For many of us, 2003 begins with a quiet internal debate about travel.
We have that old urge to get out of town. It has been building for months. We need to hit the road to someplace new, or at least someplace that seems happy and relaxed.
On the other hand, we're feeling a bit anxious. We are not afraid, more like a little uneasy.
On top of that, who knows what's coming this year? It could be war in Iraq. Or North Korea.
So this year, my top 10 picks for travel include destinations and travel options with high interest and variety, that are generally safe and that won't do permanent damage to your bank account.
The only exotic suggestion is No. 10: Bali. This faraway place may seem dangerous and expensive. But stick with me. You'll understand my reasoning.
1. THE GREAT AMERICAN ROAD TRIP
That's right. We're talking about mom, apple pie and Chevrolet. Or maybe an RV, one of those condos on wheels.
America basically is pretty darned wonderful and diverse. None of us has seen all the places we'd like to see.
This is a great year to whittle down that list.
Maybe you want to follow Route 66 as the song goes "from Chicago to L.A."
Follow the switchbacks on the Big Sur cliffs along California's Highway 1. Or perhaps retrace the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Mississippi and Missouri and across the mountains to Oregon.
You almost cannot lose with the national parks.
A great trip would be to head south from national park to national park starting at Glacier in Montana, where grizzlies roam, down past Yellowstone's geysers, Grand Tetons' knife's-point peaks and then to Rocky Mountain Colorado.
All along the way you'll find spiked peaks, great hikes and horseback riding. Blue, blue waters thick with big-shouldered trout.
Speaking of national parks, it's a great year to mosey through southern Utah's parks with their otherworldly rock formations and pictographs by the ancient Anasazi Indians.
If black bears and mountain peaks are not your thing, how about touring up the New England coast. Start in Boston, hit Cape Cod and poke on up to Maine. Dine on big-clawed lobsters. Swim in Atlantic waters that turn your arms to blue and your face to smiles. Evenings, take in summer stock plays. Almost every town has a playhouse barn.
Or follow the southern shore through the Carolinas into Georgia. Hit North Carolina's Outer Banks. Hike the dunes, see where the Wright Brothers had their first successful flight and touch the sky yourself with a hang gliding course.
In South Carolina, stop and see some Branson-style shows in Myrtle Beach and play some golf, then stroll through among the 18th- and 19th-century homes in Charleston, one of the South's most charming cities. In Georgia, do not miss the elegant old city of Savannah, the city that Gen. Sherman spared. And you can quickly learn the true story behind the best seller and movie "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."
2. MEXICO
Here is a country that can be as foreign as you want it to be. And it's a great bargain. You can dine like a king for $8 and write home about your fabulous $50 hotel room with an antique bed and 20-foot ceilings.
If what you want is the SPF-15 sun rays and powder sand beaches, you can get it at Mexico's major resorts such as Cancun, Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos.
Think of these resorts as comparable to Miami's South Beach, but they speak less Spanish — it's English only at cocktails by the pool, international cuisine, Hard Rock Cafe, Pizza Hut, miles of golf greens.
If you are ready for something Florida doesn't offer, Mexico boasts a lot.
Just hours away from Cancun, the pyramids of the Mayan ruins in Yucatan will astound.
Rock by sweat-stained rock, they were built by a people who hundreds of years before Jesus had developed a written language and a calendar system that is more precise than our own. In winter, you can see literally millions of monarch butterflies in the state of Michoacan. Some of them might be relatives of those who began a long migration starting in September in Michigan. Take in the paintings and fabulously colored tile work in Oaxaca.
3. CANADA
Sure, it's right next door. We think we know it. But we don't, not really. Canada is simply too big and too diverse to grasp beyond the usual sense of Mounties, mountains and guys who say "eh."
What's more, discovering it is relatively cheap. Right now, $1 U.S. equals $1.60 Canadian.
How diverse? On the Arctic islands, Inuit people still hunt seal and narwhals, do wondrous soapstone carvings and stretch polar bear skins outside their houses. Regular flights from Montreal go to Resolute Island and Iqaluit.
The fishing villages in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland are at least as charming and a whole lot more authentic than the often gentrified New England towns. Also don't miss the Bay of Fundy, which has the world's highest tides. From ebb to full, they run from 30 to almost 50 feet twice a day.
Montreal is like living in some idiosyncratic Parisian arrondissement. The French cooking is superb. Women turn a simple dress into high fashion with just a scarf. Cobblestone streets in the old city seem to ooze the history of voyageurs.
Toronto was once described as New York run by the Swiss. What could be better? All the cosmopolitan attractions, but it's safe and clean.
Next time, get away from downtown and the shops at Yorkville. Take the King Street trolley to the Beach section for a little bit of Cape Cod on Lake Ontario. Ride the Yonge Street subway and then a bus to the city's great hands-on science center. Ride with the kids on a ferry to the Toronto Islands and let them run through the 6-foot-high shrubbery maze.
Moving west, if you take a motor trip around Lake Superior you'll find one of North America's most dramatically beautiful drives near Thunder Bay, Ontario. Between Nipigon and Marathon, you can watch the thunder of waves crashing into giant cliffs. Perhaps only Big Sur can compare.
Dig big hats and Tony Llama boots? Grab a seat at the Calgary Stampede, one of the best rodeos in the West. Skiing comes no better or cheaper than in the Canadian Rockies at Banff or Lake Louise or out near the British Columbia coast at Whistler/Blackcomb.
Set by the sea with towering mountains nearby, Vancouver ranks as one of the world's three most beautiful cities, along with Rio de Janeiro and Hong Kong.
If you visit anytime from July through September, you'll never want to leave. Flowers are everywhere. The Vancouverites are cosmopolitan and as laid-back as any Canadians get. And Chinese food that rivals Hong Kong's best. After
all, the best Chinese chefs came to Vancouver at the time of the Hong Kong's handover to China in 1997.
4. CRUISES
You've got to love the cruise industry. It just keeps building more and more ships, and more and more big ones.
As a result, for years it's had more cabins than it could fill. With supply outstripping demand, cruising is one of travel's great values.
For as little as $100 a day, you get all meals, a stateroom (albeit an inside cabin), entertainment, swimming pools, nine daily eating opportunities, plus you visit some great places with everything from steel bands and old Spanish forts to quaint fishing villages and the sharp-angled mountains of Alaska.
This year, of course, you can do the Love Boat thing. Cruise the Caribbean and get off in ports deluged daily by 8,000 cruise-ship visitors.
Or you could board a sailboat on the Barefoot Windjammer cruise to small out-of-the-way ports. Or maybe, a luxurious canal barge in France or Germany, although prices are not hugely reduced.
Alaskan cruises were sellouts last season, and well may be again this year. It will be harder to get an inexpensive fare. But for something different, you might try a cruise to or from Hawaii.
The media have reported much in recent months about cruise passengers falling ill with the Norwalk-like virus.
It is a true concern. If you are quite elderly or in fragile health, you might want to give cruising a pass for a while.
However, the odds are small not only that you will be on a ship where the virus flares up, or even if you are, that you will get the disease. Only 1 percent of passengers has gotten the Norwalk-like virus in the past year, according to National Council of Cruise Lines, a lobbying group for the industry.
The best advice: If you go, wash your hands. Frequently. And that also will help you avoid colds.
5. GREAT LAKES REGION
Of course, Michigan is a winner. This year, take that trip to the Upper Peninsula you've been promising yourself. Eat some pasties. See the Pictured Rocks along the Lake Superior shore. Take a snapshot of Tahquamenon Falls. Wander through the old copper mining villages in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
At Lake Superior, see the glorious Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Visit the old rendezvous fort at Thunder Bay.
At Lake Michigan, take a carousel ride on Chicago's Navy Pier. See the new art museum in Milwaukee.
At Lake Erie, take the ferry out for a bit of partying at Put-In Bay and the nearby islands, and visit the Rock 'n' Roll Museum in Cleveland.
And Lake Ontario? Niagara Falls, of course.
6. EUROPE
We love the British isles. It's foreign without being uncomfortable. Everyone speaks English. The history often feels like the prologue for American history. And the people are lovely, especially in Ireland.
But the isles are pricey. The pound is worth about $1.50 U.S. And when you look at prices, you think, "Gee, that's about the same as in Detroit or Chicago." But then you are hit by the realization that the price is in pounds. It's actually 50 percent more expensive.
For low prices and fascinating travel, try the Iberian Peninsula — Spain and Portugal — or the Greek isles.
Spain has Barcelona and its superb museums, Bilbao for its architecture, the Pyrenees with its Basque culture and the Costa del Sol for beaches.
But my recent favorite is the Greek island of Crete, a near-perfect combination of things that make vacations great — wonderful beaches, terrific mountains with great hikes, the home of Greek myths, a history that goes back 4,000 years before Jesus, fine craftspeople working in weavings and ceramics and charming seaside towns where you can loll in cafes watching the boats nod-nodding at their moorings.
7. HAWAII
Consistently ranked as the best vacation place in the United States. Honolulu gives city energy. But the rest of the state is pretty laid back, with weather that soothes, never grates. Mountains leap up from the sea. Beaches beckon you to lay down a towel. Locals actually can do the hula and play the ukulele. It's a long, often expensive plane flight there. But Hawaii lives up to its reputation.
8. CHALLENGE YOURSELF
If you do something on vacation that's a challenge, I promise you will never forget it.
You might try something physical. Go on a week-long bike ride. Hike for a week in the Rockies. Go on a trek through the Andes to Peru's Machu Picchu.
Learn something new. Take a course in photography at the Santa Fe Workshops or study English lit at Cambridge. Travel to France on a watercolor painting expedition. Learn to build your own cabin in Wisconsin.
Volunteer. Do something you'll be proud of. Clear trails in national parks. Build a house for Habit for Humanity. Study sea turtles in Costa Rica. With most of these programs, you pay a little and come home with a lot.
9. COLORADO
If you are an outdoor person, this is your place.
A lot of people know about Colorado. But you can zig when the world zags. Instead of winter skiing in Aspen, go in summer and attend the music festival, hike the trails and get lower hotel rates. Instead of hiking with crowds during the summer in Rocky Mountain National Park, go in winter and cross-country ski. The trails are almost empty, wild birds will eat out of your hand and motel rates are cheap in Estes Park.
Hit the slopes when the crowds are elsewhere. Denverites and others pack the close-in areas on weekends, like Winter Park, Breckenridge, Arapahoe Basin and Keystone. So you should go during the week.
In contrast, Aspen, Vail, Beaver Creek and Steamboat Springs are all destination areas where out-of-staters jam in all week long. The weekends are transition times with people flying home or flying in. That's when the slopes are the most empty.
Coloradans tend to bail out of the mountains in spring, the muddy season. That's a great time to head for the San Juan Mountains at Ouray or Telluride and shoot pictures of the mountain wild flowers. Once again, cheap hotel rates.
10. BALI
I know this may seem like an outrageous suggestion. But think of it as one more version of the zig-zag game.
As the world knows, a bomb killed nearly 200 people last October in Bali. Police have picked up a number of suspects. They also have boosted security to new heights.
In the meantime, tourists have left Bali deserted.
However for the visitor, Bali might be better than it has been for years.
If people had a complaint about Bali it was that it had been discovered. And the crowds were appalling.
Now the crowds are gone. What remains is what was always there — wondrous volcanoes rising from the jungles, ancient palaces, great beaches, fabulous art work and some of the world's most gentle people.
And having been suddenly undiscovered, the prices are stunningly cheap. For example, hotel rooms that went for $400 have dropped to almost $100. With Natrabu Indo-American Travel, you can get a seven-night, five-star package, including air on the superb Singapore Air for $1,159 from Detroit (1-800-628-7228; www.natrabu-usa.com. And travel agents can tell you about other deals.
Of course, no one knows if terrorists will hit Bali again.
But Bali does seem relatively safe since the terrorists already have accomplished their end there. They have gotten big publicity, scared away the world's travelers and slammed the economy of Bali and, with it, all of Indonesia.
Is it safe? Logically, yes.