What is the best age to travel?

After reading about how international travel can be one of the best ways to spend money to increase your happiness I then thought of the question: what is the best age to travel? Thinking about how time and finance would play into this idea it seems to be that a time where someone has ample amount of free time and cash of course would be the best age to do it. However if we followed this logic, the best time to travel internationally would be in someones retirement years. I think this is probably the worst time to travel however. If you want to make the most of your travel experience I think doing it the younger you are, the better off you'll be. By travelling international your hoping to jump out of your reality tunnel and into something new and exotic. By doing so, you ultimately alter the way you see the world, and by doing this when your at the end your life you really missing the impact as there isn't much life left for the experience to impact. I think the best time to travel then would be in the summers of college years or directly after college. Doing this allows you to have the necessary amount of freedom to really take advantage of the trip. Your not chained to your parents and your young another to mix with the new generation of the area as well as physical fit enough to do so. In addition to this, you are also old enough to really appreciate your time there and will be impressionable enough for it to greatly effect your life for the better. After thinking on this, it makes me really excited to be travelling to Italy for a week this summer. To be able to leave this country and visit somewhere like Rome and Florence the summer of my Freshman year, to me is probably the best time I could embark on a journey abroad.