It is Friday, December 30, 2016. Roughly noon time in NYC. I am sitting at JFK, waiting to go on my last trip of the year.
When 2016 started, my New Years Resolution was to take a trip at least once a month. It didn't matter where, as long as it was outside of metro NYC. I sort of cheated by booking some of trips at the tail end of months (like leaving at the end of March and returning at the beginning of April) but I fulfilled my resolution. As a recap, over this past year I went to:
- Jan 2016 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Visited a friend for a weekend.
- Feb 2016 - Went to a resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico all by myself. I thought it would be weird to go on a beach vacation by myself but not at all. It was really relaxing and I never got bored.
- March 2016 - Went to Cartagena, Colombia with the intention of going alone, but ended up meeting up with a mutual friend who happened to be there the same time as me. It was great. Cultural and definitely outside of my comfort zone, compared to the environment in NYC.
- April 2016 - Orlando, Florida for a conference. A friend from Texas was also in town for a different conference the same weekend so we got to catch up which was nice.
- May 2016 - Copenhagen, Denmark, solo. Loved it. I highly recommend Copenhagen for a solo trip. So much to see and do. Best to go when weather is warm and the daylight hours are long so you can take in as much as possible.
- June/July 2016 - Nova Scotia, Canada. Was lovely but probably not worth the time/money to fly over there (kind of expensive). Great family trip if you have a lot of time to drive and love to go camping/go somewhere rustic and low key.
- August 2016 - Went down to Baltimore for work. I was really tired of trip planning by this point in the year so I was totally fine not going anywhere else for this month.
- September/October 2016 - Greece! This trip spanned almost 3 weeks due to the air traffic controller strikes that happened towards the end of the trip. Went here with family, loved Santorini. Santorini was the highlight destination of all trips I've gone on this year.
- November 2016 - Visited a friend in Charlotte, NC. Was so good to catch up with her, hadn't seen her in over two years since she moved and we've known each other since high school.
- December 2016 - Off to La La Land in a few hours
I really love the thrill of travel. Not knowing what the day will bring or who you might cross paths with. I also always see it as an opportunity to learn and reflect on life in general. I love being introspective and taking in other lifestyles.
Even though I've been to LA a few times already, it's been about 10 years since I've back. And in general, traveling in your 30s is way different than traveling in your 20s so I'm looking forward to it. I've always had a thing for West Coast culture and wonder what's new since I last visited.
This morning I felt super anxious though. Despite having traveled solo many times over, whenever the day arrives for me to get out of town on my own I get butterflies. I'm not expecting anything life changing to happen on this trip but it's just breaking out of the normal day to day routine of life that we easily get sucked into that I'm looking forward to the most. I just wish I had more time to go off on trips like these. I know it seems that based on all the trips I took this year I have a ton of vacation time but I don't. I took most of my trips on holiday weekends and took maybe a day or two off in addition. I mainly used most of my vacation days up for Greece.
Anyway there is no point to this post. I just wanted to collect my year end thoughts of all my travels so far this year. Look forward to see what's in store for 2017!
