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| Penrith Castle, England |
Sometimes some of the simplest blog concepts turn out to be the hardest to actually write. While we were on the Queen Mary 2 in December, I told Lori we should write another blog to update our travel wish list (a transatlantic crossing on the QM2 has a way of getting you thinking about travel dreams). My thought was, now that we’ve tackled a few more of our travel dreams, we should cross them off the list and add a few more.
Not to mention the most common question we’re now asked (by a mile) is, “Where are you going next?”
The problem is that the travel addiction seems to compound exponentially. Having challenged Lori to think of places we want to go and things we want to do, we both began to collect a list that far exceeds the list we began last year’s 6-month adventure with. So much for “crossing things off our list”.
I guess in that regard, we’re anti “bucket list” people. We just don’t think of travel that way. We like slow travel, not solely “go-see-do-move-on” travel. We like being opportunistic. We like being temporary regulars. And we especially like making new friends everywhere we go, not something you can exactly plan out in advance. Nevertheless, we came up with a list, but (trust me) you’d fall asleep reading through it. Suffice it to say we’re interested in seeing pretty much every corner of the globe as long as there’s good food and friendly people there.
Instead, we boiled our travel aspirations down to four “themes”. Three of them we’ll work on this year and next, but the fourth will take some effort (as in time and money) to accomplish. And while this list is light on a few major places of interest (4 of the 7 continents, to be precise), don’t think we’re not interested in places like South America or Australia anymore. We’re just saving those for later.
Here are our current travel aspirations:
Americana – We’ve been all over America. We’ve seen more of our country than 99% of Americans, but that still leaves quite a healthy list of places yet to see, including Alaska and the states of the upper Rockies. We have a yearning to see more of the West’s national parks, particularly Yellowstone (which we’re planning to visit in July). Look also this year or next for us to go on a “Hall of Fame” trip to hit the Football, Baseball, and Rock-and-Roll Halls of Fame.
Dance Travel – We’ve decided that we’re going to seek out opportunities to stretch our dance legs. As I write this, we just completed a big band dance event in Asheville, North Carolina. We’re hoping to go to a dance club in New York when we pass through in March. And we’ve collected a list of ballroom dance venues with potential for us to visit this year, including a casino in Las Vegas (June) and a dinner-dance club in Seattle (July-August).
Eastern Europe – Our only regret (if you could call it that) from our 2014 European travels is that we sacrificed our time in the Balkans. When we return later in 2015, we definitely don’t want to miss Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro again. We still want to visit the Czech Republic, plus we now also want to see Poland.
Round-The-World-Cruise – Cunard announced a couple of months ago that they’d offer 3 round-the-world cruises in 2016, one on each of their “Queens”. The Queen Mary 2 will set out from Southampton in January, and 120 days, 38 ports, and 26 countries later, return to Southampton. This, if you couldn’t tell, is the aspiration that we’ll have to work on (it’s not cheap). But oh, how nice it would be to spend 4 months at sea, at constant travel yet with no decisions much more complicated than how late to sleep, whether to eat in the buffet or the restaurant, and how late we’d stay up dancing.
