Lonely Planet Bluelist
618 Things to Do & Places to Go

1st Edition
Simon Sellars, Simone Egger
Published December 2005
ISBN: 174104734X
328 pp

The Lonely Planet Bluelist captures the world’s hottest trends, destinations, journeys and experiences for the year ahead.

Drawing on the knowledge, passion and miles travelled by the Lonely Planet community of authors, staff and travellers, and covering every country in the world, this first edition is a selection of 618 of the best places to go and things to do in the world right now.

Excellent book for the independent preMBA (or postMBA) traveller. Picture yourself with a more or less clear plan for the next two years (quit daily job soon, holidays, MBA for two years) with a very good finantial forecast (if you can do a top MBA, you are incredibly rich by world standards). This lack of anxiety about the next two years mixed with a vacation period puts the preMBA student in a unique and very convenient state of mind for relaxing, reflecting and traveling. And that is exactly the situation I am in right now.

Travelling is a passion for me, the only vice I spend my money on. Inspired by Phileas Fogg, I have already completed one around-the-world trip two years ago, and I loved every single minute of it. At that time, I had two main destinations, two places I had longed for years to discover: China and Australia, two of the bigger countries in the World. I spent one month in each of them and it was a mindblowing experience.

This summer, I have a myriad of smaller targets and I wanted to get a feel for my potential destinations before making decissions. The BlueList is an excellent ressource to plan for your next trip when your goal is to discover the World. All the countries are on it, and it sticks to the Lonely Planet secret recipe for success:

• Focus on the independent traveller,
• a certain degree of priorization and top destinations
• coupled with comprehensive information on all the tourist attractions (or countries in this case),
• healthy sense of humor and finally
• hunger for discovering and understanding the world.

If you plan to travel this summer and you are open to suggestions, get the Bluelist, it will give you quite a few unexpected hints.

Myself, I am already making some decissions, but I have not made up my mind yet. A new trip is in the making!!

(the planning and anticipation from trip planning is almost as good as the trip, isn’t it?)

I will keep you posted on my plans!