I’m a newlywed living in the DC metro area. My husband and I are both in our late twenties and work full time jobs. We make decent incomes but don’t have a ton of vacation time and are saddled with house mortgage sized law school student loans. Basically, we’re a lot like you, fellow DC-ite! We shop at Trader Joe’s, we’ve only been to one monument and one Smithsonian museum in the last year and that’s when we had out of town visitors who actually wanted to go sightseeing, but we can barely count the number of times we’ve been to Ray’s Hell Burger in the last month on two hands!
How do we plan to finish this list? We have the time and money for really only one long vacation per year. So we’ll probably never use it on a house share in Dewey Beach or a Carnival cruise to the Caribbean or holiday somewhere where we spend our days in a dark smoky casino or spend our nights in an exotic locale in a familiar American hotel chain. That said, I’m not the type of traveler that just picks up a Lonely Planet guide and backpacks it with 20 dollars in my pocket. (I really don’t do well without daily showers and taking a crap in a hole in the ground? I have and will in the future, I’m sure, but I really really prefer not to.)
This blog is going to be the story of how my husband and I travel to every country on our list, the adventures we’ll have, and the stories we bring home. There will be stories of waterfall rappelling, getting kicked off the back of a horse in the jungles of Costa Rica and eating tons of wonderful, gut-sticking food. I hope that this blog inspires you to travel beyond your comfort zone, to meet interesting characters from across the globe and to see things you’d never think you’d ever see — and to inspire you to create your own personal “Travel List!”
What’s this list?
We sat in the beautiful open air dining room of our resort, watching the azure waves lap against the beach. The fans whirred above us in the thatched roof, casting a light breeze that cooled the hot air against our skins. It was truly the most beautiful place I’d ever been. And I was sad. Seriously, very very sad. “I wish we had booked another day. Maybe another two days… Maybe a week,” I whispered to myself, my voice beginning to croak from a tear. My husband heard me. “We’re in the most beautiful place in the world! We should enjoy it!” “But… I’m just… sad. I just wish we had booked two weeks. One week was just too short,” my voice started to rise as I started to pout. It was the last day of our honeymoon and I, as typical on the last day of every vacation I’ve ever taken, was starting to get a wee bit (okay, a lot) depressed. My husband, knowing me all too well, and knowing I was about to spiral into my typical, slightly pathetic, albeit adorably pouty (so my husband says, because he really is, a great husband), spiral of self-pity, made a suggestion. “I know what will make us happy! Let’s make a list of all the places we want to visit!” I noticed that even my husband, who has been called by many to be the happiest man on this planet, said this with the slightest bit of sadness in his voice. “Yes,” I replied, “But you see, all I want to do is come back here. Every year. Maybe multiple times. Do you think we could get a job at this resort? I know there’s the whole problem with getting a work visa but…” My husband, meanwhile, had gotten a piece of crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket (I still have no idea why he had a piece of paper with him) and a pen and began to write “HONEYMOON LIST.” He interrupted me. “Well,” he said, “Obviously we want to come back here.” He wrote it down and promptly circled it with 10 empty check boxes and checked off one. “See, now we have to come back here 9 times! The paper says so! Let’s see, where else? Europe. Where in Europe? Iceland, Greenland, St. Petersburg, Svalbard.” Oh dear, he was really going to make this list. If I didn’t intend on spending every vacation from now until the foreseeable future in sub-freezing climates, I ought to pipe in. “France,” I said, “Paris, Provence. Italy. Rome, Florence and Venice… you know, before it sinks.” I was starting to get excited! And so, over bites of freshly grilled, freshly caught fish, with our toes digging deep into the cool sand floor of the restaurant, we volleyed back and forth the names of countries and cities, some exotic, some close to home, and some that my husband mentioned that I secretly had to look up on Google Maps when we got home, because I had no idea where they were (really, Svalbard??) and created our “Travel List.” And so, as we finished up our meal, drinking our cool Lion beers, we vowed to each other that we would eventually check off each of the empty checkboxes on our list, until there were none left. “Do you know where I really want to go to though?” I asked. “Where?,” my husband asked, as he began to unfold the crumpled sheet of paper and reach for his pen. I took sip of my beer, feeling the refreshing (and slightly alcoholic!) coolness run down my throat. I stared past the azure waters of the lagoon, up past the white caps where the waves of the Indian Ocean were crashing against the edges of the reef at low tide and into the deep turquoise of the sea and as I began to scan the horizon, “Here,” is all I said.
PACIFIC OCEAN
Fiji
Tahiti
Tuvalu
Vanuatu
Indonesia
ASIA
China — Hong Kong, Fujian, Beijing, the Great Wall, the Terracotta Soldiers
India — Kerala, Mumbai, Delhi, the Taj Mahal
Thailand
Sri Lanka
MIDDLE EAST
Jordan — Petra
Israel — Jerusalem, the Dead Sea
United Arab Emirates — Abu Dhabi
EUROPE
Spain — Granada
UK — London
Italy — Rome, Florence, Vincenza, Venice, home eating tour (http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/travel/11Frugal.html)
Russia — St. Petersburg, Moscow
Greece
France — Paris, Provence
Norway — Svalbard
Iceland
Ireland
Greenland
INDIAN OCEAN
Maldives
Seychelles
AFRICA
Botswana
Mozambique
Egypt
Morocco
South Africa — Capetown, Pretoria
Madagascar
Ethiopia
CENTRAL AMERICA
Costa Rica
Belize — Whale Shark Migration
SOUTH AMERICA
Peru
Chile — Easter Island
Argentina — Patagonia, Buenos Aires
The Galapagos
THE CARIBBEAN
Bermuda — Pink Sands Beach
Barbados
St. Lucia
OCEANIA
Australia — The Great Barrier Reef, Melbourne, Sydney
New Zealand
Papua New Guinea
NORTH AMERICA
United States — Grand Canyon, Napa/Sonoma, Sequoia National Park, Chicago, Seattle, Yellowstone/Grand Tetons, Hawaii, Niagara Falls
Canada — British Columbia (Vancouver), Alberta (Calgary, Banff), Toronto, Montreal
Mexico — Monterrey, Whale Shark Migration
