Visited Countries Map

Here's what my Visited Countries Map looks like as of today, 9/6/24.

Make your own map here.

At age 52, I have been to 34 different countries. That seems like a pretty high number until I look at the map above and see how little blue there is compared to all the grey. I've only seen a small fraction of everything our world has to offer. 

I know a lot of people who have been to far more countries than I have, including: my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, my aunt and uncle, my sisters-in-law, my nephews, a handful of high school friends, former coworkers, retired friends from church, and virtually every other travel blogger I know. A few have been to well over 100 countries.  

But I know far more people who are much less traveled than I am. There are a lot of reasons for this, obviously. Travel is a privilege that not everyone can afford. Life circumstances and differing abilities can make travel difficult or impossible. Some people travel internationally often, but keep going back to the same one or two places, giving them a very low country count. Others travel extensively through the US, a huge country with enough destinations to last a lifetime, but rarely cross the borders. 

I did some Googling to find out how my stats compare. Needless to say, I found a lot of different information with varying reliability. Here is some of the more trustworthy information I found:

• 71% of Americans have left the United States. 11% have been to 10 or more countries (source)
• 2% of Americans have traveled to more than 31 countries (source)
• The average American adult has been to 3 foreign countries (source)
• People in 27 countries have a stronger passport than those of us in the US (source)
• Roughly 450 people have been to all the countries in the world (source)

Unlike my goal to travel to the five Canadian provinces I haven't visited, I have no plans to visit every country in the world. But there are still several dozen countries on my bucket list. Obviously, there's Luxembourg. And St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Others topping my list include (but are not limited to) Iceland, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. 

How many countries have you visited? What's still on your bucket list? Let me know in the comments!