We travel for the experience and not simply to check a place off a list, but we are occasionally asked where we’ve been on our travels. I didn’t give it much thought until I started writing this page and as it turns out, it’s not as many places as people may think—77 for Sheri and 75 for me.
According to the Traveler’s Century Club, even the shortest stay, transit, layover or fuel stop qualifies as a visit to a country or territory. When a short visit happens, we explain the circumstances in the footnotes and hope to return at a later date for a longer visit. The TCC recognizes 324 countries and territories. That’s more than the official U.N. list of countries, but it includes some places that are distinctly separate, so for a traveler, it’s a more meaningful list. For example, the Indonesian island of Bali is very different from the island of Java, where Jakarta is located. Bali has a different culture from the rest of Indonesia and could be considered its own territory.
We have been married for about 15 years, and in that time, we have traveled together to Belize, Bonaire, Botswana, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Honduras, Hong Kong, Israel1, Italy, Jordan, Mexico, South Africa, U.K., Zambia2 and Zimbabwe prior to our around the world trip.
Prior to knowing one another, we each separately traveled to Australia, Austria, Germany, Indonesia, Nepal, Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, Taiwan, and Tibet. We’ve also been to nearly all 50 states in the U.S. and 4 Canadian provinces.
On the map, green are countries we have visited for the first time on our around the world journey, yellow are countries we have visited on this trip but have visited before, together or separately, red for those Sheri has visited, and orange for countries we have visited together in the past.
Yes, we obviously love to travel, but we’re just getting started. Our around-the-world trip is finished, so this map and list only shows all the places we have been to so far. We have more travel planned in the future, we hope to add to the number of places as soon as we replenish the coffers. This list shows where we’ve been and the last year we visited.
Footnotes:
1 We transited through Israel on our way from Egypt to Jordan. We spent about an hour going through their tough border security and 20 minutes in a cab to the Jordanian border.
2 Sheri spent 3 months in Japan in 1981, and we both had a layover in Narita in 2003 on our way to China.
3 I had a 4 hour layover in Seoul in 2000 on my way to Thailand.
4 We transited through Zambia from Zimbabwe to Botswana. We only stepped foot on Zambian soil when we got out at immigration and to wait for the ferry.
3 thoughts on “Been There”