Boxes: ticked and still to be ticked

In 2000, I started on my “bucket list”, and then a film came out which had “stolen” my idea. So I came up with a new title. Since then I’ve been “ticking boxes”.

Most of my boxes are about travel: places I’d dreamed all my life of visiting. But some of them are about things I want to have a go at.

Places / countries / cities already ticked:
1. Walk on the Golden Gate bridge
2. See the Grand Canyon
3. Gamble in Las Vegas
4. Drive a car in the USA
5. Holiday in Hawaii
6. Drive over the bridge to Skye
7. Wander around Tower of London
8. Visit Stonehenge (I’d dreamed of that all my life. The reality wasn’t as good as the dream.)
9. Loch Ness – was that ripple maybe the monster?
10. Henry V111’s cod-piece (wonder how many socks he needed to fill it out)
11. Drive through / stay in Death Valley (did the former a few times, but the latter only once)
12. San Francisco cable car
13. Take a harbour cruise in Singapore
14. See the moai on Easter Island
15. Visit Machu Pichu (every bit as awesome as expected)
16. Fly over the Nasca Lines
17. Reed boats of Lake Titicaca
18. Take a boat ride on the Amazon River
19. See the White House in Washington
20. Drive through Monument Valley
21. Get sprayed on at Niagara Falls
22. Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde
23. Empire State building
24. Statue of Liberty
25. See the Leaning Tower of Pisa
26. Go to the top of the Eiffel Tower
27. See the Mona Lisa in the Louvre (SO small!)
28. Stand on the Rialto bridge in Venice
29. Cruise on the Danube
30. St Peter’s Square in Rome
31. Walk in the Colosseum
32. Visit Gallipoli
33. Cuba before the Castros die
34. See the Mayan / Aztec culture
35. Go back to New York – I LOVE New York!
36. Visit a South Pacific Island (Rarotonga)
37. Safari in Lake Ngorongoro crater
38. Stay on Zanzibar – upgraded to the honeymoon suite . . bit of a waste for me on my own!
39. See the deserts of Namibia
40. Lake Victoria & Victoria Falls
41. Balloon ride over Masai Mara
42. Table Mountain in Capetown
43. Check out the geysers of Iceland
44. Phallic museum in Reykavik
45. St Petersburg & Moscow
46. Stay in southern France – Conques, population 80. Amazing.
47. Go for a cruise in Alaska
48. Check out the “stans” : Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan
49. Visit the Forbidden City
50. See the terracotta soldiers
51. Walk on the Great Wall of China
52. Go as far north as North Cape – the very top of Europe
53. Visit Scandinavia: Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway
54. Go to Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Gibraltar
55. Baltic countries: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia
56. See the Berlin Wall, and Checkpoint Charlie
57. Taj Mahal
58. Rajastan
59. Japan
60. South Korea – specifically the DMZ

Places / countries / cities unticked:
61. South America: Brazil, Argentina, Eduador, Bolivia (some of these would be good)
62. Colombia – specifically Catagena
63. Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia (but having second thoughts about that in terms of heat)J
64. Jordan, Israel, Egypt – supposed to visit in 2023, but it was all cancelled
65. Antarctica – second thoughts. Should tourists really be going there?
66. Greece: some islands and the Acropolis
67. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan (maybe not bearing in mind their current situation)
68. Some Scottish islands: Harris, Tweed, Hebrides
69. southern Italy – ideally with a week’s stay somewhere
70. Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg

X rated (ask if you want me to tell you)
71. ?
72. ?
73. ?
74. ?

Things to try / do – ticked:
75. go to a strip club
76. picked up by a guy who’s 30 years younger than me
77. sailing
78. drive a racing car
79. drive a car in Europe
80. ride on a Harley
81. a roller coaster
82. own my own home
83. ballooning (Canterbury Plains AND Kenya)
84. walk off the Sky Tower in Auckland
85. learn to play jazz on a piano
86. fly any class except “cattle”
87. dirt-bike riding
88. be a bridesmaid
89. Nevis Swing
90. have a helicopter lesson

Things to try / do – unticked:
91. Sky-dive (booked 3 times; weather had other ideas)

New Zealand list: (from 2020, this became a “thing”!)
and I’ve already seen an lot of New Zealand
92. Farewell Spit (top of South Island)
93. Southern Alps train trip
94. stay at the Hermitage (Mt Cook)
95. Doubtful Sound cruise
96. Dart River Jet boat
97. Marlborough Sounds via the Mail Run
98. Drive around Catlins (Slope Point and Curio Bay)

New Zealand list – unticked:
99. Helicopter onto a glacier in Southern Alps
100. Cape Reinga – I’ve been there briefly, but it was raining heavily