Living

Florida woman visits every country in the world, breaks 4 world records





View Gallery

























































She really wanted to get out of Florida.

After graduating from Vanderbilt University in 2017, Pensacola native Taylor Demonbreun decided to do some traveling — on an epic scale. Over the course of 18 months, the now 24-year-old visited every country in the world.

Her journey was record-breaking. On June 10, she accepted four Guinness World Records for her travels: Youngest overall, youngest female, fastest overall and fastest female to visit all 193 sovereign countries — plus the Vatican and Chinese Taipei.

“I took advantage of every possible low-fare flight,” Demonbreun tells The Post of her tight-budgeted trip. She was sponsored by the vast majority of the hotels she stayed in, making lodging costs negligible.

Overall, she estimates she spent $70,000 total on the journey.





“My parents and my brother each picked where in the world they wanted to join me,” she says. Mom chose the Netherlands, Finland, Russia, Denmark, Belgium, Czech Republic and Hungary, while her bro accompanied her to Japan, South Korea and China. Dad tagged along to Australian and New Zealand.

For the remaining 183 globe-trots, Demonbreun flew solo.

“I met a lot more people because I was traveling by myself,” she says. (Full disclosure: When she reached her final destination — Canada — her family was there to greet her.)

Demonbreun doesn’t like to play favorites, but two places do stick out. “Iceland was absolutely beautiful — and Singapore was somewhere I always wanted to travel.”





The adventure was far from Demonbreun’s first taste of the world. During her junior year studying abroad in London, she visited 20 countries. “I traveled pretty much every weekend,” she says.

The following summer, she scored an envious internship at a Wall Street investment bank. “I thought it was what I wanted to do,” says the econ major. “I got there and thought, oh, maybe I don’t.”

So she spent her final semester of college planning the record-breaking trip: “I thought, ‘Where can I go?’ — and then I realized, I kind of want to go everywhere.”

For those looking to replicate her trip, Demonbreun advises prioritizing paperwork. “Keep on top of the visas,” she says. “It determines a lot and the political environment is constantly changing.”





As for what’s next, “I’d love to write a book. I have a whole lot to share,” she says. “For me, the biggest thing is finding what I love.”





Share this: