I’ve been thinking for quite some time that there are just SO many places I want to see for myself, I can’t even think of an organized way in which to attack my wish list. Being a Virgo, I am left with the option of making a list and crossing things off. Maybe if you’ve been to some of these places you could offer me tips, or maybe this will inspire you to make your own list, which could be fun. I’m all about cross-referencing 🙂 Who knows, maybe we’ll even end up in a tour group together! Anyway, in no particular order:
- The Shiloh battlefield
- Atlanta – in general
- New Orleans, especially the Garden District
- Venice
- Savannah, Georgia
- Rome
- Paris
- Versailles
- Hampton Court in England
- Mark Twain’s House in Connecticut
- Gettysburg – I’ve been there before but the trip was short and marred by car problems
- Portland
- Seattle
- Salem, Massachusetts
- The Grand Canyon
- The Black Hills
- Laura Ingalls Wilder’s house in DeSmet, South Dakota
- Charleston, South Carolina
- Dublin
- Belfast
- Glasgow
- San Diego Comic Con, especially if Benedict Cumberbatch is gonna be there again
- New York City. I know, it’s crazy. I’ve never been there.
- Miami – my cousin lives there 🙂
- The White House – I’ve seen it from a distance but never got a tour
- New Salem, Illinois, where Lincoln “grew up”
- Vicksburg
- Santa Fe, New Mexico
- Albequerque, New Mexico (Maybe I’ll run into Saul Goodman)
- Alaska in general
- Puerto Rico to take up my friend RaĂşl’s invitation
- Harper’s Ferry
- Arlington Mansion (I should retour the cemetery as well. I was a kid the last time I was there)
- Andersonville Prison
- the James A. Garfield home
- Vienna (especially where Mozart lived)
- Van Gogh’s home (any of them)
- A Broadway play
- Stratford on Avon
- Hadrian’s Wall
- The Great Wall of China
- The Holocaust Museum
- Monticello
- Independence Hall (and Philly in general)
- Edison’s lab in New Jersey
- Where Emily Dickinson lived, if any of that is still around
- Memphis, Tennessee
- The Alamo
- Mexico City
- the hobbit village in New Zealand (amongst other sites)
- Sydney, Australia
- Ghana, to see my friends the Federwitz family
- Montreal
- The Galapagos Islands
- The Great Barrier Reef (while it still exists)
- The Charleston Tea Plantation (I love their tea)
- Yorkshire
- Cardiff, Wales so I can look for Doctor Who
- Barcelona
- Madrid
- Seville
- Salamanca
- The Rock of Gibraltar
- Morocco
- Cairo
- The Great Pyramid
- Athens and the Acropolis
- Buenos Aires
- Guatemala to visit my friend Nic Wirtz (boy would that shock him) 🙂
- SXSW – I would like to go some time. Just because.
- Los Angeles – I feel like I should see it. Ya know?
- Vancouver
- Yellowstone
- Mount Rushmore
- Ocean City, New Jersey – I want to see the hubub all of my friends are making about this place!
- Baltimore – I was only a kid when I was there and it was a very brief stay
- Tokyo – although I would want  a very experienced tour guide who could deal with my crowd aversion 🙂
- Jerusalem (if peace ever gets there)
- Amsterdam
- Odessa, Russia – ancestral home for at least part of my family
- the old Czarist palace, or whatever is left of those places
- Helsinki
- Zurich
- Ground Zero – I am not sure I will ever be able to gather up the strength to do this, but I feel I should
- Berlin
- Bombay
- Vatican City
- Nepal
- Lisbon
- Boulder, Colorado (and a trip to see the Vickery family)
- Kauai
- Costa Rica
- Â Moscow
- the fjords of Norway
- Copenhagen
- Florence
- the painted caves – wherever those are in France
- the Anasazi ruins out west
- Old Faithful
- Switzerland, where my great grandfather came from
Boy, that 100 goes fast. I could go on forever 🙂
Now it’s your turn.
I’ve been to many of these, including Ground Zero in December 2011. NYPD officers were posted around the fenced perimeter and most I met were willing to talk. I thanked each one I saw. That was a harrowing and moving site visit, after which I walked in quiet thought all the way back to my hotel on the Upper East Side. I returned a few years later with one of my brothers. NYC became like a second home in the couple years before 9/11, and I still return on business or to visit friends. I once sat behind Michael Chang at a US Open match, once stood at the curb as Al Gore’s motorcade passed on the street and once flew out to see a friend perform at Lincoln Center.
It’s cliche—but for good reason—to claim a seat and order beignets and coffee at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans. Buy a po’ boy sandwich at Parkway or Guy’s. Do visit the Garden District. Soak up some jazz one night at Preservation Hall. Or go sometime between the end of April and beginning of May for the annual Jazz Festival. And then get drenched in jazz. Or maybe that was the guy next to you spilling his beer. Try Preservation Hall, first.
When you go to Boulder, also head up to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. Keep an eye out on the right side as you go along Hwy 36 or 34 (I forget which, 22 years later) from Boulder, for a house that has a veranda on the first floor and a balcony on the second—both of which wrap around the house. I confess to having coveted that house.
As for Sevilla, I recommend you go in April or October, during one of the festivals. There are several reasons I want to go there, but one in particular: Flamenco. Stay at a place with some character, like Casa No. 7, and consider taking a train from there to Madrid so you can check off another bucket list stop.
I’ll be happy to give you tips for NYC, LA or San Diego. Or maybe I’ll be there to give you a tour. (FYI, I make my escape from the Wisconsin winter each January/February to go to SoCal. Best time to go… IMHO.)
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