “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” -Dalai Lama
92. “Live your life by a compass, not a clock.” -Stephen Covey
93. “We must travel in the direction of our fear.” -John Berryman
94. “Cover the earth before it covers you.” -Dagobert D Runes
95. “Travel while you’re young and able. Don’t worry about the money, just make it work. Experience is far more valuable than money will ever be.” -David Avocado Wolfe
96. “When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” -Susan Heller
97. “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, kill nothing but time.” -Aliyyah Eniath
98. “If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.” -Cesare Pavese
99. “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” -Clifton Fadiman
100. “Do yourself a favor. Before it’s too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.” -Jhumpa Lahiri
Travel Memories
101. “We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone.” -Travelermentality
102. “I have worn the dust of many foreign streets, but to brush it off would surely be a crime. I have the memories of many foreign adventures, but to forget them, would surely be a sin. So, breath in the dust, and keep the memories in.” -Rowland Waring-Flood
103. Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know why I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads weren’t paved.” -Will Rogers
Without a doubt, there are a lot of amazing travel quotes out there. However, I’ve only shared a few of them. Do you have a favorite quote I missed? I’d love to hear from you. So tell me, what are your favorite travel quotes, and why do they speak to you?
Also, if you’re looking for a little more travel inspiration, check out Clarice’s Travel Bucket List. Or if you’re looking for more quotes, you can check out 13 John Muir Quotes for the Adventurers at Heart, too.
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7 Free Things to do in Barcelona
Traveling can get expensive fast. One of the number one reasons I hear people list for not traveling is the cost. I get it. But travel really doesn’t have to be something so far out of reach. For those of you who are traveling Spain …
15 Best Things to do in Barcelona, Spain
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small fee from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.
We landed in Barcelona after our long Amsterdam layover. We started and ended our Spanish adventure in Barcelona. I immediately loved the city. But at first I couldn’t tell if I actually loved the city, or if I just loved being on vacation. After seeing a little more of Spain, I can definitely tell you, I love Barcelona.
Barcelona is located in Catalonia on the eastern coast of Spain. Something to be prepared for – Catalonia has its own identity apart from Spain! First of all, their primary language is Catalán, not Spanish. And you will not find any bullfights in Catalonia.
But don’t let any of that scare you off. We were still able to get around using our Spanish, or rather, my husband’s Spanish. We found Barcelona to be a very welcoming city. It is highly wheelchair accessible, very bike friendly, and filled with motorcycles and museums.
There were a few things we knew we wanted to see in Barcelona, like La Sagrada Familia and the Picasso Museum. But there was a lot we were able to wing as well. Barcelona just has so much to offer, it was hard to decide what we wanted to do most!
So if you’re planning a trip to Spain and looking for things to do in Barcelona, here’s just a brief description of a few must-see sights you can’t pass up.
1. La Sagrada Familia
La Sagrada Familia is simply breathtaking. And a must on the list of things to do in Barcelona. To be honest, I wasn’t that impressed by what I saw in photos. La Sagrada Familia is…different. And no matter how good a photographer you may be, photos just cannot convey its beauty adequately enough. But every one who had been there raved about it. So I figured, “Sure, why not? Let’s check this place out.”
Built in the Modernista style, La Sagrada Familia has a surreal feel to it. At times I felt like I was under sea in King Triton’s palace from Disney’s Little Mermaid. Other times I felt like I was gazing up at a canopy of trees or at the cordae tendinae of some great giant’s heart. Gaudi definitely met his aim in imitating nature.
TIP: There were many things we planned spur of the moment on our trip. This wasn’t one of them. Be sure to book your tickets in advance, as they sell out quickly!
2. Cathedral of Barcelona
The Cathedral of Barcelona, built in the Gothic style, is worlds different from La Sagrada Familia. If you choose to pay for the tower access <which I highly recommend>, an elevator takes you up to the roof top for a stunning view. You can see all the way out to the ocean on a clear day. For those of you who are worried about accessibility, once you get to the roof top, there are a few steps to navigate.
TIP: The cathedral entry lines were much shorter in the afternoon. Instead of waiting in long lines in the morning, hop on over to the Gaudi Exhibition next door first.
3. Gaudi Exhibition Center at the Museu Diocesa de Barcelona
The Gaudi Exhibition stands right next to the Cathedral of Barcelona in the Gothic quarter. We spent maybe an hour and a half here as an audio guide led us through the museum. We learned about Antoni Gaudi’s life, inspirations, and innovations in his architecture.
TIP: If you’re able to, I would visit the Gaudi Museum before visiting La Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, or Casa Mila. You’ll have a much deeper appreciation and understanding of his work.
4. Park Güell
Park Güell sits on a hill overlooking the city of Barcelona. Designed by Gaudi, it was originally intended to be an upscale, exclusive neighborhood, but was never completed. Park Guell is actually quite large. There are two sections – one with free entry, the other with paid entry.
TIP: If you want to see the iconic Gaudi lizard at Park Guell, that requires paid entry. Booking tickets ahead is a must.
Click here to check availability for Park Guell
5. Picasso Museum
I know nothing about art, but I do enjoy it…sometimes. I expected the Picasso Museum to be a bunch of modern expressionist work that I would not be able to understand. However, I was quite pleasantly surprised. We got to see a wide range of Picasso’s work over his lifetime, including pieces from his Blue Period and a study of Velasquez’ Las Meninas. Quite honestly, I did not realize what a wide range of skills Picasso possessed. It gave me a far better appreciation and respect for Picasso’s work. I suppose you have to understand the rules of an art to be able to break them, right?
6. The Chocolate Museum
I am of the strong opinion that chocolate should be the sixth food group. So it should come as no surprise to you that I dragged my husband to the Chocolate Museum. I had heard that Barcelona was known for its chocolate, but I didn’t know why until we visited the museum.
SPOILER ALERT: Barcelona is who introduced chocolate to Europe. “Europe, meet Chocolate. Chocolate, meet Europe.”
The Chocolate Museum is a bit small <an hour was plenty of time>, and it isn’t overly flashy or high tech. Unbelievable chocolate sculptures stood on display in one room. In another room, displays depicted the history of chocolate and chocolate production. Did I mention your entry tickets are actual chocolate bars?!
7. Enjoy Churros con Chocolate
While we’re on the topic of chocolate, you cannot pass up the churros con chocolate in Barcelona! It’s the best you’ll find anywhere. Just be aware, the hot chocolate is more for dipping than for drinking. It is dark, thick, and strong!
8. Passeig de Gràcia
The Passeig de Gràcia, or passage of grace, is an avenue in the Eixample district of Barcelona. You can visit several beautiful buildings from the Modernista architectural movement here, including Casa Batllo and Gaudi’s Casa Milà, or “La Pedrera”. For an entrance fee, you can take a roof top tour of many of these beautiful buildings. Or you can also just enjoy them from the street.
9. La Boqueria
La Boqueria is an open air food market, located just off La Rambla. It has a buoyant atmosphere and is a great place to wander around during the lunch time hour or if you’re looking for a quick snack. It was also a fun and inexpensive way to try a variety of Spanish foods. We tried jamon iberico con queso (Iberian ham with cheese), empanadas, and some fresh juices that were just delicious.
10. La Rambla
La Rambla is a thoroughfare bustling with pedestrian and tourist traffic, shops, and restaurants, from morning to late at night. You’ll probably catch a street performer or two, but don’t be surprised if they run at the first sight of law enforcement! You can also follow La Rambla all the way to the beach.
11. Columbus Column
The Columbus Column stands at the end of La Rambla, just before the beach. There’s a small museum or exhibit inside at the bottom of the monument. There’s also an observation deck you can visit at the top, but it was unfortunately closed for maintenance the day we visited.
12. Go to the Beach
You can follow La Rambla all the way down to the beach. There are hawkers selling beautiful beach blankets and intricate sand castles to check out. It was a little cool on the beach when we visited in early May, but still full of life and activity.
13. San Felipe Cathedral
We wandered into San Felipe Cathedral while aimlessly exploring the city one night. Although not as impressive as the Cathedral of Barcelona, it had its own charms. Not a big tourist attraction, the atmosphere was more peaceful. Entrance was free, and they were hosting a concert the following night I wish we could have made. I would not call this a must-see, but just know there are other cathedrals in the city that are fun to explore and much less touristy.
14. Explore Barri Gotic
One of our hotels was in the Barri Gotic. It was amazing – we were just a thirty second walk from the Barcelona Cathedral. The narrow, twisting, intimate streets of Barri Gotic hide secret courtyards and beautiful architecture that’s fun to explore.
This is where you’ll find the Cathedral of Barcelona, Carrer del Bisbe Bridge (pictured above), and ancient Roman towers that mark where a gated entrance to the city once stood. In Placa Nova there’s a fun sculpture that spells out “Barcelona” in geometric shapes which makes for a fun photo op.
15. Hop on Hop Off Bus Tours
The Hop on Hop Off bus tour was a convenient form of transportation and nice way to see more of the city. We used it to see the Eixample neighborhood, and to stop in at Park Guell for a short visit. You can also use the Hop on Hop off bus tours to get to La Sagrada Familia and Camp Nou, Barcelona’s soccer stadium.
We did the hop-on hop-off bus tour on one of our last days in Barcelona. But I would highly recommend doing it towards the beginning of your stay and here’s why: we received a coupon book with our bus tickets. The book included discounts for many noteworthy sites around Barcelona, such as the Gaudi Exhibition, several of the Modernista buildings, and the Columbus Column. Plus, the buses have free WiFi! Which helped in planning our next move.
TIP: Barcelona has two different companies that run the hop-on hop-off bus tours. Their bus stops will be marked with a sign matching their brand – do not confuse these bus stops with each other or with the city bus stops.
What We Want to Do Next Time
We have three main things on our agenda for our next visit to Barcelona. First, I hope to plan our next visit after La Sagrada Familia is completed, sometime after 2026. Second, we plan to check out Camp Nou. Camp Nou is Spain and Europe’s largest soccer stadium, plus there’s a museum and tour you can check out there! Lastly, I hope to visit more of Barcelona’s 55 museums on my next visit.
Next post I’ll share some ideas for visiting Barcelona on a budget. Until then, buen viaje!
For more vacation ideas, check out my post about a long Amsterdam layover.
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