While on vacation with my husband, taking our usual daily walk, I asked him to think about something that has been on my mind for a while.
We are still young (-ish) and healthy, but we are getting reminders of our mortality regularly: his mother’s passing, his father’s decline, my mother’s surgery.
In the past few months, my parents have lost several friends and acquaintances that I had known for decades, and one of my local friends lost her mom.
Some of my patients are showing signs of decline as well. They aren’t quite family, but I still find it quite stressful.
I’m starting to feel a little pressure to make sure that I actually make it to some of the places that I always figured I would get to…someday.
Mr. PiN and I agree that, in retrospect, both our sets of parents stopped traveling around age 75.
We have a while yet before Mr. PiN reaches that age, but I think it is time for us to consider where we would like to travel before he does.
And since I am a bit younger than he is, and may work for a few more years, I would like to start planning to take some of those trips before I retire.
I would like to hear from Mr. PiN which are his must-see locations, but am starting to think about my own list. Though I am lucky that I have already been able to travel to amazing places, I still have a long list of places I would like to go, or go back to.
To make a preliminary list to discuss with Mr. PiN, I am thinking about 3 different lists:
- The real bucket list. Places I really, really want to go; which I have wanted to see since I was really young.
- Destinations that sound amazing, which other people rave about, but which I am not 100% that I truly want to go. But I would think about going.
- Places I still want to go, or return to, but not in group #1.
For me, I think my personal bucket list definitely includes:
- Australia and New Zealand. I have wanted to go there for ages, especially New Zealand, long before The Lord of the Rings was filmed. If you were to ask me, I don’t really know why. I suspect it is to see an area of natural beauty, with reputedly clean air. And, of course, Australia has koala bears, kangaroos, and the Great Barrier Reef. Watching shows made there—with different bird calls and vistas on the screen—has certainly whetted my appetite.
- Alaska. I suspect for more of the same: glaciers, and wildlife (from a distance), and seeing a way of life that I suspect is a little different from mine in the lower 48 (but maybe not so different that it’s totally foreign).
- Seeing the Milky Way and Northern Lights (this is more of an experience, than a particular location. But still, something I want to do).
- Egypt and the Pyramids. There are many reasons why this trip has fallen off my mental list for years (think, sinking boats and satisfied crocodiles, kidnappers, and general crime), but the appeal endures. To see monuments over 4000 years old is mind-boggling to me.
Some of these trips–I’m thinking about my top destination, Australia–may require more time than I can reasonably take off from practice. That trip may need to wait until I stop working. However, some of these trips can certainly be done in 1 to 2 weeks, if I plan for them.
There are two more trips that I’m not sure about. Other people rave about them, and I think that if we want to travel there, we need to be reasonably fit to go:
- Antarctica. My parents went not long after my father retired, and had an amazing trip. They still talk about it nearly 20 years later. Right now, for me, that sounds like something more to have been to, than to go to. (Also, I am pretty sure Mr. PiN would not like the boat ride; considering how seasick I get, I might not either).
- The Galapagos Islands. I enjoyed reading about them in The Origin of Species. I hear many people talk about them, and have read a ton of articles, mostly about how over-tourism is bad for them. I suspect the boat trip might be one of the issues.
Then there are the trips I would like to take, but which maybe aren’t top of the list locations. Some of these could certainly be done during my vacation time while I am still working (but not all):
- A trans-Atlantic crossing. Ironic, isn’t it, since I am worried about sea sickness. However, I love the ocean, and the idea of spending a week or 2 crossing the ocean the slow way sounds restful and lovely. Of course, I want to go on an old-fashioned trip, in the style of the very wealthy (lying on a deck chair with warm blankets, someone to bring me hot tea, or strolling around the deck for my exercise, with a comfortable cabin if the weather is inclement), not like the poorer majority (stuck in small rooms in steerage).
- Portugal. It sounds lovely, with old castles and beaches and tasty pastries. I have never been, but Mr. PiN spent a month there when backpacking through Europe (he ran out of money and took a job).
- India. A vast area of the world with a long history. I have heard that no one who goes to India returns unchanged, which is both exciting and scary to think about.
- Returning to multiple places across the globe that I had the opportunity to visit when younger, which I always told myself I would come back to…later.
Something to think about—especially if I never get to any of these places (thanks to COVID restrictions, or political unrest, or infirmity)—is how thankful I am to have been to amazing places already. Or, as was recently written about on Accidental Fire, my reverse bucket list.
If it should happen that I never again travel further than a day’s drive from home, I can look back on some of my trips and be so thankful that I had the opportunity to:
- Drive solo across the USA, seeing multiple parks and monuments along the way. Not to mention visiting with friends and family.
- See the Colosseum in Rome.
- See the originals of many of the Renaissance masterpieces I studied in college.
- Visit Normandy, with the Bayeux Tapestry and Mont St. Michel.
Plus many other trips, which I won’t list because I am embarrassed to list them all.
Most of these trips were planned around visiting friends, or getting airfare deals. Making a list of destinations, with plans to work my way through it more deliberately, feels a little weird. But I think it might be time to try.
Do you have a few true bucket list trips to plan? Reverse bucket list trips to look back on?