My travel bucket list

My ultimate dream is to travel the world. But that’s so abstract. So if I’m going to be specific, here are the places and especially the experiences that I really want.

I don’t think there’s a country in the world I wouldn’t want to visit. After all, I would love to go to Alaska too, even though I hate the cold. I’ve already visited a few places. But here’s a list of things I’d like to experience in my travels and where I definitely need to go. Some of them are pretty cliché, but that’s the way life goes, we dream of the cliché ones and on the way to them we meet something even more fabulous that we’ve never heard of…

Big dreams

to visit the city of Petra in Jordan, I must visit my city!
to live in a foreign country and feel like a local, to be a regular at your favourite café,
to see the aurora in every possible shade of color,
go on a Nordic roadtrip – across the Baltic to Finland, to Norway to the northernmost point of Knivskjellodden and back via Sweden and Denmark (or vice versa),
drive around the Iberian Peninsula in a cabrio and reach the southernmost point of Punta de Tarifa,
to drive Route 66 in the US (in a Mustang, for example),
go on a cruise, ideally in the Caribbean (the Caribbean hasn’t happened yet, but the Fjords have),
sleep in the desert in a million-star hotel (half-fulfilled: I have slept in the desert before, but under a full moon, so no stars),
to see a giraffe (but also other animals) in the wild, in a safari in Africa,
learn to dive and see underwater turtles and everything that goes (tiger shark was too),
sleeping in an igloo, like really sleeping, not knocking scythes all night,
to get from Europe to America by boat,
visit all countries of the world (57 / 195),
and, of course, petting donkeys wherever I see them in the world.

Smaller dreams

Those were the bigger and more challenging dreams. And then there are the smaller ones, some easily attainable, others I’ll have to wait for:

to swim with the pigs in the Bahamas (Exuma),
to see the pyramids of Giza,
spend at least one night at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore,
to visit the Taj Mahal,
eat authentic Neapolitan pizza (in Naples),
To see Loch Ness in Loch Ness (or at least the loch),
to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge,
to build a snowman in Alaska,
to see Paris from the Eiffel Tower (now I know that it’s stupid and it’s better to see Paris from above with the Eiffel Tower and the Eiffel Tower is one of those places where you can’t),
a boat trip through the canals of Holland,
to visit the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá,
to be in Provence surrounded by lavender fields,
to see the Amazon rainforest,
drive through Ha Long Bay and wake up in Ha Long Bay,
to drive from Prague to Gibraltar,
throw a dart at the map and go where it fits,
to see the Iguaçu Falls,
to see Niagara Falls,
to visit the Easter Islands,
Buddhist temples in Bagan, Burma (and generally visiting a country with so many Burmese :-),
standing by a geyser in Iceland waiting for it to come,
to visit a colourful little town in Cinque Terre, Italy,
have a BBQ picnic in the desert,
to spin the roulette wheel in Las Vegas,
a balloon ride among dozens of other balloons in Cappadocia, Turkey,
visit the Fjords (by boat from Copenhagen to the Fjords),
have bun cha in Sapa (the one in Vietnam, not Prague),
swimming in a volcanic lake (fulfilled at night in Greece),
to see a volcano sizzling (but not too sizzling),
Bora Bora!,
to go to Bethlehem,
to get a flower wreath made of orchids in Hawaii,
to attend a wedding in a very different culture,
to the most remote inhabited island, Tristan de Cunha,
to be one of the 160 tourists a year in Nauru,
take a ferry to Iceland (with a stop in the Faroe Islands),
go on a Nile cruise to discover the sights of Egypt,
visit coffee plantations and learn about the process of growing, harvesting, drying, preferably in Africa,
to meet penguins in Patagonia,
take a ride on the Orient Express,
to visit the Seychelles and walk on the beach among the granite rocks,
go to Zhangjiajie National Park in China and see the Tianzi Mountains from Avatar,
to smell the sakura trees in Japan,
Christmas in New York – ice skating at the rink, with carols, snow, everything, like in the movies,
visit the Irish countryside and watch Galway Girl in Galway,
take a week-long or longer course in local cooking, for example in Tuscany, or in pastry, preferably in Paris.