Vacations I'd Love to Take

This one is in the planning stages already for 2023! Looks like we'll be spending a few days in Barcelona, a few days in Rome, and the cruise will take us to ports along the coast of France and Italy.

My mom is Taiwanese and I grew up with a lot of Taiwanese culture. I speak the language and have been there many times. My wife is from Taiwan. I want to let my kids see their heritage, since they are 75% Taiwanese.

I hear it's a great place for Americans to live. I'd like to visit and see for myself. Maybe I might think it's awesome and want to move there too. It sounds like a great place to retire early to, since the cost of living is much lower than in the United States.

Oslo, Gothenburg, Helsinki, and fjords. I've also always wanted to see the Northern Lights and experience Arctic winters in person. I like the melodic death metal music these countries are known for. I hear you can visit the "real" Santa Claus in Finland... and I also hear he's a cranky old foul mouthed drunk.

It would be nice to travel through Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Nova Scotia in the summertime. We were planning this trip before COVID hit and Canada closed their borders. Maybe we can revisit this idea again soon.

Many smaller towns in Italy are offering extremely cheap houses (like 1 Euro) to lure foreigners to move in and revitalize crumbling old towns. The idea is intriguing to me. I'd like to go see for myself and see if I can envision myself living there with my family.

I'd love to see Bryce Canyon, Petrified Forest, Anasazi ruins, the Badlands, Monument Valley, etc. I lived in Colorado for a year as a kid, and I have good memories of living there.

I've never been to the Southern hemisphere before. Did you know that 90% of the world's population lives in the Northern hemisphere? It would be especially cool to experience Christmas in Australia, since it would be the middle of summer there.

I've never seen a rain forest before. I don't like the idea of giant exotic insects though. Peanut head bugs scare me!

I hear San Miguel de Allende is nice. Maybe I could even move there. But I'd have to see it first.

The above are my top 10 trips. But Argentina, Germany, New Zealand, Thailand, England, and Ireland are also high on the list. Ultimately, I'd like to visit every country if possible (and safe). There are no African countries on my list, not because I don't want to visit, but because I perceive those as not as safe or convenient to bring children... but I also recognize that those might be stereotypes and I could be completely wrong. Gotta do more research!