Ferries!

While You Are There: Your on-board experiences will vary widely, but whether you are living it up in a private cabin on a ship with plenty of booze and entertainment, or crammed in a cold and leaky vessel with a bunch of local fisherman, enjoy it! It’s not your everyday experience. It’s part of being wherever you are.

Why It’s On My List: Yesterday’s post was about the places you can stay and today’s post is about the ways you can get there. Ferry travel can take you places that are expensive to get to otherwise, or sometimes, that you can’t even get to at all. Some of my favorite ferry related experiences are

• The Aran Islands in Ireland  where I rented a bicycle and rode around narrow roads lined by sheep pastures outlines with old, low stone fences and the ever-present cold, gray sea in the background. It was the quintessential image of Ireland.
• Elephanta Island in India, which was the first place I visited in India, the day after I arrived in Mumbai and had a day to kill before my flight to Vadodara. It was overwhelming and magnificent.
• Tortuguero National Park in Costa Rica where I witnessed a sea turtle nesting in the middle of the night under the stars.
• Pelican Bar in Jamaica, which in itself was very cool, but my favorite part was riding over with a Honduran immigrant and learning about his life experiences and being very impressed with his English, but more, with how he had picked up the Jamaican patois in just six months
• And last but not least, the ferry ride to Tasmania because I found a $100 bill lying on the carpet in the hallway!

For this year’s A-Z Blog Challenge, I’ve decided to showcase 26 of my favorite places in the world. I’ve only been to 22 of the 196 countries, so I’ve got some more travelling to do, but these places are well worth a visit.