Bucket list 2026: From the Alps to Vietnam, from Maldive to Iran

My gym here in Rome is packed again. Of course it is. It’s January. Everybody has “Lose weight” or “Get in shape” or “Meet a gym junkie” on their 2026 bucket list.

My bucket list is always different. Mine is about travel. I am very goal oriented, very aggressive with my list. Once I set my mind on a destination, it’s about 90 percent sure I’m going, world geopolitics be damned.

Of the 11 spots I listed on last year’s bucket list, I made eight.

I have a nice mix, ranging from the snows of Italy’s Dolomites to the sugary sands of the Maldive Islands, from terraced rice fields of Northern Vietnam to the chaos of Iran. (Yes, Iran. Hey, I went to Damascus and Lebanon last year and I’m still typing.)

Traveling has become more challenging for Americans. With Pres. Trump putting 39 nations on his banned/restricted entry list (with every one either Black, Muslim, Hispanic or Myanmar), some of those banned nations are reciprocating. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have announced formal bans on Americans entering their country. 

They aren’t on my list but there is also speculation about how long that Yankee Go Home list will grow. 

Before it does, Marina and I will scramble around the globe like comets with no orbit. Here’s the bucket list in very rough chronological order:

Dolomites, Italy

I’m replacing my sportswriter’s fedora with a stocking cap for this one. I’m covering the Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo for Colorado Public Radio and National Public Radio. More specifically, I’m covering Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, Colorado’s two Olympic gold medalist skiers who may be the face of the entire U.S. Olympic Team.

Vonn is defying science and logic by coming out of a five-year retirement with a partially replaced knee to lead the World Cup downhill standings – at age 41. If she wins gold, she’ll be the biggest story in the Olympics.

Shiffrin has won seven of her eight World Cup slalom races and may be the most dominant athlete entering the Olympics. I can’t wait to chronicle the history. Please read my dispatches starting next Tuesday at CPR.org.

When I’m not chasing down skiers, I will marvel at the beauty of the Dolomites. I’ll be staying in Auronzo di Cadore, about 20 miles east of Cortina. It’ll give me a nice mix of the Olympic spirit that every sports fan should experience at least once and the tranquility of a small mountain town of 3,000 people high in the Italian Alps.

Maldive Islands

I’ve visited Maldive tourism officials at London’s annual World Travel Market a couple of times and they almost brag how expensive their little island resorts are. You’ve seen them on posters. They’re the string of  wooden bungalows over turquoise water with a ring of white sand wrapped around an island you could jog in 20 minutes.

And they’re right. Some of these bungalows are thousands of dollars a night. (Soneva Secret is $11,000). That doesn’t count the expensive transfers, by boat or plane, from the capital of Male’. 

But I’m taking the plunge. I’m going over my birthday the last week in March and you only turn 70 once. And once you turn 70, you don’t know how many more birthdays you’ll have.

We’re staying at some place called Royal Island. Like many of Maldive’s 1,200 islands, spread out over 26 atolls, Royal Island Resort is the entire island. It’s 800 meters long by 200 wide and has 150 beach front villas. It doesn’t have the bungalows over the water but we were both mesmerized by our Sunset Beach Villa.

Waking up right on the water under palm trees, I can’t think of a better way to feel young at 70.

Doha, Qatar

My plan was to tack on two extra days in Maldives and stay in Male’ for some local culture. I don’t like going places without meeting locals. But the more research I did, the more turned off I was on the capital. Its 195,000 people are packed in a small city which, based on everything I read and heard in chat rooms, is quite boring.

Instead, we are trying to turn our flight connection in Doha into a three-night stay, if the Italian travel agency we’re using can ever get the rebooking right. There’s plenty to do and see. The souq Waqif at night. The cultural village of Karata. A dhow ride on the Persian Gulf. A hotel on the beach.

My fellow American expat in Italy, Florence tour guide, blogger and historian Chandi Wyatt, lived in Doha for three years and wrote Qatar: A Three-Day Itinerary and Guide in 2022. We won’t want for things to do.

Qatar will be my 23rd Muslim country. I wonder if Trump will now ban me.

(However, I may not have to worry about Trump. The Italian travel agency that organized our package to Maldive has screwed up our change request on our return flight to Doha so we may not stay at all.)

Iran 

I normally don’t do guided tours. I like being on my own. I do my own research. Go at my own pace. But I do guided tours when the logistics are too complicated or the local government requires it.

Like Iran.

Saiga Tours, which I took last year to Turkmenistan and Damascus, is a spectacular tour company. They handle all the logistics, get us to the far corners of the destination and are brutally honest about the local scene.

Americans can only visit Iran via an organized tour with a government-sponsored guide. Saiga have organized tours of Iran in April and October. Perfect.

With Iran is exploding in turmoil and the government closing down the Internet, there is still so much to do and see. Saiga’s tour includes a visit to the former U.S. Embassy famous from the 1979 hostage crisis. We’ll visit villages, do homestays where we’ll smoke the shisha with locals, do a dune buggy tour in the desert and taste Tehran’s nightlife, if any is allowed.

Lampedusa, Italy

My Travelers’ Century Club’s Mediterranean Chapter is having a meeting on the little Italian island so far south it actually looks north to the coast of Africa. 

It won easily in a vote over Crete, which received my vote. I haven’t been to Crete since 1978 when I slept on the beach in Paleohora as a budget-traveling backpacker. I visited Lampedusa in 2002 during my first stint living in Rome and found it the noisiest island in the world.

Including Manhattan.

Its giant squadron of motor scooters desperately needed emissions control checks. Lampedusa is ugly. It’s a desert island with little inland landscape worth even a postcard. Since I visited, it has become the Ellis Island of desperate African refugees

But I hear it’s not as noisy as back then, the sandy beaches are surely still spectacular and refugees have not taken over the island. In September, Italian news agencies reported Lampedusa only had about 1,300. 

Lampedusa is also considered part of Sicily so we’ll have that luscious Sicilian cuisine. I can’t wait for that first sweet cannoli and icy pistachio granita at a sidewalk cafe.

Krakow, Poland

Marina is going for a WordPress conference and I’m tagging along. The former Eastern Europe is my favorite region to travel. I love the mix of modern, spruced-up capitals with remnants of oppressed communism right around the corner.

Everyone who has visited Krakow says it’s the most beautiful city in Poland. Rynek Glòwy is one of Europe’s largest medieval squares and absolutely hops at night. Cloth Hall has terrific shopping. We can peruse through the Jewish Quarter and Wawel Castle.

Lots of good day trips which we will work into our itinerary.

At sunset we’ll take a stroll along the Vistula River and then have a pierogi and shots of Polish vodka. Well, at least one of us will.

Skopelos, Greece

This is our home away from home. This will be our sixth summer we’ve come to the little island in the Sporades Island chain about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Athens.

Normally, we come the first week in September. Crowds immediately drop at the end of August. However, Marina convinced me to go against my one iron-clad rule of travel – besides always wear a money belt: Never travel ANYWHERE in July unless you’re deported.

But we are planning a trip to Eastern Turkey (see below) in early September and we are tired of melting in Rome’s July heat. Besides, the village of Panormas, where we stay at the spectacular Panormas Beach Hotel, is tiny. It can only hold so many people.

A month before our trip, I always stop eating feta cheese. I want that first Greek salad and ouzo on ice to taste special.

Hakkari, Turkey

Our TCC Mediterranean Chapter’s director, Omer Yalkin, is Turkish. A great guy, with a big laugh and even bigger wanderlust. He has organized a wonderful trip to this magical, little-known corner of southeast Turkey.

We are planning a trip to nearby Lake Van, the largest lake in Turkey at 1,200 square miles (3,000 square kilometers) and also the alleged home to the Lake Van Monster. It’s similar to the Loch Ness Monster except for less hype and fewer sea monster keychains

Hakkari (pop. 285,000) is also the jump off point to  the beautiful glaciers of the Cilo-Sat Mountains. Hakkari is also close to the Cennet Cehennem (Paradise-Hell) Valley which is crisscrossed with challenging hiking trails. We can walk along the Zap River.

The TCC is reserved for travelers who’ve been to at least 100 countries and territories. To acquire that many, you need many years. Many of us are old. However, we’re fit.

Also, Hakkari is only 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of the Iraqi border.

Northern Vietnam

I’ve wanted to take Marina to Southeast Asia for years. She’d love it. She’d love the light, healthy cuisine. She’d love the beaches. She’d love the weather.

I know I do.

I have been to Southern Vietnam but not Northern, which has become a smoking hot destination the last few years. As an American who grew up during the Vietnam War, I was fascinated by the old people’s views in Ho Chi Minh City. Now I can ask in the North which was communist even before the war.

But I won’t just talk politics. Hanoi is a fascinating capital. Its Hoan Kiem District is the Old Quarter with narrow, windy streets like in Italy’s historical centers. We’ll take a room on Cat Ba island on Halong Bay. We’ll kayak around the karsts in Ninh Binh and see Ha Griang’s terraced rice fields which have attracted the world’s top photographers for decades.

We’re planning for October, the most pleasant time of year, after the rainy season and well after the sweltering heat of spring.

Grenoble, France

We loved our Christmas trip to Vienna so much last month, we decided to do another this year. Grenoble doesn’t always get snow over Christmas but it is at the foot of the French Alps and we’ll take a day trip into a small French mountain village.

I’ve been around that area covering six Tours de France and I know it’s beautiful in July. I look forward to seeing it in December. Its Bastille will have great panoramic views of this city of 155,000 and surrounding mountains. Grenoble has one of France’s best art museums and a cozy old town, perfect for rich French sauces and richer Savoy wine.

However, Christmas is 11 months away. We are open to change. 

If any of you have been to the places on my list, feel free to write and give me some off-the-beaten-path places to see and do.