Before the Coronavirus pandemic, I had a list of places I wanted to travel. It was part bucket list and part points and miles unicorns. Think Sydney on New Year’s Eve and seeing the Northern Lights from Lapland.
Over the last year, I’ve spent hours with the “I Want” list going through my head when I couldn’t leave the house. This mostly consisted of me hoping that I didn’t get COVID-19 because my job forced me to work in a people facing job every day and that I didn’t bring it back home with me and infect Sharon.
I also was worried about unknowingly bringing the disease to my father, who’s been fighting off some major medical issues for the latter part of the year that he’s spent in hospitals and rehab facilities. This is the same person that I booked flights for him and his wife to visit Bali and Thailand less than 2 years ago.
So it’s understandable that my “I wish” list had changed over the past year when everything we thought as usual was taken away.
Hamilton
OK. Talk about a first world problem. We love Hamilton.
In January of 2020, Sharon saw the show for the 9th time during our trip to San Francisco. We had plans in 2020 to see it again on tour in Jacksonville and Orlando. Both of those shows were canceled and there’s no idea when touring shows will resume. One redeeming light of the pandemic was that Disney+ released Hamilton to the streaming service a year before it was planned and we’ve watched it several times from our couch.
Broadway in general
Besides being fans of Hamilton, we’re just fans of Broadway musicals. We had tickets to see a one-night-only concert production of Ragtime as a fundraiser for The Actors Fund. With Broadway being closed for over a year, The Actors Fund has become more important than ever to support all of the people out of work with all of the shows closed. While we were sad to see the show postponed, we gladly allowed our ticket price to support those who helped the shows we’ve enjoyed all of these years.
However, when New York shows open for business, there’s nothing that we want to do other than stay for a week in Manhattan and go to see Broadway shows non-stop. Book of Mormon, Hadestown, Dear Evan Hansen and even Wicked. Whichever other shows are open, we’re there as vaccinated guests.
Concerts
While I never thought we were huge concert people, we went to Indio, CA to see Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones and Citi Field in NY to see The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac.
Right now, there’s no amount of cash or miles to keep us from seeing a Billy Joel concert at Madison Square Garden.
Schlitterbahn (and the Texas Hill Country)
We’re a whole year from visiting one of our favorite places in the USA. We’re in a decades-long love affair with Schlitterbahn and the New Braunfels area.
Unfortunately, floating down a river while jammed close to other guests isn’t conducive to stopping the spread of COVID-19. Therefore, we skipped our trips to Texas in 2020. Cedar Fair, the owner of Schilerrbahn, extended all 2020 annual passes thru 2021. Hopefully, we’ll still be able to make a trip in the late summer to our favorite water park and for a trip to taste the best BBQ in the world.
New Orleans
In early 2019 we joined the BoardingArea family of websites. It wasn’t until 2020 that we felt comfortable joining the other websites for the Freddy Awards. We planned to meet all of our fellow writers at the ceremony in New Orleans until COVID ruined all of that.
We love New Orleans and were looking to revisit our favorite parts of the city. None of that happened in 2020 and we have no idea if it will happen in 2021. But it will happen, eventually.
Meeting all of our friends
Part of what we love about traveling is making or re-connecting with friends. While we had a few chances to have socially-distances dinners with friends in 2020, it was a facsimile of what we could do pre-pandemic. Dinners had to be outside and we didn’t spend the time we’d usually do with them.
In fact, we skipped meeting with friends if we felt the time just wasn’t right due to the surging COVID-19 cases.
Everywhere Else
London, Tokyo, Sydney, Seattle, San Francisco, Key West.
Add any other city to the list. They’re all on the Bucket List. The “I Want” list and the “someday” list. One day the thing keeping me from seeing New Year’s Eve in Sydney will be flight award availability and not being able to book a room at the Park Hyatt. I look forward to that being the biggest problem I have to worry about.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
