If your bucket list includes these 9 places, it’s time for an upgrade

Be honest: how many items on your “someday” list are just famous backdrops for a photo?

Many of us collect them. We fly in, take the same shot as everyone else, and move on. If what you really want is meaning, perspective, and a story that changes you, the usual suspects rarely deliver.

Here is a gentle nudge. Trade postcard stops for experiences that stretch you. That does not mean ditch travel. It means upgrade the reason behind it.

Research supports this idea. Experiences tend to create longer lasting happiness than material trophies, including “I went there” snapshots. Cornell psychologist Thomas Gilovich has written about how experiential purchases deepen our sense of identity and connection over time.

With that lens, here are nine classic “bucket list” places I suggest retiring, along with what to reach for instead.

1. Times Square, New York

The neon is hypnotic. Five minutes later you have spent too much on a bottle of water and inhaled enough exhaust for the week. What you are really after in New York is a jolt of cultural electricity.

Upgrade to: a neighborhood deep dive. Pick one micro area and give it your full day. Try Jackson Heights for a global food crawl, the Lower East Side for tenement history and indie galleries, Harlem for live jazz and soul food, or Sunset Park for big sky views and incredible pan Asian eats. Ask locals where they go after work.

Try this: Walk with a theme. Hunt for the oldest bakery, the best dumpling under five dollars, or three jazz spots in one night. Leave with a story you cannot buy under a billboard.

2. The top of the Eiffel Tower, Paris

You may wait an hour to see a view through thick security glass. Lovely, yes. Transformative, not usually. The upgrade is intimacy. See Paris at street height and on a human scale, not from a queue.

Upgrade to: a handmade Paris. Spend a morning in a cheese aging cave and learn how affineurs coax flavor. Take a short bookbinding class on the Left Bank. Wander Canal Saint Martin with a simple picnic. End at Parc de Belleville at golden hour for a free skyline and that iron lace in silhouette.

Small practice: Ask yourself, “What skill can I learn here in two hours?” Come home with a muscle memory that outlasts any panorama.

3. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy

You can snap the “holding it up” pose. Or you can move beyond novelty into craft and context. Tuscany’s lasting magic lies in slow technique: dough under your nails, pigment on your fingers, and soil on your shoes.

Upgrade to: a day apprenticing. Join a family bakery before dawn, take a lesson in fresco restoration, or shadow an olive oil producer during harvest. You will still get your espresso, and you will earn a story that tastes like place.

Reflection: Which feels better a year from now, an angle or an ability?

4. The Hollywood Walk of Fame, Los Angeles

The stars on the sidewalk are dusty, the crowds are intense, and no one feels glamorous. What you want is the spark of creativity. There are richer places to find it.

Upgrade to: making something. Try a storytelling or improv workshop in Los Feliz. Tour a backlot, then write a two page scene in a café. Catch a tiny comedy set where tomorrow’s headliners are still nervous.

Anecdote: The first time I sat in a twenty seat black box theater and watched a playwright test a scene, I felt the city’s heartbeat. No souvenir stand can sell you that.

5. The Vegas Strip, Nevada

The spectacle can dazzle, yet many visitors leave feeling oddly hollow. If what you want is awe, the Las Vegas area has it, just not where most people look.

Upgrade to: desert time. Watch sunrise paint Red Rock Canyon. Hike a slot canyon at Valley of Fire. Stargaze in the Mojave, where the sky feels like a cathedral. Back in town, choose one world class performance you will remember for years, perhaps aerial work, dance, or magic. Give it your full attention. Put the phone away. Skip the side chatter.

Two part rule: Fill the morning with silence and geology. Earn the evening’s glitter with wonder you did not manufacture.

6. Santorini’s Oia sunset, Greece

The sunset is beautiful. You will share it with several thousand elbows. The cliché here is not the island. The cliché is moving in a herd.

Upgrade to: the quiet Cyclades. Naxos offers long beaches and family tavernas. Amorgos brings cliffside monasteries and cobalt coves. Syros gives you neoclassical streets and a local opera tradition. Travel in the shoulder season if you can. Pick one hiking trail, one grandmother run taverna, and one dawn swim.

Mindset shift: Chase textures rather than shots. Think salt crusted skin, warm bread torn by hand, and bells drifting over a hillside.

7. The “Bali swing,” Indonesia

The swing is dramatic. It also exists primarily for Instagram. If your guiding star is growth, Bali offers far richer ways to meet yourself.

Upgrade to: community powered learning. Tour an agroforestry project. Help plant mangroves. Spend a day with artisans who harvest and dye natural fibers. Ask about what tourism sustains and what it strains. You may return lighter, and you will also return more accountable.

Practice: Learn to say thank you in Balinese and in Indonesian. Use names. Respect is the best travel currency.

8. Cancun hotel zone, Mexico

An all inclusive offers comfort, and it can also encourage a soft kind of blindness. If you want memories that hold layers of meaning, head past the gate.

Upgrade to: cenotes and small towns. Swim in an early morning cenote with a guide who cares for the site. Rent bikes in Valladolid. Eat lime soup in a shaded courtyard. Visit a community weaving cooperative. If you visit ruins, go with a guide from the nearest town and learn what is being preserved right now, not only what once stood.

Ground rule: Direct a meaningful slice of your budget to local, family run experiences. You will feel the difference in every conversation.

9. Dubai’s biggest mall, or any “world’s largest” attraction

World records are fun. Chasing superlatives can detach you from place. You end up inside a climate controlled Everywhere.

Upgrade to: ecology and heritage. Take a dawn trip into a desert conservation reserve. Learn about falconry and the delicate water math of the region. Follow a food trail led by residents, starting with an Emirati breakfast and continuing to the South Asian comfort dishes that power the city.

Value check: Ask, “What here exists because of this place’s constraints?” That single question leads to better designs, better choices, and better stories.

The deeper upgrade you are really after

Let us zoom out. These swaps are not about being contrarian. They are about aligning travel with the person you are becoming. A few principles help when planning, and also when re planning on the fly.

• Trade photos for practices. Can you learn a skill, even a small one? Roll pasta. Bind a chapbook. Identify three desert plants. Time your breath to cold water. Research on memory shows that the moments we recall most intensely are shaped by the “peak end rule,” a combination of an emotionally rich peak and a mindful ending. Design your days to create both the peak and the ending.
• Prioritize people over places. The right guide, cook, musician, or market vendor can turn any alley into a universe. If a tour centers on human connection, not just logistics, it is usually worth it.
• Go slower than is comfortable. Many of us are productivity pros. Slowing down can feel like failure. It is not. It is the only way your senses catch up to where your feet are.
• Let your values steer. If sustainability matters to you at home, it matters even more when you are a guest. Read up on the Leave No Trace principles and apply them on beaches and trails, and also online when you share locations. Protect what you love.
• Build a contribution into the itinerary. Volunteer for a morning. Take a class that supports a social enterprise. Pick a dinner where part of the proceeds go back to the community. You will feel the difference before the plane lands.

But what if the “cliché” is your dream?

Keep it. Joy is not a contest. If watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle makes you cry, go and let yourself cry. The point is not to shame the familiar. The point is to notice when habit or hype is steering more than heart.

When I finally upgraded my own list, I stopped tallying countries and started counting connections. The cab driver in Athens who taught me to say “efcharistó” properly. The retiree in the Mojave who pointed out a constellation I had never seen. The bakery owner who let me shape one imperfect roll and then wrapped it for me like a medal.

These are the souvenirs I touch when a work week gets loud.

How to rewrite your list tonight

Grab your current bucket list. Circle the items that are there mainly for the photo. Then, for each one, write an “upgrade” that adds one of the following: a skill, a relationship, or a contribution.

• Skill: Replace “Climb landmark X” with “Learn a local craft for two hours.”
• Relationship: Replace “See the famous square” with “Share a meal in a neighborhood home or community spot.”
• Contribution: Replace “Do the popular trail” with “Join a guided cleanup or conservation walk.”

Plan one upgraded micro adventure you can do within driving distance next month. I will be out trail running at dawn and picking up trash along the way. Old habits fade quickly when you are moving on purpose. When a bigger trip shows up on your calendar, you will already be in meaning mode.

Final thought

If your bucket list includes the nine places above, consider making room for experiences that change how you see, listen, and give. The world does not need another photo of my face in front of a tower, and neither do I. What I need, and what I suspect you crave too, is the quiet satisfaction of doing something you can feel in your bones.

That upgrade is available anywhere. All it asks is that you choose it.