Traveil-bis

I said yesterday that my traveling days may be over, but of course I have a list of places I'd still like to visit. Starting with Dubrovnik, Croatia, which I've dreamed about ever since the Los Angeles Times Magazine featured it on the front page oh, fifty-five years ago (when Dubrovnik was still in Yugoslavia). I may still have that photo stuffed away in a file drawer. Yes, I would dearly love to see Dubrovnik.

Also:
Prague
Cape Town
Rio, with a hike up the hill to visit Christ the Redeemer
Angkor Wat
Barcelona
Tbilisi

I'd like to walk the Offa's Dike Path bordering Wales and England. 

I'd like to go back to Japan, which I last visited in 1982, and before that in 1965, and spend a few months wandering through all the islands. 

Oh, and yes: Namibia, where I have been, but I didn't get to the sand dunes. I'd love to see the dunes.

What's interesting, really, is thinking about what's influenced me—to want to go to some places, not others. Why aren't I eager to visit, say, Monterrey, Mexico, or Nairobi, Kenya? Mainly, maybe, because I don't have any pictures in my head of those places? 

Though yes, I'd love to go on a safari in Kenya. 

All this makes me wonder about my fellow Americans, more than half of whom don't even have a passport. 

To spend your entire life in just one place? (Because let me just project here: I doubt the people who don't have a passport have traveled very far even in their own country.)

Weird. Seriously.

Then again, the fact that so many of my fellow countrymen could vote for the current president is beyond weird. I'm pretty sure they (the billionaires excluded) don't have passports.

And there's my political rant for today.