What makes your favorite place or favorite trip?

Photo from a ski area in the Italian Alps (Dolomites).

    There are many experience or events that make a place a favorite. It can be a place you always wanted to go and it lived up to your expectations. It could be the beauty or history of the place. There are many considerations.

    One thing that makes me label a place a "favorite" is the people I meet. When you have spent months traveling, you remember the sites and you have the photographs. The one thing that sticks in your mind is the kindness and welcome of strangers.  I don't speak Spanish or Italian or German - at least not well -but I can tell when someone is honestly glad that you visited. 

    I met people like this at Fort Augustus in the Scottish Highlands - I we both speak English (sort of). I have fond memories of the biker who helped me pump gas in the alps.  There was the young woman who tended us on a ship on the Danube, the policeman that helped us in traffic in Italy. There have been people in nearly every place we have visited. I remember them even if they do not remember me. We can recall a kindness received longer than one given.