At what age did you first leave your country, for any reason (vacation, business, immigration, etc.)?
I was 27 I believe. Went to a friend’s destination wedding in Tulum, Mexico. Then I didn’t leave the US again for another 10 years, in which I went to *another *friend’s destination wedding in Lisbon.
My family was not travelers. I don’t think either of my parents have ever left the country. We never ventured further than central Pennsylvania when I was a kid (living near Washington, DC).
I can’t recall the exact age, but it’d be somewhere in the single-digits the first time my family took a trip to Niagara Falls.
I was 4. Took a boat across Lake Erie.
8 to BC and Vancouver Island.
I was an infant. Also traveled as a fetus. One parent’s job involved international travel, with business class tickets that could be traded down to bring family along. That job ended before I was old enough to remember any of the travel. And I’m not aware of anyone having that kind of deal these days.
I get to hear stories from the trips. Apparently the Scottish loved babies, but the French acted like you’d dropped a turd on their floor if you showed up with one.
- It was only Canada though.
I was 2 when I left California for Japan and didn’t come back until I was 11 except for vacations.
As an adult I was 24 when I left for the first time and I seem to go about every 7 years.
8 or so, a day trip from Michigan to Ontario.
Senior year of high school - our A Capella Choir participated in a choral festival in Rome by way of Paris - just before I turned 18.
This, exactly.
Thirteen. My 8th grade Spanish teacher used to pick half a dozen girls to go with her to a summer rental in Mexico, and I was one of the lucky few. She was filthy rich and basically taught Spanish to keep herself occupied, and her family spent every summer in Mexico. We basically had to pay my airfare and a small grocery stipend, so for my parents it was cheaper than sending me to day camp. It totally bit my travel bug, and I ended up majoring in Spanish.
I was about six, my family visited friends in Vancouver I think. The things I remember are looking at the flag and being awed that I was in a different country, and at a rest stop in a park with a lake, a swan came up to me, grabbed my shoelace out of my shoe and ate it, terrifying me. Nothing else. I don’t think I was again out of the country until I went on a Europe vacation with my parents when I was fifteen.
I was 11 or 12. Family used to go on fishing \ camping trips to Canada from PA. We camped on a large farm, lots of cows wandering through, on a chain of lakes – somewhere near Elgin, Ontario. Had to go through a lock or two to get to town. Sometimes just men and boys, sometimes a whole convoy of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.
Two things I thought were really neat about my first international travel:
The margarine was white and had a little breakable bag you added to make it yellow; something about the dairy industry insisting.
The exchange rate changed over the years but I remember the first few trips getting a nickel (Canadian) back for change when you bought something for a US dollar.
As a fetus, then it took something like 18-20 years later to do it again.
I hardly count. Moved to northern Maine at age seven. Right across the border from a small Canadian city and a ski hill not too far away. The whole time I lived up there crossing the border consisted of this:
“Anything to declare?”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
And off you went. I spent half my teen years in Canada, where the skiing was cheap and the drinking age was 19 (18 a short drive away in Quebec).
As a baby. Being from Toronto, Buffalo was an easy 90 minutes away.
First plane trip was to Orlando when I was eight, first trip beyond the US was a class trip to Italy and France when I was 16.
In comparison, my oldest was in Spain and France at 14 months. At almost 15 she has been to Europe 4 times and has been to at least 8 countries.
I grew up in northern NY. Montreal was only about fifty miles away. We made regular trips up there throughout my childhood. I put 3-10 years as my choice because the earliest trip I specifically remember was going to the World’s Fair in 1967, when I was six. But I probably visited Canada before the age of three.
A baby. Much of my family lives just across the Canadian border from where I grew up.
Well, look at that!