How A Weekend Abroad Started
My love of travel started nearly 25 years ago, when I spent three weeks traveling through Europe before university. It was my first real experience abroad, and I came home fascinated by how much bigger, more diverse, and more interesting the world was than the small piece of it I knew.
I was hooked.
Throughout my twenties and thirties, I traveled whenever I could—sometimes with friends, often alone. Later, as a full-time consultant spending 30+ weeks a year on the road, an exhausting travel schedule came with an unexpected silver lining: it gave me opportunities to see places I otherwise may never have visited.
A Weekend Abroad (awa) grew out of that period of my life. My demanding career meant I rarely had a week to explore somewhere new, but I often had a long weekend. I learned that 48 hours could be enough to get lost in a new city, eat somewhere memorable, attend a sporting event, meet new people, see old friends, and come home having learned something new.
Travel Changed. So Did I.
Over the past 25 years, I’ve watched travel change dramatically.
Paper maps became smartphones. Guidebooks became Google Maps. Boarding passes moved into digital wallets. Airbnb changed where we stayed. Social media transformed how we discovered places—and sometimes overwhelmed the very places we went to experience.
I eventually found myself working in Travel Tech in Silicon Valley, with a front-row seat to an industry being reinvented.
Then COVID brought global travel to an almost complete standstill.
For someone who had spent much of his adult life on airplanes, it was difficult to imagine just how quickly the world could close. When it reopened, travel felt different. Some of that spontaneity had disappeared, overtourism had become harder to ignore, and I found myself thinking more deliberately about why I traveled rather than simply where I wanted to go next.
My own life had changed, too.
Now We Travel as a Family
Today, I travel with my wife and our two young children.
Our trips involve fewer late nights and considerably more strollers, playgrounds, snacks and negotiations with small humans.
But I may appreciate travel now more than ever.
We want our kids to see that the world is much larger than the community where they grow up. We want them to hear different languages, try unfamiliar foods, learn other histories and traditions, and become comfortable around people whose lives may look very different from their own.
Because ultimately, travel has never just been about collecting destinations.
It has made me more curious, compassionate and empathetic. It has taught me how much we can learn when we step outside what is familiar—and how much people who appear different often have in common.
Those of us fortunate enough to travel have a responsibility to approach the world with humility, respect the communities we visit, and become better stewards of the places we are privileged to experience.
That’s what I hope to pass along to my children.
And that’s what A Weekend Abroad is about today.
The site includes nearly 25 years of travel—from solo adventures and 48-hour weekends to the very different experience of showing the world to two young kids.
The way I travel has changed.
The desire to understand the world hasn’t.
Travel far, travel often, and stay curious.
-BC
