My Bucket List
A bucket list doesn’t just tell you where someone is going, but where they’ve been.
1. Tomatina Festival
It’s a food fight. It’s tomatoes being thrown around by 20,000 people. It’s just full on food ridiculousness and I cannot live this life without taking a tomato to the face.
2. Singapore Airlines
I can’t decide what my bucket list item is on this. Ideally it would be to “ride” in the all out suite on Singapore Air. It’s a cool $18k, but I’m pretty sure they’d be losing money after all the free caviar and Dom Perignon I’d drink. But my obsession with this suite really just makes me want to get on one of those planes regardless of seat. Singapore Air just seems like they are doing it right, and I want to go to there.
3. Hot Air Balloon Ride
Preferably in Cappadocia Turkey, because freaking look at this photo. But the reason for this bucket list item is because of an unforgettable morning on my 13th birthday at the national hot air balloon festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My parents didn’t exactly explain what we were doing at 4am as they pulled my younger brother and me from the hide-a-bed at my great aunt’s house. We arrive and I see nothing but darkness and flashes of fire. It’s about 40 degrees, we’re in t-shirt and shorts, because the day will end up being in the 80’s. And we do what we see everyone else doing — huddle around the fires for warmth.
Then I see a line of pink on the horizon. One minute it was pitch black and the next minute —intense pink and orange are overtaking the sky. I stood there almost dumbfounded by what was happening. Because on top of all of these dawn colors, were the giant masses of hot air balloons. I wasn’t prepared for how large they were either, and I’m standing below them as they go from gigantic to minuscule, joining a thousand others above me. The sky is filled with balloons, the commotion rises, everyone is cheering, powdered sugar from my funnel cake is everywhere, I am [still am] speechless.
4. Attend a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater
This place just moves me. The colors and the shapes are epic, and I just know that if I go, it would be one of my most intensely special nights ever. Follow up answer — I would like to see Kaskade there, my favorite DJ. Or Stevie Wonder.
5. Dine at the world’s best restaurant
(currently El Celler de Can Roca — Girona, Spain)
Because if we’re asking for absolutely anything, and you only have one life to live, why not shoot for the best of the best of the best of the best? (Location of this item changes every year; previously held by Noma restaurant in Copenhagen).
6. Create 100 recipes
Creating is a humbling experience. Taking something from inside your head, and making it appear in your hands, is powerful. While I love every moment that I’m in a kitchen, knife in hand, a less enjoyable experience is writing the meticulous details of a recipe. But its reward outweighs its struggle, and I would be pretty damn pleased if I left this world with 100 of my own ways to be delicious.
7. Sail through the Panama Canal
I’m not a sailor, I will not be able to pull this off without a lot of help and luck, but there is something very intense about making this voyage. Even more daring for a non-sailor, perhaps. But think about it — this shouldn’t exist. We created it so people could travel, so the world could connect, and by god did we. Thanks Wright Brothers for making going from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean no big deal, and visiting the Panama Canal, a novelty. But in a list full of travel dreams, this passage is an ode to how lucky we are to have such exploration possibilities.
