{"id":42354,"date":"2024-09-28T00:01:24","date_gmt":"2024-09-28T07:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=42354"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:59:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:59:41","slug":"dumping-out-my-bucket-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/dumping-out-my-bucket-list\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m 83 and I’m Dumping My Bucket List"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"dumping<\/a>
I’m\u00a0 traveling closer to home these days. Here, the interior of the opulent Breakers mansion, Newport. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why I’m Dumping My Travel Bucket List<\/strong><\/p>\n

The party was a noisy one, lots of people, lots of Prosecco. I was describing my recent travel adventures to a new acquaintance.<\/p>\n

“You went to Provence?” she said. “Oh, I love Provence.”<\/p>\n

“Providence,” I said. “Providence, Rhode Island. I was visiting friends.”<\/p>\n

Her question gave me pause. I could have traveled someplace far more exotic than Providence last summer.\u00a0Like Provence. Why didn’t I?<\/p>\n

I could have walked the Avenue des Anglais instead of the halls of\u00a0 the Vanderbilt’s grand mansion at Newport.<\/p>\n

I could have breathed in the purple fields of lavender outside the Abbaye Notre-Dame de S\u00e9nanque instead of the salvia and milkweed growing in my friend’s tiny French intensive garden.<\/p>\n

Provence instead Providence.<\/p>\n

The Penguins of the Antarctic<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There was a time, not so long go, when the penguins of the Antarctic and the steps of Machu Picchu were were on my list of Things I Gotta Do Before I Kick the Bucket. It was an ambitious list: Bhutan. Mongolia. Madagascar. New Zealand. Bali. Lake Tanganyika.<\/p>\n

But standing there the other night, chatting with this new acquaintance, I realized that somewhere between the pandemic and Jon’s death<\/a> I began dumping out the contents of my travel bucket list.<\/p>\n

I was 83 now and what I really wanted to do was spend time with old friends.<\/p>\n

Friends who live in places like Austin, Traverse City, La Jolla, Knoxville, Grosse Pointe, New Orleans, Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

A Trip Within a Trip<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The Providence friends were old friends, really old.<\/p>\n

The older the better, I say. Because there, at their dinner table, we could travel so far back in time together. Way back to 1967, just for starters, to the apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where I introduced the two of them.<\/p>\n

It was a trip within a trip, to a place faraway in time that was, and still is, every bit as lovely as the lavender fields of Provence.<\/p>\n

Travel adventures in years past: “The Poop on China. And the Pee.”<\/a>\u00a0 And “Is Istanbul Too Risky for You? Here’s What You’re Missing.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"dumping<\/a>
My friends treated me to a stroll on the Cliff Walk and a visit to the Vanderbilts’ Gilded Age mansion, The Breakers<\/a>, in Newport. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"dumping<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometime between the pandemic and my husband’s death I began dumping out the contents of my travel bucket list.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14],"tags":[103,34,655,2141,2897,2898,2899,2419],"class_list":["post-42354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-widowed","tag-aging","tag-dont-miss","tag-friends","tag-friendship","tag-newport","tag-providence","tag-the-breakers","tag-widowed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48684,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42354\/revisions\/48684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}