Andrea Colognoli Moment

Here’s what happens when 30 before 30 went from Angie to Andrea…..

Destination: Europe

Inspiration: Andrea Colognoli documents his 30 days around Europe.

And the story goes…

To understand the story, take a look at the first email I received on asmallworld last November…..

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Hi Angie,
How are you?A friend from LA talked to me about your blog Angies30before30 and how you went on your dream trip before your 30th birthday.
That was SO inspiring…seriously!
As a matter of fact I was planning to go on a Euro trip with my best friend a while ago but we never really got the chance to actually do it. Well, I read some of your posts, got inspired and now we are going to do this in April for reals. Very exciting!
My friend is actually quitting his job to do this trip.

NO fancy hotels, no chauffeured car, no private flights. I LOVE the idea!

Sorry for reaching out to you directly, I tend not to do this very often but I find myself to be so supportive of your whole experience. With that said, I was wondering if you could share with me some of your insights… places I should go visit, people I should go see, …etc. Any recommendations or contacts would be very much appreciated.

My plan is to hit the following 5 cities: Barcelona. Paris. London. Amsterdam. Berlin
Alright, sorry if this was a long read but here is my personal email address:
Thanks in advance for your advice and consideration.

Andrea Colognoli

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I’d like to think of Andrea as my first follower..and I don’t mean on twitter. I mean the Derek Sivers kind in How to start a Movement on Ted Talks.

Anyone who knows me and gets my 2am emails knows Ted.com has become my classroom for inspiration…..

If you watched the TedTalks video, Andrea saw the nut in me and went to go be a travel nut too! Andrea’s emails reminded me that there’s a reason I’m 31 and still talking about 30:)

Andrea sent this note to me 6 months ago, and I almost forgot to forward my emails – I didn’t realize that Andrea truly planned to follow in my footsteps but Andrea persisted and emailed again and again. So I forwarded the emails I had saved from my favorite people. I sent some of my favorite emails that helped make my 30 before 30 trip….

It wasn’t until Andrea sent an email from Barcelona with a photo that I realized, wait….oh Andrea is male. I have a cute boy experiencing my moments!!

Every day when I received another Italian Andrea email, I got a secret rush to read what moment he’d experienced and see Europe through his eyes.  My friends loved it because he was cute which made it even more fun!  We would send pictures of us……singing karaoke at Camille’s engagement party and he’d send pictures of him in Gaudi Park!

He went and got a tattoo from David Arquette’s friend (Hollywood Mark) in Amsterdam, just like me!

He went to eat dinner at Scrubs star, Sarah Chalke‘s favorite restaurant in Cinque Terre where I was almost two years ago.

Even later, we discovered through some google search that our cute Andrea actually could afford to be taking jets and chauffeurs but instead he chose to see Europe this way.

I’ll leave you with another quote below from Derek Sivers (one I am going to work on) and some photos of Andrea around Europe. If you want to see my pictures in these spots, you’ll just have to read the book!

“Have the courage to follow and to show others how to follow and when you find the lone nut doing something great have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in. “

Can you name each spot Andrea and his friend hit in the photos posted?