Prologue - Trip Around the World

I’m about to take off on a trip around the world.
  Why in the world would I do that?!
  At my age?!
  Well, I’m very interested in archaeology, in architecture, in other places.  And most of those that have fascinated me since I learned of them - sometimes way back in my childhood (for instance, the Pyramids, Machu Picchu or Rapa Nui/Easter Island) - and which I haven’t visited yet - are on the far side of the planet from my bases on either side of the Atlantic.  These are the places still on my Bucket List to see.  At least on the A-Bucket List, because there are other things to be put on a lesser B-Bucket List (Portugal, Morocco, the fjords, the Greek isles...), but all of those are easily reachable from either Ann Arbor or Paris.
  Why now?  Because I still can.  It’s that simple.  Many friends my age - or even younger - have problems with their knees, hips, heart, lungs, fill-in-the-blank that prevent them from traveling any more.  And I don’t want to wait until that happens to me.  A month before departure, I stumbled into a footstool and thought I’d broken my little toe, which left me hobbling for quite a while.  Turns out it must have been only sprained and has healed enough to stand up to this sixty-day odyssey.
  I will leave behind me the cardinals, blue jays and sparrows that come to eat at my feeder in the early morning.  The blue morning glories that bloomed belatedly but stunningly on my front porch.  The majestic seventy-year-old trees - maple, spruce and mulberry - that tower over my little house, shade it from the summer sun and stand etched against the grey winter sky.  And of course Spot, my favorite squirrel, plus all the others who come to eat the hardened heels of bread, old cherries and Craisins that I leave for them.
  There will be too many jets on this trip.  Lots of trains I can compare with France’s TGV.  Cabs and maybe buses.  A boat down the Yangtze.  Of course lots of walking.  And maybe even a zipline off the Great Wall.
     I’ll be visiting - in this order - the Marquesas, Kyoto, China (with National Geographic, the only part not done on my own), Hanoi and Halong Bay, Angkor Wat, Agra and Kathmandu... then on to Paris for two weeks and finally back to my point of departure in Ann Arbor.
  Light a candle in the window.