Personal Recommendations - 12 Places to Travel in 2019

I caveated last week’s article by saying the locations were not my recommendations but those of the Travel Powers That Be. However, by request from one of my friends, I am now doing my personal list of places to visit in 2019. For the record, I have not been to all of these places – I’ve visited a third of the places listed and the others are based on research rather than first-hand experiences. You can tell where I’ve been because there are pictures. A couple places on my recommendations overlap with the “Best of 2019” list. Others are on one or another organizations’ list and some are just me. With that, here are my top 12 places to visit in 2019.

Rome

Rome has been standing for thousands of years, and is on many, many people’s travel lists. But why I think now is the time to visit Rome - I mean the Colosseum isn’t exactly going anywhere - is the use of virtual reality tech at historical sites. At two sites I visited last spring - Domus Aurea and the Baths of Caracalla - visitors could use VR headsets to see what the site would have looked like in its heyday. It’s both trippy and potentially an incredible change in how we visit ancient sites and view the past, quite literally. And of course, it’s Rome. It’s less a question of why would you go and more a question of why wouldn’t you?

Uzbekistan

600-700 years ago, Europe was not the center of the world, Asia was. From Japan to the Ottoman Empire, trade was linked through the ancient Silk Road, and modern-day Uzbekistan was home to some of the most magnificent and key trading cities along that route. The country has three great medieval cities: Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khiva. And now, the Central Asian country is the most accessible it has ever been for travelers. Sixty countries can now apply for visas online, and flights are fairly simple, as Turkish airlines flies to the capital city, Tashkent, from NY or DC with a layover in Istanbul. Way easier than joining a 15th century caravan.

Peru

Peru is far more than Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail. It’s even more than that plus the incredible food scene in Lima. It’s forgotten, very hard to reach Incan ruins, Spanish colonial architecture, and the Amazon. It’s ceviche made of some fruit I can’t even name and the most beautiful plaza I’ve ever seen. It’s not being able to breathe after taking a few dozen steps despite have been at extreme elevation for a week, and understanding one word in ten, to my endless frustration and occasional tears. It’s a pretty big country - almost twice the size of Texas and there is way more there than the surface stereotypes. Peru even has an emerging craft beer scene - although I found it amusing that two of the three microbreweries I visited were founded by people from Oregon.

Pisac in the Sacred Valley - roughly 10,000 feet above sea level

Namibia

Namibia flies under the radar for reasons that just escape me. The country is in Southern Africa and is considered extremely safe, including for solo female travelers. The big game park - Etosha National Park - is in the north of the country and contains the usual suspects in terms of animals. One of the country’s more unusual feature is the Skeleton Coast - an area where the desert meets the ocean that is scattered with the remains of hundreds of shipwrecks. Namibia is also known for its desert sand dunes, some of the highest in the word, and for sandboarding (snowboarding but on sand)

Japan

To be honest, I’d absolutely love to go to Japan this year - because this year Japan is hosting the Rugby World Cup. For those of you who didn’t follow the 2015 World Cup, Japan’s team - the Cherry Blossoms/Brave Blossoms - beat South Africa’s Springboks in what was the biggest upset of tournament and one of the biggest in World Cup history. Seriously, it was a huge deal. So Japan hosting this year seems only fitting. If you aren’t a rugby fan, you’ll still get to enjoy the updates and English-friendly adjustments in infrastructure that are preceding the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. And of course, there are far too many cool places to list for Japan. Suffice it to say, there is something for everyone - from food to sports to history to animation fans. This is just a particularly good year to check it out.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

This is one of those “go before it’s too late” recommendations. Global warming has raised the ocean temperature, stressing out the coral in the Great Barrier Reef. The result is a phenomenon called coral bleaching. But what that all means in practical terms is that roughly half of the coral in the Barrier Reef has died since 2016. Yep, half of the largest reef in the world died in two years. So if you want to visit the Great Barrier Reef, pretty much ever, there isn’t time to waste. Really, it’d be best to invent a time machine and visit the reef in 2015, but barring that go now, as there is no telling how much worse it will get in the upcoming years.

Portland, ME

Yes, the millennial hipster thinks you should visit the other Portland. Portland, Maine feels lived in in a way that many cities I’ve visited haven’t. Walk a little away from that lobster place (or vegetarian Thai restaurant if you’re me) and you can find yourself the only tourist in what is still clearly a working port. The same can be said for the islands, where a fifteen minute walk from the ferry landing and you end up in a diner/general store and are the only non-local. And the beer scene, while not as epic as Portland, Oregon’s, is still excellent.

Dakar, Senegal

Dakar had always been on my radar as a place to visit but had never really hit me as anything other than “maybe eventually” until this year. And that is because of the opening of the Museum of Black Civilizations. I hadn’t even heard of this museum until I read about it on The New York Times’ list and I am so excited about it. I love a good museum, but this one is extra exciting. It focuses on black civilizations, both in Africa and in diaspora communities in places like the US and Brazil. It’s important for cultures to tell their own stories, and for a richer, more complete picture to be told about the past. This museum is a huge step in that direction. Also there are fantastic beaches.

Germany

I am not a fan of modernist architecture. At all. But other people are, so for those of you who do enjoy that, the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus movement will be cool and an excellent reason to visit Germany this year. As an amateur historian, the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is much more interesting and an excellent opportunity/excuse to really delve into Cold War Berlin and the two Germanys. And of course there are always castles along the Rhine, beer in Munich, and wine in the Mosel Valley.

Bolivia

Nearly half the country is covered by the Amazon, but it’s the highlands that spark many of Bolivia’s great sites. The Altiplano covers the westernmost chunk of the country and two of the most interesting areas for travelers in Bolivia - Lake Titicaca and Salar de Uyuni. Lake Titicaca - the highest navigable lake in the world - is home to a number of Incan ruins, such as ones on the Isla del Sol, the traditional birthplace of the sun according to Incan myth. There are also the ruins at Tiwankanu, a pre-Columbian civilization that predates the Inca by nearly 1000 years. The Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat, and, if visited right after the rain, forms a giant natural mirror. In addition, there are the cities of Sucre and La Paz, and the silver mining town Potosi. And of course, the aforementioned Amazon.

Ireland

I will always tell people to go to Ireland. I went to Dublin in November 2016 and absolutely fell in love with the place. Dublin is the only part of Ireland I’ve been to, but Galway and Belfast have been highly recommended by travel writers over the last couple years. And as a lover of trad music (traditional Irish music), there is nothing more fun than chilling at a random bar listening to live music and singing along when you know the words. The country is full of history, music, and literature which, honestly are three of my absolute favorite things.

Jordan

So much of the last 3000 years of Mediterranean history can be found in Jordan. The ancient, pre-Roman ruins at Petra (remnants of the Nabatean Kingdom), Roman ruins at Jerash. Early Christian sites, Crusaders’ castles, Islamic Palaces, this country has it all. Even the wilderness area of Wadi Rum is filled with history – it was the stomping grounds of T. E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, during World War I. Jordan’s tourism took a hit following the Arab Spring – it’s a fairly safe country but borders numerous areas of unrest, particularly Syria. Tourism is bouncing back, but it’s still an affordable place to visit.