Introducing Casey from Land of Marvels.
1. What made you decide to start blogging?
I’ve been blogging on and off for about 10 years, the first 5 of that were just on a private blog I kept as a sort of journal and it was about 5 years ago I started blogging for other people to read, then that morphed into a travel blog about 2 or 3 years ago. I have always loved writing and blogging has been such a wonderful outlet for that.
2. What does Land of Marvels mean?
Land of Marvels came about last Summer when I started thinking about a name change for my blog. Previously it had been True Colours, but I wanted something that had a little bit more of a travel theme, since the blog is primarily a travel blog. I was reading a magazine one day and a Jules Verne quote from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea came up, “You are going to visit a land of marvels.” It really struck me and I ended up using Land of Marvels because this world is full of treasures to find and places to explore and each and every one is truly a land of marvels.
3. What was it like growing up in the Middle East?
I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia until I was 12 years old, so it was basically my whole childhood and really all I knew. I look back very fondly on my life there and have a deep love for the Middle East to this day, it’s the land that I called home for a huge portion of my life and a place that raised me. It’s such a misunderstood part of the world, at least in the West and I think it’s important to remember that parts of the world that we might not understand, they are just people living and loving and learning too. We’re all more alike than different. My expat childhood there was definitely not the average; we rode camels in the desert on the weekends, learned some Arabic, met people from different countries all over the world and had the opportunity to travel a lot and explore lots of the world. And while it definitely wasn’t the average place to grow up, I’m so incredibly grateful for that experience and it’s completely shaped who I am today.
4. You lead a really cool life of traveling the world, what’s been your favorite place?
My husband and I travel a lot for personal trips and I also travel a lot for work; it’s something that has come to define our lives and has created in us a huge passion to see this world we call home. There are so many places we love, but I would say my top 3 places I have completely fallen in love with are Paris, France & Udaipur, India & Sevilla, Spain. There are of course lots of others we greatly enjoyed, but those three completely changed my life and I hold a great love for each of them.
5. Care to share any travel tips?
I think the key to adding more travel in your life if first, to just make it a priority. Life is all about figuring out what is important to you. If you want to travel, that needs to come before other things. We live in a small 1 bedroom apartment, in a city that doesn’t cost a lot to live and we sacrifice other things in order to put travel first. With that said though, you can also travel really economical these days so if you want to see the world there are so many avenues to do it. Second, keep an open mind and open yourself up to the possibilities of what the world might be able to teach us and be open to any experience that might come your way. I write a lot about travel tips on Land of Marvels if you want to read further!
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