Skip to main content

Bucket List: Revisited.


The year 2016 is at an end. It has undoubtedly been a turbulent 12 months of highs and lows, and has thrown at us many, many (mainly political) surprises. On a personal level, 2016 featured the best seven weeks of my life over summer as well as possibly the lowest few weeks too across the year- but let’s not dwell on them right now.

In July 2015, I wrote a Bucket List and, last year, I feel I was preeeetty successful in completing some of them.  Okay, so I may not have completed no.1 on the list (I am indeed studying French but perfecting it maaaay take some time) but I certainly did eat a stack of at least four pancakes- at an iHop in Orlando, Florida. Raspberry and white chocolate- I remember it well. Did it live up to my Bucket List expectations? Oh, yes.
I also managed to tick off the slightly more extreme third thing on my Bucket List- a trip to New York. What a city. I definitely intend to return one day in the future.
One day I was in New York City, the next I was at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, Orlando.
I don't think I've ever felt so at home somewhere in my life. Surrounded by fellow Harry Potter adorers (or 'Potterheads', as they tend to go by the name of), walking around a brick wall into Diagon Alley, I was in my element. Both 'worlds' (Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade) were so beautiful presented  and exceeded my extremely high expectations. I didn't think it was possible to take over 100 pictures of a theme park but apparently it is...
In August, my family and I had a Shakespeare intensive 48 hours. On one day, we visited Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon and the other day I finally saw a production at the Globe Theatre in London. I had seen Macbeth before (with James McAvoy as the titular man, no less) but had never seen anything at the ultimate Shakespeare haven.  Five pounds for three hours of Shakespearean loveliness? A good investment, I think.
Over summer, I also travelled across Europe solely by train; in other word, I went Interailling. Whilst it was an exhausting 18 days, I visited places I probably would never have otherwise gone to that turned out to be sublime and also managed to tick off to sites that I have always wanted to go to (the Reichstag, anyone?!).  I would recommend it to anybody that ever gets the opportunity to go Interraling.

 Other Bucket List successes include finally conquering the Lord of the Rings films (and falling in love with it) and getting an article (or three!) published in a newspaper.

 In the 18 months since I wrote my Bucket List, I have completed 12 of the 39 things on the list, which I'm pretty pleased with. Some are certainly  going to take a good while to complete (perfecting my French for starters)  so I've still got many things to aim for.

 I wish you all a brilliant 2017.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

12 Problems Only People with Glasses Will Understand

17th May 2008. The day my dreads became reality: I got my first pair of glasses. I'd seen it coming for a few months prior to it, but there was still a part of me clutching on to the idea that perhaps my eyesight was just blurry because of the side effects of some peculiar, undiagnosed illness I'd had. Yeah, I was pretty desperate. However, just because the optician tells you to start wearing glasses, that doesn't mean you to have to, right? ...Wrong, but that's what I did anyway, up until late 2012, when it got to the stage where I felt like my grades were being affected by my near-sightedness.  Don't get me wrong- I don't have anything against glasses-wearers; in fact, I genuinely do believe glasses can look sublime. It's just the hassle of wearing them that frustrates me to this very day. If you forget your glasses, you're completely, and utterly, stuck. Every activity you attempt to complete at work that day becomes 19842 times more d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Accomplishments.

Summer is well and truly over. In fact, it had ended over a month ago, but only in the past week have I fully accepted that the weeks of going out in just a t-shirt and shorts are finished for the year. To say that my summer was an adventure would be an understatement. Interrailing across Europe, flying out of the continent for the first time and getting a place at university... These past three months have been simply unbelievable. As I closed that Mathematics exam paper for the last time on 24th June 2016, I had little idea that my summer would be the whirlwind that it was. One week on, and I had flown to the Netherlands for the beginning of eighteen days of walking 30,000 steps a day, train journeys and simply incredible sights. Four weeks on, and I had flown to New York City for, undoubtedly, my greatest holiday. Five weeks on, and I had flown inter-continent to the Sun State of Florida. Seven weeks on, and I had received my A-Level results, which I was fortunately absolute...
Post a Comment
Read more

Interrail 2016: LAKE BLED

Our longest journey by far turned out to be well worth the pain. Although it was nine hours long and we waited for the wrong bus in Bled for over an hour, we had a Harry Potter compartment and we arrived at our destination- Lake Bled, Slovenia. What a place. We lobbed our bags into the lockers at our hostel and immediately went on the hunt for a restaurant to eat at (nine hours of travelling can certainly work up an appetite). Pizzeria Rustica served us enormous pizzas and also some pizza-burgers, which are basically burgers with pizza dough for bread. According to my friends, pizza-burgers are something that should be brought to our hometown.  As it was relatively late by the time we had finished, we only had time to walk to the lake itself before getting to bed. On arrival, we had been asked by the hostel whether we were there more for the night life or nature. Considering the fact that we were deprived of at least 20 hours sleep, we went for nature, rejecting ...
Post a Comment
Read more