Where to Go Next: Chaos Edition

Ten Things to Know About the Calgary Airport | Canada's Alberta

Even with a month-long honeymoon on the horizon, I’m starting to get the travel planning itch. You know the one; that nagging feeling that lingers around the edges of your brain 24/7 and pops in to remind you to research that flight, check that reel you saved on IG about that cool neighborhood, or see if you can swing a night at that bucket list hotel.

So even though we’ll take a small hiatus from travel after our honeymoon (likely not going anywhere until 2026), that doesn’t automatically put the brakes on travel planning.

My latest hobby is now coming up with random prompts to determine the next country on my 50 Before 50 list. Take some inspiration from these unorthodox ways to select your next travel destination:

The Emoji Flag

Learning the flags of the world was not as ingrained as European capitals or times tables in elementary school, so most of the flag section of the emoji keyboard is a mystery to me. I think it’d be a fun game to go through all the flags and pick out one that looks cool but you have no clue what country it’s for, and then plan a trip to that place.

The Pick-out-of-a-Hat Game

Popularized at the end of 2024 on TikTok, this group activity has everyone write a destination on a piece of paper that’s thrown in a hat. The hat is passed around and places are pulled out and announced as places you’re NOT going until the last place pulled is announced as your chosen destination.

The Last Minute Flight

I’ve been wanting to do some variation of this for a while now. My rules are simple: The night before, head over to Google Flights and book a ticket to a place you’ve never been before. (Purists will say you should do this at the airport, but booking a same-day flight is always more expensive so that’s just a waste of money.) At the airport, book your first night at a hotel or Airbnb but leave the rest of the trip completely unplanned so you can do things on the fly as you go. Chat up your Airbnb host for recommendations or play the bartender game where you go to a chain of places recommended by whoever is serving you a drink. This probably works best for a long weekend city break — somewhere like Copenhagen or Bogota.

Spin the Globe

I don’t own a physical globe, so this will have to be modified for the digital age but the sentiment remains. You blindly select your next destination by tracing your finger around a map of the world and stopping randomly.

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