Travel Daydreams
For today's newsletter, I feel like daydreaming. Earlier in this newsletter cycle I wrote about my road trip daydreams, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, today's daydreams also feature travel. But I want to be a little less grounded today, a little less focused on our current pandemic reality, and a little more gosh, it would be cool to visit Thailand someday. So, here are 5 trips of varying complexity and likelihood that I thought it would be fun to imagine.
Thailand: Let's start with the example country I gave. Thailand has been towards the top of my list of places to visit since I was in college. It's actually kind of surprising that I haven't made it there yet considering how much I've traveled and how long I've wanted to go there. Some of you reading probably know that when I backpacked around Europe after college, it was partly because I was too scared to backpack around Southeast Asia. I had hoped that I would enjoy my experiences traveling solo in Europe so much that I would plan another trip and head to Southeast Asia as a more experienced backpacker. But that's not how it worked out. At this point, I would still love to take a multi-month trip to Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, but it would probably look pretty different from the trip I imagined when I was 22.
Barcelona: I studied abroad there, I concluded the aforementioned European backpacking trip there, I brought E there for his first big international travel experience, and, most recently, I visited with my friend Lisa in 2019. Barcelona is my favorite city in the world and I never get tired of it. Specifically, I hope my next trip to Barcelona is with Eben and Laura because we've been talking about it for years and I'd love to finally show them around 'my' city.
Poland: The Polish border is just a 1-hour drive east of Berlin, and I really want to visit with E. I've been to Poland twice - Krakow was one of my favorite stops on my European backpacking trip and my mom and I spent a couple of days in Wrocław when she visited us in Berlin in 2018. My grandfather was born in Poland and my mom's side of the family is proud of their Polish roots and I just have a real affinity for the country, which I'd like to share with E. Plus, it's so close! We could pop over the border for lunch!
Puerto Rico: Our friend Steph recently moved there for graduate school and I love visiting places where my friends live because it gives the trip such a different vibe. It's fun to be shown around by someone who speaks the language and has insider knowledge, but it's best when you also have a personal connection to that someone.
India: I visited northwest India for three weeks in 2013 and it was an experience that challenged me. Parts of the trip were great and delicious and parts of it made me uncomfortable and physically ill. India is a huge country though and I'm starting to feel ready to go back and see more of it. In particular, I'd like to spend some time in the tea-producing regions in the northeast.
Where in the world would you like to go someday?