I like attending events so a lot of my previous travel plans were centered around events, whether it be family reunions, funerals (these are unplanned by the way in case anyone was wondering), gaming tournaments or whatever. Case in point, for the past few years I've tried to plan a summer trip to Edmonton because of a big annual Warhammer 40k/Fantasy tournament (It Came From Out of the Basement) arranged by some former Prince George gamers (hasn't worked out yet though as things always seem to get in the way) and late last year I thought about going to Seattle just to attend PAX Prime 2014 or to see We Will Rock You. This year I was even considering trying to go to Cologne because Gamescom (and coincidentally the League of Legends EU LCS Summer Playoffs!) happens to happen after our week in Paris is done (though not sure if the rest of my family would share my enthusiasm about the event)
A few moments after my wife asked the question it dawned on me that I could relate our travel plans to some of the games we play and I suggested we do a Civ 5 World Wonder Tour - basically visit every World Wonder in Civ 5 that still exists. This would help us plan future vacations and for me it wouldn't just be sight seeing; we could actually visit the wonders we build in our games of Civ 5 (we play Civ 5 together a fair amount)
It's going to take a very long time though to hit all the Civ 5 wonders (here's a list of all of them http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_wonders_in_Civ5) but it's an interesting family goal to have.
This summer we'll be heading to London and Paris for two weeks so we'll hopefully be able to cross off the following:
- Oxford University
- Stonehenge
- Big Ben
- Globe Theatre (though the original doesn't exist they did reconstruct a new one not too far from the original location)
- Eiffel Tower
- The Louvre
- Notre Dame
Penny probably won't understand any of our plans but she'll have fun regardless (she's only 3 at the moment and she likes going places outside her house). As she gets older she might have a better understanding/appreciation of why we our vacation plans are the way they are.