55

Today is my 55th birthday. That's ten years (and 11 birthdays) that I've started a blog post words similar to that. That's a long time to be blogging about traveling around the world. I know I've said something like I'm glad to be alive and healthy and still able to do what I love every year I've been writing this thing and it's no less true this year than in past years. I still love it. I love the thrill of landing somewhere new and exploring. I love the thrill of going back somewhere that I love again and again (I'm looking at you, New York and Los Angeles) and either doing the same things I've done before or finding some new gems. Or both. Preferably both.

This year I feel like the shackles have come off. The loosening (or just complete elimination) of restrictions on travel due to COVID have freed us to travel all over the place again and we've taken advantage. Scotland. England. Costa Rica. Vienna. Brno. Bratislava. Uganda. Rwanda. Zanzibar. Everywhere I've blogged about in the last 12 months has been outside of the United States. It's the first year I've been writing a birthday post that I can stay that.

That's not to say those are the only places we traveled in the past year. We did manage to squeeze in a long weekend in Los Angeles for three straight nights of Duran Duran concerts and we did, of course, make it to New York City for a weekend in early December. Los Angeles and New York. I'm telling you...

This past year we have traveled by ourselves (meaning just the two of us together) and we have traveled with friends (or friend, as it turns out) and we have traveled with a group of complete strangers. As stressful as traveling with a random group of folks is sometimes, we also found some inspiration on that trip in a couple approximately 25 years our senior who were still able to trek to find gorillas in the Ugandan mountains. That's what I want to be doing when I'm in my late 70s. No sitting around at home in a chair for me when I'm almost 80.

The D Tram in Vienna. We took this (and similar trams) everywhere in that city.

I have found so much that I love over the past year. Scottish whisky. The entire Isle of Mull. Puffins. Gannets. The Hollywood Bowl. Lychees. Tortuguero National Park. Toucans. Scarlet macaws. Kingfishers. Plantains and Gallo pinto for breakfast. Viennese Christmas markets. Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17. The public transportation system in Vienna. Chicken schnitzel. Wild chimpanzees and gorillas mere feet from where we are standing. White sand beaches. More kingfishers. My first tuk-tuk ride. So much more. Finding new things away from home never gets old.

One of the things I do on this date every year is assess how I've done against my goals. At this point, I should be completely done with the travel goals I set for myself when I turned 50. I'm not. On this date last year I noted that I still had two goals unfulfilled: (1) visiting every state in the United States and (2) finally making it to Angkor Wat. I've done neither. I've made no progress on my goals in the last year. I'm going to have to take a mulligan. 

I said last year that I might have to do this. COVID. What can I say?

And since I'm not complete with the last five years' worth of goals, I'm not making any new ones. Not yet. I have to finish what I committed to before I make another list. So for this year, at least, I'm traveling without a new five years worth of goals. I hope I can deal.

So what's on tap for the next year? Well, we may at some point in the next 12 months set foot in a certain Hindu temple in Cambodia. It's booked. And if there's no global pandemic or anything else to get in the way then we can check that one off the list. Other than that? Finishing up our 2020 cancelled trips and finding more Game of Thrones sights somewhere along the Adriatic Sea in Croatia before heading to Athens for the first time. That doesn't seem like it's enough for a whole year. There may be one or two other little trips in there somewhere.

Year 11 starts today. Cheers and here's to another successful year of exploring. I'm excited to see what we can find in the next 12 months.

"Her name is Rio." Duran Duran at the Hollywood Bowl.