How do you define Well Travelled?
On Friday while I was having my pedicure the lady next to me explained that she was well travelled after visiting 11 countries. I sat there quietly hoping she wouldn’t ask how many countries I had visited (I stopped counting after 50) and thankfully she didn’t.
The lady worked 3 jobs so that she could afford to take 3 holiday each year; I’ve got total respect for her as she loves exploring the world and works hard to be able to live her travel dream! I did slightly look down my rather big nose at her when she said she loved Egypt and when I asked which part she said her hotel in Sharm…she didn’t visit one ancient site at all but I digress (you can judge people when you start putting the tick in the 35-44 year old box). How could you visit Egypt and not see these bad boys! Anyway…
Now I get told quite often that I’m well travelled however I don’t think thats the case especially when you regularly meet folks that have visited over 100 countries.
But it did get me thinking – how do you define well travelled?
- Is it how many countries that you’ve visited?
- Is it the number of continents you’ve stepped onto too?
- The number of cities?
- The number of days travelling vs spent at home
- Or is it the number of memorable experiences?
- As a travel blogger – is it the number of blog posts?
Can you tell that I’m an accountant always looking at a way of analysing the numbers.
For some reason travel bloggers get fixated on the number of countries that they’ve visited and I find some travel to a new country just to bump their numbers up to 30…40….50….or 100 rather than actually wanting to visit the said countries which I think is blooming sad.
Even though I’m going to share my magic country number…I personally don’t think the number of countries is any indication of how well travelled a person is…. so are you ready!
Europe
Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Jersey, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, The Vatican and Wales
Middle East
Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Oman, Palestine and Syria
North America
Canada and USA – I probably shouldn’t count Canada as I did a day trip from Seattle to have afternoon tea there (I kid you not!).
South Pacific
Australia, New Zealand and Samoa
Africa
Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Morocco, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe
Asia
Singapore
Total = 60 (I didn’t realise it was 60 until I was writing this post, I knew I was at 50 before I had turned 30)
Now you can probably see from the countries that I’ve visited some of them you wouldn’t link to luxury travel and you’re right – there wasn’t a 5 star hotel anywhere!
But then again my definition of luxury travel is slightly different from other luxury travel bloggers – for me it’s about having the ability to travel the world as not everyone has that advantage.
As much as I love flying business class and staying in 5 star hotels – that element of travel doesn’t define luxury travel for me at all and my best night sleep was under the stars in roman ruins in Syria and I hadn’t washed for days either – I’m actually not that much of a princess in reality but I do have high expectations from 5 star establishments when I’m forking out my hard earned cash.
Phew we got to the end of this post where I’ve just babbled on for almost 600 words…you deserve a sexy bottom as compensation.
So over to you, how do you define well travelled?
xx
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