There are only two weeks until we jet off again and while we are excited to get back on the road, we will miss our friends and families. We didn’t have nearly enough time to spend with everyone as we would have liked and now time has run out. We will try to cram as much visiting time as possible in the next two weeks, but we know we will miss out on many connections.

New Friends

Today we want to share with you, the new friends that we made this summer. We had many a tweet up, presentation, travel tribe and media trip to meet new and like minded friends that have inspired us and touched our hearts.

We met amazing people on our Princess Cruise, at TBEX and the Travel Tribe that we now can truly call our friends. The next few days, we are going to introduce you all to our new friends that met this year. They are some of the coolest and fun people on the planet and everyone should check out their blogs to see more.

Meet the Toronto Travel Tribe.

We were lucky enough to spend some time on many occasions with these people at the Toronto Travel Tribe meet ups. We laughed, we learned, we brainstormed and we had a great time. Just when we feel that we are starting to get to know all of you so well we are leaving.

I feel that one of you are going to have to bring a computer to the next meeting so that we can take part via skype!

Here’s to some of the fearless people that we had a chance to get to know personally this summer. You have all inspired us and we can now call you all our friend.

1. Evelyn Hannon of JourneyWoman – one of the first travel websites we discovered when we looked into travel blogging was JourneyWoman. I remember our first tweet together and how honoured we were to get a retweet from her. She started JourneyWoman before solo travel was common, especially solo women travel. Before the Internet was used commonplace, she printed off newsletter and stuffed envelopes and inspired women around the world to get out there and live their life. At 70 Evelyn is going strong as the leading women’s travel website on the Internet. She has 75,000 newsletter subscribers, she has been featured in Time Magazine, on USA today and Canada AM just to name a few. Listening to her speak is captivating. With her engaging presence, she tells amazing stories of her fears, accomplishments and stuggles while travelling.

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2. Lauren and Todd of Globetrooper - The best thing we could have done was check a facebook message one night in July. A couple of days later we were in Montreal for a spur of the moment weekend with Todd and Lauren. They had 3 free suites for the weekend and invited us along. We made great friends with them and even managed to meet up a couple more times after the fact. They have one of the coolest and fastest growing websites on the internet and are filled with extraordinary ideas. Every time we have a conversation with them we are not only pumped up to do something big, we are also amazed at how well we all get along. We are expecting big things from Todd and Lauren. With write ups in Mashable, Killer Start ups, and MakeUseOf.com they made a huge splash into the world of travel. In a few short months, they are pulling in numbers that the rest of us can only dream about and that goes for the top togs of travel blogging too!

3. Janice of SoloTraveler – Our fearless leader of the Toronto Meet Plan Go event, Janice is a fantastic woman that has a compelling story. From family traveller to SoloTraveler, she is an inspiration to everyone that says “maybe tomorrow we will take that trip of a lifetime.” Even though there were a number of reasons as to why they shouldn’t go, Janice and her family left for a trip of a lifetime for a 10 month trip around Europe. It was a wonderful time together and if they didn’t seize the day and take that step of doing something extraordinary, it never would have happened. After returning home, Janice’s husband passed away due to a rare disease. Janice is living her life without regrets, she has carried on as solo traveler and is an inspiration to us all to live your dreams now because you never know if there will be a tomorrow. We value our friendship with Janice and the way her smile lights up a room when she enters. She has a vibrancy and youthfulness about her that only a woman living her dream can have.

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4. Katy of Intrepid Travels - I am so happy I sat down with the two Katy’s from Intrepid Travels to chat about well, I am not sure what…the wine had gone to my head by then:-) Intrepid Travels is a cutting edge travel company that takes tourists off the beaten path to exotic destinations around the world. We are so excited to be going to China with Intrepid, but that is not the reason that we are happy to have met Katy. We are happy that we met a woman that is interested in promoting travel in Toronto. Intrepid has slide shows and media presentations each wednesday at their store on Bloor Street, They have tours around the Toronto area and they are open to any idea that get’s people excited about travel. She has come out to Travel Tribe meetings and even hosted one at their store. If Katy weren’t at the tribes, there would definitely be a void in the room. She is a woman with a great presence and there is a reason that the entire crowd wants to talk to her. Fun, successful and a generous woman, we are happy to not only call Katy a colleague, but also our friend.

5. Alicia of Life Behind the Lens - I have never met a lady with so much on the go! It took a few Travel Tribes before we had the chance to actually talk to Alicia and wow, I wish we made the time earlier. There are always so many people to meet and so little time, but if you find yourself out at a Toronto Travel Tribe, seek this woman out. Filled with great energy and ambition, we see Alicia doing something amazing in the future. She has so many projects on the go, I don’t know where she finds the time. Between working in Television promoting the World’s Best Travel Job, running the Toronto Travel Tribe and helping out Intrepid’s Scavenger Hunt, she is a mover and a shaker. But not only that, she is a great lady! She is funny, smart and supportive and giving. It was great fun having a Caesar with Alicia and it is a bummer that we only just got to know her and now we are leaving.

6. Marcello of WanderingTrader – Marcello came out to a couple of Travel tribes, but we also spent time with him in Montreal with Lauren and Todd. He is now is South America, but it was great to get to know him for a short time in Canada. He is a guy that has business and success on his mind. Day trading by day, fearless traveler by night, Marcello certainly takes life by the horns and lives by what he says. If Marcello says he is going to be in Africa next Spring, he is going to be in Africa next spring. This is something we have loved about meeting people similar to us. You know how most people are dreamers and say that one day they will go somewhere? Well each of these people just do it. We haven’t met other people like that in the past. Our friends say they would like to go to Africa or they would like to try something new, but life keeps holding them back. This group of travelers has an idea, they figure out how it can be done and they do it.

7. Mariellen of Breathe Dream Go – Co-Founder of the Toronto Travel Tribe, we all wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Mariellen. She brought us all together for the first meet up in Toronto early in the summer. A calm and centered person, you can see her years of meditation and yoga have kept her grounded. A lover of India, Mariellen sees the best things in life. Her optimism motivates me to be a better person. She has nothing but good things to say about everyone and everything with a genuine heart. She shares her fears and dreams openly and listens intently when someone speaks. Happy to let others have the spotlight, she has the confidence to know that she can simply be. Her youthful smile and quiet grace always attract an audience, even when she isn’t trying. We will probably see Mariellen in India in January and the amazing thing about having friends that travel the world is that it is never good-by, it is see you on the flip side.

There were other amazing people and now that I am writing this, I feel that there should be a second Meet Your Travel Tribe.

There is the always smiling Natalie Taylor, Jeannie of NomadicChick that we just didn’t get enough time with but loved her bubbly personality, the lovely and talented photographer Erin Hogue, Melanie Fine who has the best laugh and is a kindred spirit, if we had more time together, I know we would be inseparable, Diane of Girls Getaway who we really must get to know better because she is fabulous, Gregg Tilston who we just met at the last tribe, but is such an interesting guy filled with great stories and excellent Internet knowledge, and the super people at Gap Adventures that are so much fun to be around.

Friends of Summer is a post from: The Planet D: Canada's Adventure Couple