Another year has snuck past us, just as it always does. But, looking back at our 2023 resolutions, we think we did ok!
2023 in Retrospect
Laurel did take sailing lessons (John wasn’t actually all that interested, it turns out). She sprained her ankle in the process, and (unrelatedly) hasn’t been on a boat since. But still, that one is done! We each added a number of new countries this year, more than five (seven in fact, but not the same seven). Done! (See the map of countries visited at the bottom of our ‘About Us’ page.) So that’s two, free and clear!
As for the rest, our plans changed, for a number of reasons. We did visit a vineyard in Cyprus, thanks to the kindness of friends there, but didn’t take any longer trips. On the other hand, we have sampled wine from a whole bunch of new wine-growing regions. We still like train trips, and had hoped to take one in the Balkans, but it turns out we’re here in the wrong season. We are looking into the trans-Canadian rail trip for summer. And we still plan to walk the Compostela (we’re putting this off for another year, though). We also still plan to go diving (see below).
We didn’t make it to South America this year; that’s now scheduled for the coming spring. The main attraction there, for us, is the small nations of Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname. Mostly because we haven’t been there. But also because we love places where cultures have mixed in a way that has effects on the food. (Each of these three was a European colony, so it mixes native food cultures with European ones. In the case of Suriname, there’s also an Indonesian influence…)
Luckily, we’re not excessively hung-up on moving through our lists. (Even now, when our lists are so much fun!) We’re all about the planning though; we feel like goal-setting takes us to new and interesting places even when we don’t actually meet our goals. Or come close. So here’s another set!
2024 Travel Resolutions
- John is still working on obtaining Italian citizenship. This might well get finished by the end of 2024, and it might well mean we have to spend more than a few months in Italy.
- And so we are both working, pretty much every day, on improving our Italian.
- We’d like to add another five countries to the list. Because why not?
- We’ve also realised we really like being near the water. So we’ll focus our travels on places with rivers and coastlines.
- We’ll be spending a month this coming year on the island of Bonaire, a diver’s paradise, partly in order to make sure we get some dives in, and to see if we want to make that more a part of our plans in the future. (We both love snorkelling and Laurel did some diving a number of years ago.)
- We have serendipitously been in certain places when other people we knew were going to be there. We’ll be doing that a little more deliberately this year.
We’d love to hear about your travel resolutions for 2024! And Happy New Year, everyone!
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