Travel? We'll want to do it more, more, more. Maybe fin-desiecle restlessness is becoming more acute. Or maybe preoccupations about making the earth move have been supplanted, in the late 1990s, with the realisation that moving around the earth is the one safe stimulant left. Whatever the psychological reasons for more journeying in 1998, there are also some obvious ones - such as higher disposable incomes and lower airfares.
Lazy beach holidays will grow ever more suspect. Where will the 1998 rebellion against sun-and-sloth lead? To exotic places like Zanzibar, hot as a mouthful of cloves, for the sort of independent travellers who have no qualms about picking up a cheap flight to Nairobi and deciding where to go from there. To offbeat places, like Laos (that Far East feel - the temples, the food, the friendly people - with fewer tourists); like Ethiopia (very in for 30-something professionals, say Trailfinders); or Peru (picking up after its long spell of upheaval).
Closer to Dublin airport but still with that fashionable edge of slight inaccessibility, rural Eastern Europe will lure adventurers away from Prague and Budapest into the pretty backwoods of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania. And instead of a tan that soon fades, you're expected to come back with original stories, vivid images - memories that last.
Here are eight key directions to take in `98:
1. The White Continent, Terra Incognita - nowhere is currently quite as cool as Antarctica. Embark on a two or three-week expedition, on as comfortable and robust a cruise ship as you can afford, and you'll return with enough sparkling dinner-party descriptions to last the whole year. Awe-inspiring scenery, with floating icebergs like great sculpted cathedrals, and a new angle on wildlife as giant petrels and albatrosses follow in the wake of spouting whales.
2. The eastern Baltic is all abuzz, with a new wave of travellers exploring Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. So say the trend-spotters at Lonely Planet, who have seen the tide of interest in that area rising high enough for a new guidebook to be in heavy demand. Tallinn, Estonia's coastal capital, which mixes medieval atmosphere with hip cafe life, is being dubbed the new Prague. Fly direct from London or via Riga.
3. The western Baltic is about to have its moment, too, with Stockholm European Cultural Capital in 1998. Even without that extra incentive, this pristine nordic city has been attracting more and more weekenders in the past year. Been to Paris, done Amsterdam, bought the Rome T-shirt? Sweden's first city is a breath of fresh air, less fearsomely expensive than it used to be and easy to get to, with a welter of packages based on direct flights from Dublin.
4. Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, John Berendt's spellbinding novel, ignited interest in Savannah, Georgia, a couple of years ago. Some readers apparently booked flights the minute they'd read the final page of this evocative tale of murder and intrigue, set in and around the town's exquisite 18th-century town houses. Go soon. By the time the movie has been showing for a while, it may have turned into a theme park - but the southern states in general will charm a new audience. Why not Williamsburg, Virginia's colonial jewel, or the antebellum, Gone With The Wind-swept mansions of Louisiana?
5. As the trend towards action-packed holidays in exotic places continues apace, trekking will send hiking boot sales sky-high, along with their wearers. Colette Pearson Travel, the Irish agent for Exodus which was voted Best Adventure Travel Operator in this year's Observer travel awards, reports a steep increase in this end of the business during 1997. Nepal remains popular (even for over-50s), but there are plenty of less trodden areas to aim for. What about Kamchatka, the remote peninsula on Siberia's Pacific coast, in Michael Palin's footsteps.
6. Diving is the less visible, but no less fashionable, side of the activity coin. The Maldives float fairly effortlessly to top of the list of desirable destinations, and not much wonder. A string of atolls in the Indian Ocean - a green necklace of islands, fringed by white sand, clear, shallow waters and coral reefs dense with colourful fish. Green visitors need have no fear: environmental protection is governed by rules as strict as those that determine diving safety. And they claim that even the sharks are friendly.
7. Australia seems set to maintain its position as chief long-haul hotspot, especially for under-26s on the one-year working visa that demands you move jobs and locations every three months. But more seasoned adventurers who've been there before are going back in shoals - not to Sydney and Ayer's Rock this time, but to Kakadu National Park east of Darwin. (Who could resist Humpty Doo and the Old Jim Jim Road?). Air fares have never been better.
8. Back to basics. Soccer in the summer. Ireland may be out of the World Cup, but that won't stop thousands of footie fans planning a trip to France some time between mid-June and mid-July. Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpelier, Lyons, Paris - those are the places bonding Irish daddies and sons are most likely to slope off to, leaving the family holiday to jog along without them. Will the baguette become a punishment weapon?