As I continue to count down the days of the year, I’m using the 1000 Places to See Before You Die Calendar as a guide. I apparently still have a lot of living to do, having seen less than 50% of these desirable destinations pictured during the first couple weeks of the new year. This week’s places to live for include the Terra-Cotta Warriors in Xi’an, China; Bonaire National Park; California’s Big Sur’s Coastal Highway; Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee; Vienna’s Winter Ball Season; and Nara Koen near Kyoto, Japan.

We went to the Terra-Cotta Warrior exhibit at the Portland OMSI when it was making its world tour last year. Tomorrow morning, we’ll visit the King Tut display at the same museum. The original sites of both of these discoveries are on our bucket list. Next year, we’ll travel to Egypt and the following year China to officially check-off these two marvels of the ancient world.

The only site on this week’s calendar that we’ve explored is the California coast line along Highway 101. We stopped in Big Sur at the Ventana Spa about 14 years ago for a massage. I had spent the night close to 50 years earlier in a nearby campground, a few days before we went to a Led Zeppelin concert in Oakland. There was a sharp contrast in luxury between the two visits.

We been to the Caribbean countless times, but the closest we ever got as a couple to Bonaire was probably St. Lucia. My wife, however, has been to neighboring Aruba. These tropical paradises are located just off the coast of Venezuela. I feel we’ve seen enough of the Caribbean, together and separately, that this is currently not a priority of ours. We’ve also been through Nashville many times but never for the night. My wife is not a big country music or bluegrass fan, so the spot where Johnny Cash met June Carter is also not a travel priority. I did, however, watch a documentary on the “Carnegie of the South,” and would enjoy someday seeing a performance at the Ryman Auditorium.

I feel that we’ll definitely get to Vienna in the next few years probably as part of a Viking River Cruise. I believe my wife has been to the area on a high school trip. She can also never get enough of The Sound of Music that was filmed in nearby Salzburg. “The Hills are Alive!” I never got to take a high school trip and finally got to Europe in my late 30’s, so I was once far behind my contemporaries in worldly travel. Fortunately, I’ve been able to catch up and surpass many of them.

We’ll get our first taste together of a Buddha-inspired country when we travel to Thailand in a few months. I have already been to Hong Kong, along with a brief excursion into China about 25 years ago. This will be my wife’s first trip to the Far East. We’ll actually change flights in Tokyo before we get to Bangkok, and this will be the closest I get to Kyoto along with the parkland and temples of Nara Koen. Once we get to Bangkok, we’ll see the reclining Buddha at the Temple of Wat Pho. This 150-foot long gold structure is worthy of even King Tut. At a future date we’ll also plan to get to Nara Koen in Japan and see the colossal bronze image of Buddha housed in Todai-ji, the great Eastern Temple. It’s the world’s largest wooden structure, and another landmark that we’ll want to see before we die.