TRAVEL | DESTINATIONS
The A-Z’s Of My Favorite Travel Destinations — I Can’t Even Choose One ‘A’
Every place has its own charm.
Okay, now I’m starting to feel left out.
Sam Millichap started this challenge then Adrienne Beaumont and Anne Bonfert got on board. Adrienne tells me that it is easy and I just need to get started, but I honestly can’t even get past choosing a favorite A.
Is it terrible to write about 3 of them?
The idea is to write one article for each letter of the alphabet, choosing a favorite place for each one. But it’s just too hard.
As an editor for Globetrotters, I get to be privy to other articles that are coming down the line, and I am noticing that others are now jumping on board with this prompt. Just today I published one by Michael Rhodes and another by Nishan Fuard. I have also learned that Jerry Dwyer has joined the fun.
Am I missing others who are now partaking?
I’ve always been a little rebellious in my life, not quite following the status quo. Even when I was trying to live my ‘normal’ life, I was still doing things outside of the box. Some may call me stubborn, I call it being unique. Non-conformity has always defined me in some way shape or form, and it’s no surprise that I am living the life I am because of it.
Anyways, I have decided that instead of trying to choose just one A, I am going to write a little bit about 3 different A’s that I loved while traveling.
Sorry for breaking the rules and I hope I’m not offending anyone in the process!
Aitutaki, Cook Islands
Aitutaki is a northern island that is part of the Cook Islands archipelago. It has stunning turquoise water, white sand beaches and adorable little huts right on the beach that you can sleep in. My best friend and I went to the Cook Islands on our South Pacific tour when we traveled to celebrate the millennium in 1999.
It is basically an atoll which is the mouth of an old crater. The outside crater creates a barrier reef so most of the inner part is a shallow and pristine turquoise lagoon.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the greatest camera back in those days, so I didn’t capture the incredible color of the water. But one just has to click here to see a bunch of stunning shots of Aitutaki. Or you can see how beautiful it is in the Unsplash photo below.
It was in Aitutaki that I first snorkeled over a giant clam, and I also saw my first coconut crab.
Anguilla, Eastern Caribbean
There is something about the letter A and perfect paradises, I tell you. Chris and I visited Anguilla in 2019 during a volunteer stint on a nearby Caribbean island. The owner of the garden that we were working at sent us there to stay at her house on the island. It was a bit of a break for us from the hard work we were doing for her, but it wasn’t a complete holiday as we still did about 3 hours of gardening work for her in the Anguilla location as well.
Either way, we were located very close to the beach and each afternoon we would walk to the end of the point, don our snorkel masks, then drift with the current back to the house, taking in the colorful world below us.
I wrote about the full experience here in the June writing prompt ‘flow like water’ for Globetrotters.
We really loved our time spent on Anguilla and do hope that we have the good fortune of returning there someday in the future.
Antigua, Guatemala
We visited Antigua a few times in 2018/2019 while we lived in Guatemala. It is a stunning colonial city that is located within easy reach of Guatemala City.
It has charming cobblestone streets and colonial architecture. Plus you can see numerous volcanoes from the town, and can even witness some of them constantly erupting, like Volcan Fuego below.
While Antigua is certainly a huge ex-pat hub and tourist destination, it still has that small-town charm and is a lovely place to visit if you are traveling to Guatemala.
I have other A places that I want to travel to soon as well. Antalya is in Turkey and we are headed back down there within the next month, and we met some lovely guys from Azerbaijan the last time we were in Istanbul.
They tell us that we just HAVE to visit someday.
After talking with them about their country, it does sound like a pretty great place to check out. So I will be adding other A’s to my list pretty soon I am sure.
I also can’t finish this article without mentioning Adrienne Beaumont’s home, Australia. I have visited there on a couple of occasions, but with it being such a large and vast place, I wouldn’t want to choose the whole place as a favorite. Plus I have only scratched the surface of the massive continent. I hope you understand Adrienne:)
Thanks so much for joining me in my favorite A destinations. I already have 2 in mind for the B’s!
If you are interested in reading other’s A-Z stories, check out these posts:
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