I believe a lot of people here will be travel addicts like me. After my graduation, I have travelled to a few countries like Mexico, Portugal, France, and a few Middle Eastern countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. I am planning another one pretty soon. What's your favourite destination for travel? I would love to read interesting stories about your travels.
I have done a lot of travelling, but not a lot outside of the North / Central America. So far my favorite vacation I have done was probably Alaska. We did a two-week tour which was 7 days on land and 7 days on a cruise ship and it exceeded all of my expectations. Every day I was blown away by the spectacular scenery and general vibe of the place. #2 would be the first time I went to Hawaii. Again, we did a tour type of thing where we hit 4 islands in 13 days. Every island is different from each other and spectacular in their own way.
Montana and the 'Old West' parts of the US.
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Montana is on my bucket list, but have not made it there yet.Originally Posted by markwoll
Did most of North Am (incl Mexico), while based in Toronto, from the Beaufort/Bering to New Orleans, from Nova Scotia to Vancouver to LA, but haven't really done the "old south". Quebec many times, the Maritimes and New England.
I spent about one year in Mexico - from Yucatan to Baja Cal.
Also did a raid thru the Andes from Caracas to well-south of Santiago (the intent was Tierra Del Fuego, but lacked time), but not the east coast (Brazil).
Done most of Europe & surroundings (North, southwest, Adriatic, Morrocco, extreme west of Turkey, the Isles)
Definitely not big on hot & humid tropics, and let's face it, I've become kind of opposed to take planes for vacations for the last 25 years (global warming issues), so I've really cooled off the travelling.
Places I'd still want to visit, though:
Oman
Georgia/Armenia
Ethiopia
Kirghiztan/Tadjikistan
Malaysia
Ozzie/Kiwiland (especially the South Island)
Siberia/Kamtchatka (at least fly over it)
Madagascar/Seychelles/Mauritius
Some unsafe lands like Tibet, Xingjiang, Burma, Yemen, Persia/Iran, Kurdistan
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
I was lucky enough to spend a couple of summers on Capri when I was a kid. That was the best! Amazing food, cafes, and people-watching.
4 islands in 3 weeks? Wasn't it a bit rushed?
Man that list is really long. Looks like it will take couple oif years unless you're a nomad traveller. Btw did you visit Spain too?
My wife and I have traveled pretty extensively in Europe including Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and I'll throw in England, Ireland and Scotland. We've also traveled throughout the US, Canada, and one trip to Mexico (we have a second planned for next month). My wife travels to South Korea frequently and I accompanied her once and we had a nice vacation after she finished her business there.
Portugal definitely ranks very highly for us, especially the region in the north, the Douro valley, Porto and north of that into Minho and Braga, but we've seen the country pretty much from north to south (still need to do the Azores). We had a wonderful trip to Greece and we want to go back and do some of the islands. Our focus was on the mainland partly because my wife had business there.
We've been to Italy twice once doing the classic Rome. Florence Venice troika, then another trip focused in Tuscany centered around looking at Etruscan sites. We got up to Bologna on that trip and that is a wonderful city well worth visiting. We still want to do the Naples region down the Amalfi Coast and into Sicily at some point. European countries are extremely rich in things to do, culture and history, so there are many places that we want to go back to as well like France and even Germany after having not been there for a long time, or to visit areas we missed.
As far as recommendations for places you haven't been, I would definitely say Italy, Greece and the UK would be worth your time. Turkey was amazing but it's a bit more difficult. We were on a very specialized tour with an art history professor so we got exposed to things we might not otherwise have seen. We did go out to Cappadocia on our own and that was wonderful.
If you want any more specific tips about any of these places, let me know. Wherever you go, have fun!
Bill
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We also love Mohonk Mountain House in the Hudson Valley, which is an awesome huge ski-lodge type place on a nature preserve. Expensive but a great place for families.
I am a mountain freak. Travelled a lot hiking through mountains around the world.
These days I cannot morally justify it to myself anymore that I release the equivalent of severals tons of co2 in the air for my relaxation. I decided i can relax just as well a bit closer to home.
So my favorite destination was, is, and will remain, the Alps.
UK--started in Edinburgh, made a few other stops around it. Wales, then down to Liverpool, Bath, Stonehendge, then on to London. It was really enjoyable, I could see going back.
San Francisco--nice visit, though it's been a while and somewhat expensive, but yeah, with the exception of all the panhandlers, it's worthwhile. Same thing for San Diego, CA.
Jamacia--mostly kickback and relax on the beach.
We are tentatively planning a trip with some of my wife’s family to Austria next spring and hope to spend some time in the Alps.
I went on a work trip to Switzerland about 10 years ago and went to the town of Lucerne which was at the edge of the mountains and it was really beautiful.
I was disappointed in San Fransisco. I have nothing against homeless / street people, but there were so many of them and they were really aggressive compared to other cities I have been in. Twice I almost got into altercations with people in the middle of the afternoon in busy parts of the city just minding my own business. It was really weird.
The prices in San Fransisco were ridiculous too. I don’t know how people afford to live there. I have no desire to go back.
Montreal is our go-to destination.
Love the Pacific Northwest and am In Seattle as I write this
This has to be a problem in a lot of places.*
Switzerland might be next in line after my visit to Spain.*
Hi Bill,
Thanks so much for the detailed response and recommendations.
Just a heads up since you mentioned Mexico—if you do end up going back, I would highly recommend adding a visit to Dos Ojos Cenote to your itinerary. It's one of the top cenotes in the Tulum area and one of my personal favourites from our Mexico trips. The crystal clear waters and amazing surroundings make it well worth the visit. Just be sure to reserve tickets in advance, as they tend to fill up.
I'm also starting to plan an itinerary for an upcoming trip to Spain. Any particular areas or specific recommendations you have from your travels there? We loved the sights and culture in Portugal, so I'm sure Spain would be great as well. Also, where did you get the specialised tour from? I am looking at https://gowithguide.com/spain for my trip. Any other customised tour platform recommendation? I have checked TripAdvisor also, but generally they seem a bit more expensive than others.*
That's about 3 hours from where we'll be in Merida. It's an interesting possibility. It looks like more of a diving/snorkeling thing, which isn't something we'd do, but it would be interesting to see. It would depend on what else is out in that area that might attract us. Merida and the surrounding area has lots to do, and with the time we have we may not be able to stray too far.
We've been to Spain twice. The first trip we planned entirely on our own, and covered Madrid, Toledo, and three cities in Andalusia: Granada, Cordoba, and Seville. We also took a day trip that we booked out of Madrid to Segovia and a few other places to north and northwest of Madrid. Trips like that are easy to book while you're there. This was a longer trip, 2 weeks and three weekends, so we had ample time to explore all the cities and the surrounding areas. A highlight for me was seeing Italica, the Roman city south of Sevilla, birthplace of Hadrian and Trajan. We felt this was a great intro trip that covered a lot of ground in several important and very interesting parts of Spain, and I'd recommend all these places for at least 2-3 days, if not more in the case of Madrid.
Our second trip was with my wife's cousin and his then girlfriend, who is Portuguese. She helped us plan our first large trip to Portugal a few years before, and when we all met up in Tavira, we discovered we all had an interest in travel (she's actually a tour guide, no based in Southampton, England). This trip was a bit more specialized, focusing on the Duero/Douro regions in Spain and Portugal, home to many wonderful wines. In Spain, we centered ourselves near Aranda de Duero and use that central location to explore the region. There's lots of wine, and plenty of history as well. My wife and I visited the Roman ruins of Clunia and an incredibly fascinating Iron Age settlement quite near Aranda de Duero.
We then followed the Duero toward Portugal, stopping for a couple of days in Salamanca, before settling in small town near Foz Coa where we were able to visit the ancient stone carvings. We then continued west, catching more sites in the Douro, and winding up with a few days in Porto. From there, my wife and I took a very nice day trip up to the Minho valley, visiting Guimaraes, Braga, and yet more Roman ruins. We love our Roman ruins.
Generally speaking, in Europe, we don't do large-scale guided tours. We find it easy to book on our own, and then use local tour agencies to do day tours or shorter excursions to places that are harder to get to. For example, in Greece, after exploring Athens and Piraeus on our own, we took a three-day tour that took us north from Athens to Meteora, then south into the Peloponnese, catching countless historical sites along the way. This would have been a bit harder to organize on our own, plus this was our first trip to Greece and I didn't know it well. The specialized tour we took to Turkey was arranged through the University of Massachusetts, available just to certain alumni, so that was kind of a different thing.
A lot of this depends on what you want to see and do. My wife and I have more of an interest in history and culture, and we're also foodies/wine lovers, so we gravitate to areas that have those types of things. I'm not much for hiking and "natural wonders," though I'm certainly happy to include a bit of that in the context of our trips. We've certainly seen some beautiful areas. In the context of the travel we like to do, it's not hard to book hotels and large-scale transportation from city to city (bust/train) on our own, then use local companies to supplement.
I'm sure the gowithguide tours are fine. I'm a seasoned enough traveler and I do enough research on my own that I can usually create itineraries in the places we visit, again, with a bit of augmentation from the local tourist office or a tour company to see an outlying site. If you're more comfortable with a guide, though, I would encourage you to do that. I just can't vouch for any companies that do stuff like that, but gowithguide looks pretty good, and might actually make me reconsider something like this if I visited a place I didn't know that well.
Bill
I was only in a small part of the country and working most of the time, but what I did see was beautiful.
We went to that Cenote when we were in Mexico a few years ago. Very cool and well worth a visit. I felt like I was in a film set for “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” or something.
Germany, Austria and I also have good memories of Norway and Finland.
Good grief. I forgot that I've been to Austria and Switzerland twice, and Hungary once. We also visited Prague on one of our trips to Germany. All great trips, I just didn't recall them when I was thinking about places we've been.
Bill
That's true. It felt like Indiana Jones Stuff.
I am also looking for day tours only. Let me research a bit more.
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