Four years ago, my wife and I retired, sold everything and began to travel the world full-time. In just a couple of weeks, we will be returning to North America for a few months to visit relatives and friends. One of the common questions we get from people as we travel is, “What is your favorite place that you have visited? or “What is your favorite thing about traveling?” That is a really tough question. We love our lifestyle and it is hard to choose one place or one thing as our favorite. I am expecting to get this question a lot as we reconnect with friends and family in Canada and the USA, so Susan and I started talking about what our favorite places and things were. Over the next couple of weeks, I will post summaries of our favorite places and experiences.
One of the reasons that the question, “What is your favorite thing about traveling? or, “What is your favorite place that you have visited?” is so hard to answer is that it is hard to compare places and experiences. For example, if someone asked you, “What is your favorite food?” your answer might depend on a couple of things. What meal are we talking about? My favorite dinner is prime rib, for example, but I wouldn’t necessarily want that for breakfast. I love pumpkin pie, but typically only for dessert. Cappuccino is one of my favorite drinks but on a hot afternoon,I might prefer a glass of iced tea. I don’t know that there is any food that I would want to eat for every meal every day no matter how much I liked it.
We thought that the best way to answer the question of what our favorite place or experience is would be to group our favorites into different categories. Here is a sample of what our favorite things categories are. I plan to write a separate blog post dedicated to each of these categories over the coming weeks.
Natural Beauty and Landscapes
The world is a beautiful place. We have visited a huge variety of amazing natural wonders from mountains, to volcanos, islands, rivers, caves, waterfalls, and other places, so many incredible sights in the world to choose from.
Man-made Structures
We love being able to visit structures and sites that were built hundreds, and even thousands of years ago. Many of these are religious structures – cathedrals, temples, and mosques, others are forts, aqueducts, and ancient and modern cities.
Flora and Fauna
Different parts of the world have different plants, birds, fish, and animals. Observing these different types of plants and wildlife has been one of the highlights of our journeys. Particularly amazing to us is being able to see animals in the wild that you would typically only see in a zoo. It is also incredible to see plants and flowers growing wild outdoors that are only available as expensive house plants or imported cut flowers. We are still amazed at being able to swim in the ocean and feel like we are in a huge exotic aquarium.
Food
We like to try all sorts of foods. Sampling the local cuisine is one of the highlights of our experience. We try to eat like locals as much as possible and really enjoy eating tree-ripened fruit that is either too expensive to buy in North America or just plain isn’t available. We’ll cover our favorite and most memorable foods, as well as ones that some people might feel are a little weird.
Festivals and Experiences
Every culture has its own celebrations, festivals and customs. We have been fortunate to see many celebrations around the world. Sometimes we know in advance about a particular holiday or event, but many times we just happen to be in town while something is going on. We have seen many parades, religious festivals, and special events in our travels.
Some of our experiences involve physical activities like swimming under waterfalls, hiking, or watching artisans make their products such as weavers making fabric or rugs.
Museums and Galleries
We check out museums in just about every place we visit. We learn something in every museum we visit, but some places are especially memorable and spectacular. Some of the museums are world-famous like Louvre in Paris, others are less well known but very interesting and enjoyable.
Meeting New People and Making Lifelong Friends
The people we have met and the relationships we have formed are a major part of our experience. Even if we don’t speak the language, we have still had some great interactions with friendly people around the world. You can communicate quite a bit with a smile and some gestures. With translation apps, you can communicate even more.
It is tough for us to develop long-term relationships with those who don’t speak English, unfortunately, although we know at least a few words in over a dozen languages, I am only beginning conversational in Spanish and really can’t speak any other languages. Fortunately, English is the most popular second language in the world and we are have made friends in other countries with people that speak English as a second or third language.
We have made quite a few friends that we hope to keep in contact with for the rest of our lives. Some of them are fellow retirees that we have met in our travels and hit it off with. We have also met expats who are still working but are living abroad. Because we are Christians and try to attend church wherever we go even if we don’t speak the language, we have made friends with many people that we met at church over the past few years.
Places We Might Consider Living or Basing Out Of
People often ask us how long we plan to travel. The answer is, until we are too old and creaky to do so. At some point, we will most likely settle down somewhere, even if to just have a home base and relax between longer trips. At this point in time, we feel it is more likely that we will establish a home base somewhere outside of the USA or Canada. There are a number of places that would make our shortlist.
Keep checking back, I hope to have a blog post on each of these favorites categories before too long.
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