A month of gifts, day 18: The Gift of Travel

The thing is, once you've traveled beyond your own comfortable corner of the world, you will never be the same again. And that's a good thing. 

(The pictures are from my trip to what was then the Soviet Union. It was 1987, I was about to start my senior year in high school, and I got to see some really amazing things.)

 (Summer palace of the Persian Empire, near Baku, Azerbaijan)

 (Tower and wall, in the old city of Tallinn, Estonia)

 (Courtyard)

 (Soviet sailors in Leningrad)

 (Memorial and cemetery for the Siege of Leningrad during WWII)

(Tallinn cathedral)

(The Tsar Cannon in the Kremlin, Moscow)

(Cathedral, Moscow Kremlin)

(View from the palace, Tsarskoe Selo)

(Children at a summer camp near Sochi)