Visit 30 Countries Before 30 - Planning

                  

I've already acknowledged on the list that this particular item may be the most ambitious of my challenges. I thought initially my main constraint would be expense, but actually once I started looking at a full list of countries of the world I saw there's plenty of potential for utilising cheap Sleazyjet flights and combining countries into a single trip that make that a lot easier. As it turns out, the biggest complication this year will be finding enough time from my work holiday allowance - particularly tricky since 10 days of it have already been put aside for the Edinburgh Fringe in August!

I started by finding a suitable list of countries to work from online. A little bit of googling unearthed a few versions, and to complicate matters further the status of a lot of principalities as countries or states is heavily disputed which makes things pretty difficult to define. In fact, according to the site "listofcountriesoftheworld", only 191 countries are not in dispute. Still, I had to start somewhere, and their list seemed as good as any so I've decided to work from that.

From a first review, I've already visited 22 not including England (which I decided was a cheat since I was born here). I was a little disappointed to realise the four US states I initially wrote down wouldn't qualify but never mind. My 22 already visited are:

1) Australia

2) Austria

3) Belgium

4) China

5) Czech Republic

6) Egypt

7) Estonia

8) Finland

9) France

10) Germany

11) India

12) Ireland

13) Italy

14) Japan

15) Mauritius

16) Spain

17) Switzerland

18) Thailand

19) Scotland

20) USA

21) Vatican City

22) Wales

So now I'm fully into holiday scheduling for 2014. I'm lucky actually because through my work I already know I'll need to visit Denmark which I've never been to before, and that also opens up the possibility of crossing the bridge to Sweden while I'm there as its just a short train journey across to Malmo. It doubles up as a brilliantly geeky adventure for a girl who loves a bit of Skandi-Crime, visiting the locations of "The Killing" and "The Bridge"...

I'm also hoping that work requires me to visit the office in Nice again, because although I've been to France multiple times already, a trip to Nice would give me the chance to visit Monaco only a short drive down the road. 

Other than those though I'm pretty open to suggestions. I do of course have South America on my list so that will cover more - but for now I'm off to spin a globe and stick a pin in it.