How many times have I traveled internationally? And where have I gone? The list has become long (and old) enough that I’m starting to forget. Time to refresh my memory!
My first trip was when I was a swaddling babe, and we went as a family from PNG to Germany (that’s us upon arrival in 1972), staying for several months and then jetting back to Australia to live. I don’t of course remember this, but until I left Australia at age 21 this was the first time I ever flew.
In 1993 (when the above was taken), I jetted to the USA with a suitcase full of books and records and very few clothes! I don’t remember much of the trip now, but it remains the only one-way air ticket I’ve ever bought myself. It would be seven more years before I flew again.
In late December 2000 I flew back to Australia, and what a trip it was! The years had changed me, but looking at the above photo (taken in early January 2001) I can’t say for sure what I had become! I had a great time and – since this was pre-blog – even wrote a mini travelogue book about it. I knew this wasn’t to be my last trip abroad, and the travel bug had most definitely bitten.
Including the above trip, and in the years since, here’s where and when I’ve traveled internationally. I’ve listed this chronologically, and the Australia trips usually span the end of the listed year and into the next:
- Australia (2000)
- Canada (2001)
- Japan (2002)
- Japan (2004)
- Japan (2006)
- Australia (2006)
- Puerto Rico (2008)
- Australia (2008)
- Japan (2009)
- Australia (2009)
- England (2010)
- Australia (2010)
- Australia (2011)
- Australia (2012)
- Japan (2013)
- Canada (2013)
- Australia (2013)
- Australia (2014)
- Ireland (2015)
- England (2015)
- France (2015)
- Germany (2015)
- Australia (2015)
- England (2016)
- Australia (2016)
- Japan (2017)
- Australia (2017)
- Scotland (2018)
- Australia (2018)
- Japan (2019)
- Australia (2019)
- Japan (2020)
2015 was a year wasn’t it?! I visited five countries, and flew over 70,000 miles in that year alone! Looking at this list makes me regret not signing up for frequent flyer rewards a long time ago, but in my defense I always hopped airlines going with the cheapest, whereas these days I choose comfort instead!
That’s a lot of international trips, and the list includes 40 long-haul Pacific flights. I have memories of all of these, although to be true the many Oz trips tend to blur into one! Critics may say I go to the same places too often (Australia 14 times! Japan 8 times!) but I go where I want to be, and I hope the many trips I will take in my life return to those destinations again 🙂
Here’s where I’ve been in map form:
And since you’re wondering, travel snaps can show how my look changed during these years…
There’s me in Japan in 2006. I chose this photo because I was astonished to learn I still have this shirt!
Here’s me in Canada in 2013, playing with a photo mode of the digital camera I had in those days. My head looks fat!
England in 2016. I’m growing into my mature self here. And I wish I had those fish’n’chips in front of me right now!
And that’s me on my last day in Japan in 2020. You can tell in my eyes I knew about Covid at this point, and I was wondering when I’d be able to travel again after returning to the USA the very next day. I doubt I would have believed it would be over two years.
After a failed attempt last December, next week will be the day I once again hop on a plane and jet off for foreign shores. For the fifteenth times since moving to the USA, I will once again return to Australia. For obvious reasons the trip will be different from the usual, but I hope not drastically. As usual, you can read about my adventures here on the blog.
That shirt you are wearing in pic#3, I’m like straining to analyze what it is that my eyes are seeing! What is this pattern?! Who is this surly fellow??