Bucket List From the Bunker

Fortunately, the Great Los Angeles Lockdown of 2020 leaves us with freedom of thought, so while we may be strongly discouraged from going out into the open air except for limited daily exercise, we can still contemplate places we've been and dream about new travel rising on our Bucket Lists.

Note these are not family goals, which will of course frequently include travel, but rather major foreign destinations which we would like to visit before we pass away.



Anyone who has been on a river cruise wants to go on another one.

There are many terrific river cruises we'd like to try, and in fact we would definitely be happy to repeat the itineraries we've taken, but for a bucket list to be useful, it should be specific.

We have two on our list, both of which happen to be through countries we visited as part of perhaps our best ocean cruise ever aboard Oceania Riviera (and yes, we would love to do another cruise with that wonderful cruise line, but I'll get to that later).

While the focus of 2018 cruise clearly centered more on Spain and Italy, our stops on the French Riviera made us hungry to return France, so I included a video pointing that direction above.

We started our Riviera cruise with an amazing pre-cruise stay in Lisbon, which lit a fire in our souls for the intoxicating, friendly country of Portugal.



As evidenced by that Riviera cruise enticing a quick return to France and Portugal, we love the history and ambiance of Europe, so a Mediterranean cruise will always be high on our list.

While looking into my mother's family tree, I learned that a distant branch of the tree held prominent positions in the island nation of Malta.

Mabel Strickland, a member of my grandparents' generation, made her mark in journalism by editing and then running The Times of Malta.

Based on her lifelong career edifying the public, plus the fact that her father Gerald Strickland had been Prime Minister of Malta, Mabel became a strong political voice in the region, widely known as the unofficial Queen of Malta.

Visiting Malta on a cruise would also give us the opportunity to return to Venice for a romantic stay, plus a chance to stop at new Balkan ports in Montenegro and Croatia, but it's that family history that pulls us to what is purportedly an incredible destination in its own right.



Okay, enough Europe.  We also want to go to Africa, which is the only continent we have never visited and therefore one of these seem most likely to be our next international destination.

Rather than limiting ourselves to only one possibility, however, we like to maintain flexibility to go in the direction of better values, with flight availability often factoring prominently into our decisions.

While none of these bucket list trips are cheap, we hope that when the threat of quarantine for returning US travelers abroad has been lifted, some great residual air bargains will linger long enough to snap up.

Some ocean cruises have possibilities for overland safaris, but we will likely just focus on Sub-Saharan Africa as a standalone land trip.



That type of safari is obviously something we must do while we're in strong physical condition.

Not only will it require resilient immune systems to withstand the various jungle fevers plus well-conditioned legs to get the most out of our experience, the flights alone can be killers for people in poor health.

A safari is definitely not the equivalent of an easy cruise, even when packaged along with some city sites.

The other destination in Africa that's high on the list is Egypt, with its rich history featured prominently in movies about Joseph and his "Dreamcoat," Moses, Cleopatra, King Tut and, of course, the Mummy.

Who doesn't want to see the Pyramids and the Sphinx?

While the trip in Egypt we dream about will require a lot of overland effort, it also features a few days cruising the Nile.

Will one of the trips above definitely be our next big trip?

That seems likely, but we have many places we would love to return and many more that we have never visited, including in Asia, Australia and the Americas.

If the right situation arrives, who knows?

In fact, after I finished writing this post, Julie pointed out a particularly attractive deal on a Princess cruise to Norway, Iceland and the United Kingdom.

Yes, that is another one we've talked about for years, but having returned from a long cruise that included striking fjords a few weeks ago as well as having vacationed with our family in the U.K. last summer, I had figured this one might be simmering on a back burner awhile.



In any case, it was fun thinking about where we might go, and it costs nothing to dream.


Want to come along, or do you have different dream destinations?

I have to say Redondo Beach looks quite attractive at this time of year, and we love having visitors.  Unfortunately, the fact that we're currently on lockdown in the Sanctuary State of California takes away access from our beaches, which ironically don't tend to be crowded at this time of year anyway.