I have not been everywhere. (That was Johnny Cash; check out his 1996 song.) But I have spent at least one night in eight of the top 10 cities—and 12 of the top 20—named in this year’s rankings of the world’s best by the global magazine Time Out.

Here goes (with their Time Out rank in parentheses): Melbourne (1), Shanghai (2), Edinburgh (3), London (4), New York City (5), Mexico City (7), Seoul (9), Tokyo (10), Hong Kong (15), Madrid (19).

Some people have all the luck. To have visited these far-flung locales is the sort of rambling that can happen if one spends much of a newspapering career covering national and international sports—one of the five W’s of journalism is “where”—and has a daughter who ends up being something of a world traveler herself, these days settled with her Scottish-born husband and young son in London.

I submit this travelogue as evidence that it is possible to take the bumpkin out of the country. And I subscribe to the Kurt Vonnegut observation that “peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” Unexpected moves and potentially disorienting life changes are gifts. Opportunities to learn something. I was born in Louisiana, raised in Texas, California and New Mexico, attended college in Missouri.

And in Melbourne, during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, I learned the locals’ term for foreign visitors is “blow-ins,” and the general atmospherics reminded me of laid-back Southern California, total strangers referring to everyone as “mate.” Shanghai was where my daughter worked for eight years, and where she helped my wife and me during our visit to navigate the city by providing cabbies with her address written in Chinese. Highlights there included the waterfront area known as The Bund, and chancing upon the “dancing grannies” ubiquitous in local parks.

Edinburgh was an overnight stop on a train trip to Stonehaven, Scotland, where my son-in-law’s mother lives. Lovely castle there. London is like a second home, having passed through almost 30 times—on vacations, assignments for Newsday, regular visits to my daughter. A great, diverse, energetic place and, yes, I enjoy the occasional pub visit.

New York City has long been a sort of reverse suburb to my suburban Long Island home, and it long ago was briefly my place of residence while working in the Big Town right out of college. I’d live there now if I could afford it.

Mexico City popped up on an Olympic-related work project, with the bonus of bringing my wife and daughter along. The place was crawling with green Volkswagen bugs at the time, standard vehicles for the local cabbies.

Seoul, cite of the 1988 Olympics, was densely populated—mostly, it seemed, by men in grey suits, all named Mr. Kim. A colleague and I attended a pro baseball game there and witnessed a Kim-to-Kim-to-Kim double play. Tokyo, a temporary landing spot connected to the 1988 Nagano Olympics, was striking for its service mentality—gas-station workers racing out to fill your tank or clean your windshield the moment you appeared.

Hong Kong was a side trip upon which my Newsday boss insisted prior to the Seoul Olympics; at the time, it was then still a United Kingdom possession, which meant there were a lot of red double-decker busses, with a surprisingly Western feel. Madrid—again, I had brought my wife and young daughter to do some vacationing while I was working—appeared as part of pre-Olympic reporting leading up to the 1992 Barcelona Games.

I found lots of other cities equally intriguing for various reasons. Prague. Athens. Budapest. Florence. Singapore. Even Havana, sadly depressed by long-standing American political isolation. And that was 25 years ago.

It must be noted that the Time Out ratings emphasized that it highlighted its chosen cities as the nicest places to live; its ratings involved quizzing more than 24,000 locals based on 44 criteria ranging from the food, nightlife and culture to affordability, happiness and the “overall city vibe.” I, meanwhile, mostly experienced them as a visitor, which obviously is a different thing.

Anyway, the list got me thinking of that old Johnny Cash song—

I’ve been everywhere, man

Crossed the desert’s bare, man

I’ve breathed the mountain air, man

Of travel I’ve had my share, man

I’ve been everywhere.

—which, combined with the Time Out ratings, prompted this itemization of my geographical wanderings, which have taken in 48 of the 50 states. (No Hawaii or South Dakota, and with the admission that Alaska is counted only because I walked outside of the airport in Anchorage while awaiting a change of planes.)

Another caveat: I list 32 countries by starting with the United States and by including Puerto Rico, a self-governing Caribbean island technically a U.S. commonwealth. And Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China. Also counting England, Scotland and Wales separately as three—rather than as just one United Kingdom. And East Germany, which now is part of a unified Germany but, when I was there in 1990, still was a separate nation. One rationale for this generous accounting is that each of those places has—or had, in the case of East Germany—its own “national Olympic team.” And, thus its own national identity.

So. I commence with Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Cuba, Czech Republic, France….

And so on, all the way down to ….Spain, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, Vatican City (yes, it’s a country), Venezuela. And, by the way, my daughter has me beat. At least 42 countries are on her list, and good for her.

Back to the Johnny Cash song (originally, I learned, it was a tune written by Australian Geoff Mack in 1959, with lyrics more appropriate to that nation). Cash cites 66 cities (along with a few states); I’ve been to 38 of them. The first verse begins….

I’ve been to Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota

Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota

Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma,

Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma

Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo….

Ditto for me on 15 of those. So far.