On the island of Chios, Greece- Travel, on any level and in any place, can often be a life-altering experience. Merely breaking your daily routine and seeing unfamiliar people and vegetation can freshen the mind better than most forms of therapy.

Once you allow yourself to cast aside as much baggage as you can, you move into new places where you have the potential to become a new person, either for a moment or forever. All of this is a preface to a description of what happened to me and my wife Roberta when we visited the town of Pyrgi on the Greek island of Chios.

There are rare moments during travel when something magical and mystical happens. I think a person would be lucky to have two or three of these moments during a lifetime of travel. When Roberta and I entered the town of Pyrgi we were immediately immersed into a world where children of all ages play unattended in the streets, running with more joy than will ever be experienced by any American child in a lifetime.