FRANCE

France gifted me with my confidence to travel the world. When I was 19, a friend and I decided we wanted to go to Europe. We found an inexpensive flight to Paris, we had a distant family friend to stay with in Switzerland, and I began planning our backpacking trip. In total, we spent about a week in France. Several of those days were spent in Paris of course, but my favorite were spent in the north and south of the county. Étretat remains my favorite place in the world; I remember the moment I saw those cliffs for the first time and the way my breath was swept away with the wind.