Continents Challenge

While we were all quarantining at home back during the pandemic, C and I were dreaming about being able to travel again and came up with a plan for where we'd like to go in the coming years. As we mapped out dates and locations, we knew a huge priority would be getting to all seven continents, which we accomplished this past December when we went to Antarctica!

We originally planned to try to do the seven continents over seven years between 2021 and 2027. What we realized is that if we were strategic, we'd be able to get to all of the continents in much less time than seven years!

Back when we were doing all of the 50 states in one year, we really just had to figure out Alaska and Hawaii first, then worry about the other 48 states. For the seven continents, the trickiest one would obviously be Antarctica, so deciding when we'd go there was our first decision, and we slotted in the other continents around that. I knew I wanted to be IN Antarctica for our 31st wedding anniversary since our wedding date is December 31 (and I have a thing about numbers!), so we worked out getting to the other six continents before and after our Antarctica trip and devised a plan to get to all seven continents within a 24-month period.

As with any travel, so many things can go wrong to disrupt the best laid plans, but the travel gods were on our side and everything worked out pretty much how we planned it, with the exception of us flip-flopping the summers we went to Australia and Africa because of safari/hotel availability.

During these 24 months, the three continents that were new to us were Australia in 2024 and Africa and Antarctica in 2025, as we'd already been to North America (obviously!), multiple trips to Europe starting in 2007, Asia in 2017 and 2020, and South America in 2023. We technically went to Asia twice during the 24 months because we added Dubai to our Africa trip in 2025, but as you can see from the signs below, our plan was always for Asia to happen in July 2026. We also went to Europe thrice during these 24 months because in addition to the trip pictured below, we went to Frankfurt and Budapest last summer and Paris this past May!

North America / July 2024

Chicago

Australia / July 2024

Sydney

Europe / December 2024

Vienna

Africa / July 2025

Nairobi

South America / December 2025

Buenos Aires

Antarctica / December 2025

Antarctica

Asia / July 2026

Tokyo

Several years ago, B1 said to me, "You guys really do love a checklist," and yes, we certainly do! We've got two other almost-completed checklists that we'll finish up in a matter of weeks! LOL!

Happy Tails to you!

2025: A Look Back

my once-in-a-lifetime moment of the year

Overall, 2025 was a very good year for us. We rang in 2025 in Vienna, Austria and rang in 2026 on our Antarctica cruise!

As family, friends, and frankly, anyone who has ever read any other post related to our travel knows, C is the travel planner. And by that I mean he is THE TRAVEL PLANNER. He does all of the research, he finds flights, he finds hotels, he finds things for us to do and see, he works out all of the logistics...you name it, he does it.  I usually have very little idea about what's going on...a happy and blissfully ignorant "travel princess" who follows him blindly because I have been so incredibly fortunate to experience beautiful places around the world as a result of his efforts. He is amazing! My contributions are usually limited to two things: providing the parameters of my restrictive schedule so he can select travel dates and sometimes choosing between two or three hotels once he has whittled down the endless options. The only exception to our dynamic is that I typically book the hotels for our Disney trips and purchase any special event tickets; C still handles all of the other details and reservations!

obviously I am Partner 2
LOL

Our two big trips in 2025 were going to Africa over the summer and going to Antarctica over winter break and I am so pleased to share that I played a very active role in the planning! I was the one who researched and booked both our safari and our Antarctica cruise! C did all of the flights and hotels for those two trips outside of what I booked, since they involved traveling to multiple countries before and afterwards. I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about everything working out with the safari and the Antarctica cruise since I was the one who booked them and handled the communication about them for 17 months and 22 months respectively! Fortunately, the two companies we chose handled all logistics, down to the most minute detail, with extreme precision and we were able to visit our sixth and seventh continent and check that off our very lengthy travel bucket list! Having now been to all seven continents, I am even more in awe of my mom, who accomplished this back in 2014, with 3 of the 7 (Europe, Antarctica, and South America) being done with women's travel groups as opposed to family - meaning that for all intents and purposes, she did these three continents on her own. She wanted to go, so she went. She wasn't going to let anything stop her from getting to all seven. She was, and will always be, an inspiration to me. I often feel her presence, and as I wrote about back in July, I felt her acutely when we were in Kenya, but she was definitely with me in Antarctica, too.

In addition to our two big trips (Antarctica offers some of the most beautiful scenery we ever enjoyed and our safari was beyond life-changing!), we went to WDW twice (March and August), Disneyland twice (June and September), on a Disney cruise for spring break, as well as New Jersey, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Tampa, several trips to Canada, and some day trips to visit family! Plus I did a there-and-back-in-one-day trip to WDW with one of my best friends! It was a busy travel year for sure! New countries in 2025 were Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Hungary, and Argentina, and we returned to Germany and Austria (and obviously Canada and the U.S.).

I like to compile our travel data each year and when C and I were going through our 2025 calendars, it was pretty surprising to see our final numbers!

• total of 69 hotel nights (this number includes nights on a cruise ship)
• total of 25 flights (6 of which were red-eye flights)
• total of 9 nights spent in Canada
• 2 nights spent driving through the night to Canada

...which is a total of 86 nights not at home! 86 nights! That's so crazy!

2026 is looking pretty good in terms of upcoming trips! We've got four Disney Cruises scheduled this year, some quick weekend trips planned, and a long trip to Asia mapped out for the summer!

2025 marked 29 years of me being a vegetarian and 30 years of me living in the U.S. I also got my first new car since buying my Honda Pilot in November 2007! Most importantly, we celebrated three full years of having Avalanche in our lives! The joy he's brought to our lives means everything to us!

I was going to try and select a favorite picture from each month of 2025, but some months didn't really have any noteworthy ones and other months had several, so I just chose my favorites from the year!

Here's to a happy and healthy 2026!

Happy Tails to you!

Summer Adventure 2025: The Wrap Up

I decided to compile some stats about our summer trip! I've done this for a few of our other trip as well and it's always fun to be able to look back on these details!

For those interested, previous posts like this can be found here:

2021 - our month-long cross country road trip

2023 - our trip to South America

2024 - our trip to Australia

Here are the Summer 2025 numbers!

• number of countries: 7 (USA, Canada, Germany, Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Hungary, Austria...and I could say the number is 8 because we went to the Kenya-Tanzania border, but I'm not counting it because we didn't really visit Tanzania!)

• number of continents: 4 (North America, Europe, Africa, Asia)

• number of commercial flights: 5

• number of commercial airlines: 3 (Air Canada, Lufthansa, Emirates)

• number of charter flights: 4

• number of commercial hotel nights: 15

• number of commercial hotel chains: 7 (Hilton Garden Inn, Best Western, J.W.Marriott, Four Points by Sheraton, Conrad, Anantara, Novotel)

• number of safari property nights: 7

• number of nights on red-eye flights: 2 (Toronto-Frankfurt, Nairobi-Dubai)

• furthest distance from Avalanche: 6,900 miles

• total commercial flying distance: approximately 16,500 miles (plus about 500 miles between the four safari properties)

• total walking distance: approximately 249,000 steps / 93 miles

and finally...

• I slept in four different countries on the last four nights of summer break (Hungary, Austria, Canada, America) before returning to work last Monday!

This trip was life-changing and I know when I get to the end of my life, the time we spent in Kenya will go down as one of the best adventures we ever experienced!

We're already well into booking next summer's travel, with three of our four major flights purchased and several hotel properties chosen. When I shared this with a colleague at work who also likes to travel, she was surprised to hear we were buying plane tickets for next summer while we were in Kenya because she hadn't yet decided on where to go! I told her C and I have our travel plans mapped out several years ahead of time (just the travel for school breaks, not weekend trips and such!) and thankfully, she did not think we were insane.

This tweet is hilarious because it is so painfully accurate! As someone who travels quite a bit, I always feel like I need an engineering degree to figure out how to operate hotel showers! I'd also extend this sentiment to hotel light switches; the first five minutes in any hotel room are always spent trying to figure out which switch operates which fixture or lamp! Surely it does not need to be so complicated! LOL!

Happy Tails to you!

Budapest July 2025

We left Dubai on Monday morning to head to Budapest for four nights. As I've shared before, we generally try to fly premium economy whenever possible because it usually means a pair of seats alone, but if the aircraft we're on has pairs of seats available (typically toward the back of the plane), we are pretty content to fly economy, even on longer flights. Our thinking is that we'd rather spend our travel money on nicer places to stay and better experiences than on expensive seats on our flights. We are never above Spirit or Frontier if the price is too good to pass up and for our countless trips to WDW, we usually fly Southwest and just sit Aisle/Window, often with a stranger sitting between us. All of this is to say we are not snooty when it comes to flights - we just want to get to our destination! We've only ever flown first class one time - to Hawaii for our tenth wedding anniversary - but we'd rather be able to take multiple trips if it means sitting in economy instead of one trip if it means sitting in business class. Absolutely no judgment toward anyone who chooses to spend their travel money on business or first class seats - you do you! - and I'm very aware that there's a myriad of reasons why someone would choose expensive seats.

Well, two days before our flight to Budapest, we got an email that it was time to check in, and when we did, there were upgrades available for business class seats. We went back and forth as to whether we wanted to spend the points/miles, and finally decided to go for it, so for the first time, we "turned left" during boarding. I can't lie - the seats were amazing, the service was amazing, and the overall experience was amazing! Totally worth the points/miles we spent!

Obviously one of the perks of flying business class is taking advantage of the airline-specific airport lounges and we were able to go to two of the Emirates business class lounges before our flight. Over the course of all of our travels, we've been to many airport lounges (including lounges in Toronto, Frankfurt, and Nairobi on this very trip), and these two were pretty spectacular! I also found the overall Emirates experience to be a complete 180 from the flight from Nairobi to Dubai. From the ticket counter/bag drop/gate area to the boarding process to the flight attendants on the plane, it was much more in the line with what I'd been expecting from Emirates, given their reputation. I still can't explain why they were so awful on the flight from Nairobi to Dubai (hopefully it was an anomaly), but I'm so glad we got to have such a positive experience with them. I witnessed them being kind and patient with every passenger at every stage between check in and take off, especially elderly folks and families, and I was very impressed.

It was about a five-and-a-half hour flight and we had no issues with our bags or getting through passport control. We took an uber from the airport to our hotel, the Anantara New York Place Budapest Hotel, and as you'll see from the photos, it is gorgeous. We got settled in our room and then went out to find some dinner and wander around a little, and when we returned, we discovered that the deadbolt on our door was malfunctioning. The hotel sent maintenance personnel to to fix it for us, but they were unable to do so, and the hotel kindly moved us to a suite for our entire four-night stay!

our first room!

our second room!

our first room had a great balcony,
but the suite had two balconies!

the entire hotel was stunning!

we toasted to my mom

On our last night in Budapest, we went back to the hotel bar, named The Poet Bar, to toast to our 2025 summer adventure. I ordered a drink called The Falling Poem because the menu description sounded delicious, but little did I know that it came with some lore. Our server shared a story about the history of the building and the authors and poets who gathered there, which was honestly pretty fascinating, but had another surprise when he delivered the drink. As you can see, it came with a small piece of folded paper attached to the rim of the glass with a tiny clip, and when he placed it in front of me, he explained that everyone who orders that drink is asked to write a poem or share a few words of wisdom on that folded paper that the bar then collects and keeps! What a cool idea! (If you're wondering, I opted for the words of wisdom because the pressure of writing a poem was too much for me! LOL)

Budapest is an absolutely beautiful city; the architecture, the history, and the ambiance are incredible. The pics really don't do it justice!

not what I expected to see in Budapest!

we took a tour at the House of Music
and were very, very impressed!

apparently Mozart was a big believer
in the power of travel

the Hungarian State Opera
was probably my favorite thing in
Budapest - I loved every minute of our tour!

we left a little bit of Avalanche
in Budapest

As much as I loved the city of Budapest, I did not love the people of Budapest. I don't like to make sweeping generalizations, so let me be clear and say my feelings are based solely on the people we actually encountered (in shops, restaurants, museums, on the street, on the metro, taxi drivers, etc.). But oh my word, were they unfriendly. Unfriendly to the point of being rude. Four days of us being pretty shocked by how people behaved. Add that to the rampant smoking and the repeated instances I witnessed of public urination, and it honestly didn't feel like we were in a place that had any societal rules! Even some of the staff at our hotel - and clearly this was a very upscale hotel - would benefit from basic etiquette lessons. There were a few exceptions, namely the server we had at the hotel bar both nights we went, who was completely charming, but overall, I was left feeling like I was on a hidden camera show or something, waiting for someone to jump out and say, "Just kidding!" The contrast between the beauty of the city and the harshness of its people was striking.

We checked out of our lovely room this morning and took an uber to the train station for our two-and-a-half hour train ride to Vienna. I was not the biggest fan of Vienna when we visited here last December, but I was still happy to have the chance to see it in a different light (summer vs. winter).

Only one more sleep until we see Avalanche, as we're flying back to Toronto tomorrow!

Happy Tails to you!