What’s on Alex Trebek’s Bucket List (and Why He Thinks You’re Not a Good Traveler)

I recently had the opportunity to meet “Jeopardy!” game show host and pop culture icon Alex Trebek at an event hosted by Lindblad Expeditions. A long-time fan of the show, I was encouraged not only by the fact that we both love trivia, but also by our shared passion for travel and, unexpectedly, movies.

In our interview, I asked whether someone so worldly (Trebek has traveled to both Antarctica and the Galapagos with Lindblad) could have anything left on his bucket list. His reply was strangely specific: “Iguazu Falls — that’s inland. The Amazon has always interested me because I’ve had this long desire to get to Manaus, for some reason, and Manaus is a fascinating city. It had the first opera house in South America, 200 years ago, and that’s on my bucket list. Lhasa, in Tibet, is also very much on my list, and I almost did it this past year with National Geographic. They had an around-the-world flight that was supposed to take us to Lhasa, but the Chinese government had closed Tibet, so they rerouted everybody to another place in China, which was fine.”

However, Trebek still has an interest in Asia: “I missed out two years ago — we sent our Clue Crew to Cambodia and Vietnam and Laos, and I didn’t get to Angkor Wat, which is on my bucket list also. Oddly enough, in South China — not far from Canton, I think — there are some beautiful places, accessible; you’ve seen them in travel magazines a lot — with the rocks coming out of the water — that’s someplace I would like to visit also.”

What’s Alex Trebek’s favorite place to visit? “Yorkshire, England. Emily Bronte country. The moors, yes, my wife and I have walked the moors; we picked heather on the moors. Top Withens supposedly might have been the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. My wife and I have a picture of ourselves in front of that building.”

Having read that Trebek and his family are expert packers (and that he actually enjoys flying), I had to ask if he could offer any advice for the everyday traveler. The answer was surprising: “If you can’t do a two-week vacation with one roll-on and a shoulder bag, you’re not a good traveler at all. I have a friend who went to Prague with his partner, and his partner overpacked (had six or seven sweaters and never wore four or five of them). I’m on a three-day trip, here in New York then on to Washington and back to Los Angeles, and I overpacked but [my bag is] still light.”

As a routine overpacker, I felt the bite of “not a good traveler” and had to raise my spirits with a lighter question. Knowing that Trebek is a fan of both travel and movies, I figured he might have a favorite travel movie on file. “I’m thinking a film called ‘Hurricane’ with Dorothy Lamour. There are others in more recent days, of course. ‘Indiana Jones’ films feature a lot of geography, and they show you the maps and where the plane is going on the map so you can keep track — and they all wind up fighting bad Germans.”

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— written by Brittany Chrusciel