Last week, the lovely Jenna published
her Travel List Challenge, based on
this list of the top 100 world sites to visit. She's checked 32 off her list and says, "Travel is without a doubt my biggest passion and if I got paid to travel around the world and document my life, I would do it in a heartbeat." It got me thinking about how I travel and why - I love seeing new places and experiencing new cultures, but I'm not actually very adventurous when it comes to tripping around the globe. My favorite way to travel is alongside someone who knows our destination. I guess that, having grown up in DC and New York, I hate the idea of being a tourist and not knowing my way around. I'd much rather be an insider.
But Jon is terribly adventurous and absolutely loves traveling, especially when there are no maps and no plans. (His dream is to be able to take a few months off work and go from London to Ho Chi Minh City via train. Bye, darling; have a nice time!) So I thought that maybe he and I could make our own Top 25 Travel Challenge together using the official list as a guideline but crafting it to our interests. We tried to mostly pick places that neither of us has been before, but we did include a few that one has been to but not the other. In classically stereotypical fashion, red means that I've been there before and blue means Jon has. Here goes!
We have done quite a bit of traveling together before. Jon and I have very different M.O.s when it comes to globe-trotting, so we're still figuring out how best to compromise, but the trips have been amazing. In the past few years, we've had less time to jet around (though we have gone to Ireland and up and down the East Coast of the United States), but in our first year of dating, when we were students, we went a bit wild:
Yeah, we've been pretty lucky. But are we missing anything from our list? Please give us more suggestions!
Love this! Might have to do my own. I definitely have the travel bug after backpacking around the US and Canada. I also would love to take advantage of the fact that I live within the EU and therefore can go and live somewhere else in Europe for a while. My next travel goal is to backpack around Europe for a few months - as well as the normal citybreak holidays!
ReplyDeleteLove this and think I will do this! I totally have the travel bug and am lucky that i have been to over 60 countries, but there are so many more i want to go to, and take our kids to! I always, always recommend the Baltic in Europe (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), one of our favorite trips we have ever taken, and Luang Prabang, Laos in SE Asia. I also loved Melbourne, and New Zealand! And South America is amazing (Chile, Easter Island, Peru and Argentina particularly!)
ReplyDeleteI am very jealous of all this travelling!
ReplyDeleteMilly
@ www.asensibleheart.com
Such a great idea! I'm so jealous you guys got to do so much traveling as students.
ReplyDeleteI'd definitely add Hawaii to the list. I basically got paid to go there (not as glamorous as it sounds... cruise ship life...) but I'd go back in a heartbeat! Maui and Oahu were my favorite islands.
2009 seems to have been an awesome and busy year for you! I am very jealous of all of your travels!!
ReplyDeleteBeing able to enjoy traveling together is a sign of a healthy and long-prospering couple. My partner and I only really knew after we'd traveled together that we were in it for the long haul (hello travel metaphor!). Best of luck with your future travels. I can personally recommend Kyoto: it has stunning architecture (especially religious architecture), views and food.
ReplyDeleteyes, do, and let me know so I can check it out! and I was thinking... a "citybreak" is such a European concept because it's so easy and cheap to hop over to another country! lucky :)
ReplyDelete60! whoa nelly. you win! your kids are going to have the BEST experiences.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize how much we had done in such a short window till I wrote this post! Oh, to have flexible schedules again... haha
ReplyDeleteit was! don't think we could have kept it up though - especially not financially!
ReplyDeletewell. we MOSTLY enjoy traveling together. we still have some hiccups! but we're getting there :)
ReplyDeletesuch travelers! I love this and kind of want to steal this idea :)
ReplyDeleteTwo things: 1) if you go to Napa, make sure you hit my home town of Sonoma right next door. You won't be sorry
2) confession: I did a LOTR horseback tour through a lot of the scenery on the South Island. it was AWESOME. The north island has more of the actual structures though
Um, yeah... The LPV!
ReplyDeleteI'm so jealous that you have been able to do a lot of traveling! I love going to new places, but unfortunately growing up we couldn't afford to take expensive trips all over the place. Heck, the first time I flew on a plane wasn't until I was 17! Nick and I are still struggling with the financial aspect of being able to travel but I hope that we can do it one day!
ReplyDeleteI should have added a disclaimer, though it makes everything sound less glamorous! it's a lot cheaper to travel to exotic places when you're based in Europe already, we went to Thailand with Jon's family, and the Azores trip was an accident that I'll have to write about another time. but yes, we have been amazingly lucky! next holiday: Charleston :)
ReplyDeleteI mean, that's just such an obvious given that I didn't think I needed to specify.
ReplyDelete:P
do it! I'd love to read. and haha I love all the secret LOTR fans that this brings out of the woodwork :)
ReplyDeleteah Thailand always looks so amazing in photos! I would love to go
ReplyDelete