Over the New Year, while I was peacefully driving through the hills and valleys of Andalusia, it occurred to me that I had not really made any fixed plans for travelling in 2015. I spent the rest of that drive wondering what I should do and where I should go and ended up reaching several interesting conclusions.

1 – Travel locally

I’ve lived in Prague for almost 3 years but I’m sorry to say that I haven’t really explored much of the country. Whenever I had some spare time, I’ve always hopped on a plane and went somewhere else. This was something I resolved to fix in 2015. So far, I’ve been to Karlovy Vary and Cesky Krumlov (I’ll be writing about the latter soon) and will visit other destinations soon enough. I had hoped I would be able to tour the country every two months but other travel arrangements have interfered with that.

Status: Not as often as I’d have liked to, but getting there.

2 – Travel around Europe

I ran through the list of European countries in my head and there are quite a few that I hadn’t visited yet. (Note for the pedants – that’s geographical Europe not political Europe). In total, there still are 25 countries to visit! This shocked me because while I’ve travelled a lot, that’s a fairly large number to have on the list. One problem is that I do tend to go back to some countries repeatedly; while that’s not a bad thing, it does mean that I don’t visit new countries.

I resolved to do my best to avoid returning to a country for at least a year after I’ve been – just to give me the opportunity to explore other places.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve visited Slovakia, have plans for Romania and am keeping my eye open for possible trips to the other countries on my list. In some ways, I am limited by the flight options from Prague but perhaps an interesting Balkan road trip may be in order …

Status: Slow, but progressing.

3 – European Cities

And what about the countries I have already visited in Europe? In many cases, there are cities that I still have not seen. I put together a list of 12 cities that I would like to visit and so far have been able to cross Vienna and Warsaw off this list.

Status: Slow, but progressing.

4 – Outside Europe

Out of all the continents, I have not yet been to Africa, South America or Antarctica. (The latter will require some planning!) I’m looking at options for a good New Year’s holiday in South America but am also contemplating African travels too. One drawback to these options is that they are much more expensive than European travel so things will have to be more carefully planned.

Status: No progress, but not due to a lack of planning.

5 – What about Serendipity?

There is that, isn’t there? Sometimes I just come across some lovely offer but which is unusable because of other commitments.
Sometimes I can take full advantage of it.

What’s the sense of waiting for the perfect trip to materialise when you can surprise yourself one morning? It’s what ran through my head when I booked my ticket to Japan for September (It’ll be my second time in Asia) based on an excellent offer shared by rushflights.com.

And then?

Well, there will always be travel to Malta to visit family and friends. And I’m itching to go back to London which I miss, so I may just hop on the next flight there too – who knows?

What are your travel plans this year?

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