The only computer game I remember playing as a kid was Carmen Sandiego. And her last name always bothered me. San. Diego. Not one word. Two words. But it was always fun because even though they sent you limited places and you got silly cartoony stereotypical touristy pictures of the locations, it really inspired me to learn more about other places.
Remember Encyclopedia Britannica? Remember how incredibly slow it was? How long it took to load anything? I spent a good amount of time on that just reading about places to go. I'd make lists of places I wanted to when I was X age. 13. 16. 18. 21. 30. I'm stuck at 30 now. I'm fairly certain that if I let myself go any higher, I won't go anywhere until I'm retired. And while spending my retired years travelling (damnit I'm British sometimes, leave me alone) the world with a small group of friends or my SO sounds absolutely wonderful, I don't want to wait that long. I also fear by then all I will want to do is take tours. I won't want to plan everything myself and I won't have the energy to.
I'll exclude my list of things to do/places to go in the US (NYC ball drop, D.C., Grand Canyon to name the top 3) and jump straight to everything foreign.
I will ski on three continents. North America can count, but I only count foreign countries. So Canada's one. I've been promised Whistler (where the Vancouver Olympics just were) since I was 12. It. Will. Happen. I've also decided I need to spend 5+ days in Vancouver. It's too pretty of a city for me to be satisfied with merely passing through. Maybe I should just stay there until I can say sorry with a Canadian accent. I swear, they add an h or a w in there and it makes a world of difference. (I should add "Canadian accent" to the list of bonuses for a guy, huh?)
I'm going to backpack Europe. It will take at least 2 weeks. Must see cities are Amsterdam, Rome (with side trip to Pompeii (so I guess that means Naples too)), Paris, London, Barcelona. Oh, and I'm skiing the Swiss Alps. So whatever city gets that task done. Those are just the musts. Extras...Torino. But I figure if I'm skiing the Swiss Alps, what's a tiny side trip to the 06 Olympics host city? And Nice - heard it's super pretty and has good food. Venice. Okay! Moving on!
I will go back to Delos and fully explore the island and ruins.
Japan. Yes, I want to go to Tokyo and Kyoto and Hiroshima and Nagano (and there's the third continent!), but I also want a local to take me around their hometown and go to temples and shrines and parks that aren't on the top 10 lists of temples and shrines and parks to visit in Japan. I want to walk down streets where I'm the only foreigner while having a conversation in my broken Japanese with a friend. I don't have a desire to know other countries in this way.
Sydney has an unexplainable appeal to me. It just seems like it would be a nice city to visit for a relaxing vacation where you don't really do much. Spend a week, week and a half, just in the city, visiting beaches, wandering around malls. Of course you'd have to do some touristy things, but with a week and a half, there's plenty of time. If the season's right, hop on over to Thredbo and get a 4th continent.
I also want to go to China and India and Indonesia, but I haven't given too much thought to the trips yet.
There's just so much of the world out there and I'll never be able to understand or reach it all and, for some reason, that leaves me unsettled. I want to have a better understanding of the global society than I do right now. But I'm afraid that if I don't try and understand the world when I am young, I will lose the desire to understand it when I am older. I need to feed my desire to travel to keep it burning.
Anyone looking for a travel partner?
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