The sound of the tracks was calming as my railway car glided effortlessly through Northern England's breathtaking countryside. Watching the miles pass from a train window allows a perspective that is not offered by plane travel. And now, heading to Carlisle in Cumbria, nothing else seemed to matter besides the little farms and villages and sweeping green fields in England's north. Our life-long London friend, Trish, sat beside us, occasionally offering a soft-spoken narrative of its history, a history where the green fields were once soaked in the color of red from the Celts, the Romans, the Vikings, the Angles and Saxons, the Normans, the Jacobites and the Border Reivers

This is the third installment of Ed Boitano’s series on Pilgrimages. In the second installment, Places I’ll Remember, Part 2, Boitano covered Vincent van Gogh’s final days in Auvers-sur-Oise, the Leaning Bell Tower of Pisa and Princess Grace in Monaco. Still quarantined at home in Southern California, Boitano is doing even more reminiscing these days.

Well, all my travel journalist colleagues seem to be doing it; so I thought it was about time for me to finally compile my own list of favorite travel destinations in 2018. I was blessed to experience such an array of edifying and diverse landscapes and cultures. Did I say diverse?

When one invokes images of English King Henry VIII they’re generally of a grossly obese and egoistical king, who was no stranger to the royal casting couch, despite his marrying a number of his conquests. But this is not the Henry of early years; an avid hunter and sportsman, a helpless romantic, sublime dancer, and highly educated man who actually composed his own songs and played numerous musical instruments.