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The Grand Canyon? Now tell us what you really think...

If you are British, then probably you'll want to visit the Grand Canyon before you die. That's the conclusion of a Warner Home Video survey done on the back of the Jack Nicholson/Morgan Freeman film The Bucket List, the (rather mawkish) story of two terminally ill men who make a list of what to do before they 'kick the bucket'.

I think there's a correlation between the number one spot and the people taking part in the survey - think how often you see the Grand Canyon in movies - but even so it's a fun list to make, so I asked the good people of Essential Travel what their bucket list would be. The top five were:

1. Go into space/to the moon

2. Visit Petra in Jordan

3. Walk (some of) the Great Wall of China

4. Visit India's great monument to love, the Taj Mahal ("We all need a little love...and a nice chicken Madras")

5. See the "Christ the Redeemer" statue in Rio de Janeiro (preferably around Carnival time)

So far, so good. But more interesting was that, once they had mentioned a few admirable ambitions (climb Mont Blanc, become a black belt in anything, etc.) the naughty stuff came out. High on the Essential Travel Bucket List were:

Get fired out of a cannon

Spend a night in the Playboy mansion

Escape from Alcatraz

Blow it all in Las Vegas

And those were just the things they didn't mind telling me. So is a visit to the Grand Canyon the one thing that most British people really want to do before they die? I don't think so.

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