Easily one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to, I visited the Isle of Skye while road tripping around the UK with my mom.  There seemed to be an endless supply of sheep, purple heather, and vast, open skies.

“Do you know why there are so many cats in Morocco?” our desert excursion guide, Black Stars, asked with a smirk on his face.

“Because they all run away from China where they’ll be eaten!” he laughed, answering his own question.

There really were cats everywhere.  Even as I sat in the airport waiting for my flight back to France, a cat ran by me through the terminal and into the public bathroom.

While studying in France, my friend and I rented a car on our midterm break and spent a week driving around the entire coast of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

After graduating I spent a month working as a teaching assistant in Cape Town, South Africa.  From there I flew to London, where I met my mom, then on to Croatia for a week.  We returned to London, rented a car and drove around much of the beautiful countryside in England, Scotland, and Wales.  Here are a few select photos from that trip.

In 2009, after spending a month studying in South Africa, my friend and I skipped the second leg of our return flight and spent a month backpacking Europe.  We started in Amsterdam then headed south to Antwerp, Gent, and Brussels, up to Berlin, across the border to Prague, back to Germany to Munich, south to Vienna for a day, overnight through the Alps to Venice then Florence and Rome, finally taking a flight to Athens to spend time in Santorini and the rural village of Vassaras.  It was my first attempt at travel photography.