2024: A Look Back

It has taken me almost three weeks to write this post because to be honest, I didn't really want to revisit the first part of 2024. It was a very dark time for me as I navigated the loss of my beloved mom and I have a hard time thinking back to that time when it felt like I was barely hanging on by a thread every single day.

There's this idea that you should only look back to see how far you've come, and I decided to adopt this mindset. As a result, I'm proud to say I ended 2024 in a much different place than where I began it. I miss my mom so much and I often wonder if I'll ever experience a joyful moment that isn't tinged with sadness in some way because she isn't here to share it with me. However, over the course of the year, almost imperceptibly, despair slowly stopped being the emotion dominating my life.

Time was certainly a factor, but I really credit travel for lifting my spirits and helping me gain some much needed perspective. It's always fun to recap our travel at the end of each year and we were fortunate to go to some great places in 2024!

We spent 51 nights in a hotel (not including C's trip to the Grand Canyon with my dad and my brother or my trip to NYC with my best friend) and two nights were spent on red-eye flights (LAX-SYD and YYZ-MUC). Not too shabby!

In terms of domestic travel, we took six trips to WDW (January, February, March, April, May, and June), finishing our 11 trips to WDW over the 11 months of the 23-24 school year! We also had one trip to Disneyland in July, a weekend trip to Denver, a stopover in Chicago, and day trips to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, and Connecticut. Although Canada is technically international, we always consider it part of our domestic travel because it's home for us, and in 2024, we went to Canada several times!

Internationally, we went to Milan and Venice for spring break; we went to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Cairnes (with a layover in Tokyo) over the summer; and then ended the year with a winter break trip to Munich and Vienna.

The biggest family event of the year was the birth of our nephew in October! He is so tiny and perfect and we're incredibly lucky to now have a niece and two nephews to love!

The least fun event of the year was Avalanche getting skunked in February! The stench lingered for months! So gross!

My favorite travel experience of the year was seeing the Little Penguins on Phillip Island in Australia! Truly one of my favorite travel days ever!

Avalanche turned 13 in October and we have been so fortunate that he's had the best people to love and care for him while we travel. He loves his time at his dog hotel, he completely adores his babysitter, and of course, C's mom and dad are amazing and he has the best time when he's at their house for several weeks at a time! We're beyond grateful for them!

I had a tough time narrowing down my very favorite moment of 2024 because there were a lot of great ones to choose from, but the one that filled me with such happiness was going outside with Avalanche at 2:00 am back in February when we had some overnight snow. He and I just ran around the yard together in the middle of the night and it was magical!

We've got some big trips scheduled in 2025 and I'm looking forward to all of the memories we're going to make!

Happy Tails to you!

Spring Break 2024: Venice

After spending the first part of the week in Milan, we spent the remainder of our spring break time in Venice! The train trip between the two cities was great and it was nice to see the Italian countryside along the way!

Instead of breaking it down by day, this is going to be more of a picture dump with captions where needed because we really did spend from Wednesday afternoon until Saturday evening just wandering around and soaking in the magic that is Venice! It's a beautiful place, and obviously so different than other places we've been. I absolutely loved it! Unlike some of my other favorite cities - I'm looking at you, Oslo - I couldn't imagine ever living in Venice, but I would come back to visit in a heartbeat! We definitely saw fewer dogs in Venice than in Milan, but the pizza and gelato were equally wonderful in both cities! We didn't have particularly favorable weather in Venice, although the sun tried valiantly to make a daily appearance, but that did not make our trip any less amazing!

we hired a private water taxi to pick us up
at the train station and take us directly to our hotel,
which was less than a 15 minute ride

the water bus system was easy to navigate,
but it got really busy and had very long
wait times during rush hour

seaweed washes up on the sidewalks

on Friday we went to Murano and attended a
glass-blowing demonstration, which was fascinating!

on Friday evening, we attended a performance of
Vivaldi's The Four Seasons at the church
where he worked and composed music

absolutely incredible!

on Saturday we went to a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit

on Sunday morning, we took a private water taxi
from our hotel to the airport,
which was about a 30 minute ride

I cannot say enough good things about
the private water taxi - more than worth the money!

the lounge at the Venice airport was fantastic - plenty of seating,
countless outlets for charging, and a good selection of food and drinks!

the plane configuration for this flight was 2-3-2

there's no Diet Coke in Italy (boooooooo),
so a highlight of the flight home was drinking Diet Coke
:)

plane

train

automobile

Three random travel items to share:

1) For the first time, I tried wearing compression socks on the flights and I will never take another long flight without them! There are some really expensive brands, but I decided to buy a not-so-expensive brand from Amazon and they were great!

2) Over the years, we have tried countless types/designs of neck pillows and we have finally found a winner! They're called the Ostrichpillow Go Neck Pillows and we got them from, of course, Amazon.

3) I bought a new water bottle for this trip based on its shape - it's flat and therefore very easy to store in the seat pocket on a plane (one of my best friends lovingly called it a "flask"). The only drawback is that it's not insulated, but I still recommend it because it's so convenient and doesn't take up much space! It's called memobottle and we got it from - you guessed it - Amazon.

Fun facts:

- we walked 36.4 miles over the course of the nine day trip

- we experienced my most hated day of the year for the second time in 2024 and sprung forward an hour on Sunday

- the jet lag has affected me more than I would have predicted since returning home, but I'm slowly getting back on track

- we got home at about 11:00 pm on Sunday, which felt like 5:00 am Italy time, so it was a long travel day home for us

Avalanche had a great time at his hotel and behaved himself even though it was a pretty long stay! I've shared before how he is not super affectionate, but when we picked him up Monday morning, he got in his spot in the third row of seats and I sat in the back seat so I could pet him because I was going to have to leave for work as soon as we got home, and he put his paw on my hand and kept it there, like he was holding hands with me! SO precious and something he's never done before! After a life with clingy, emotionally needy little Dachshunds, it's been an adjustment to accept that Avalanche is just not that kind of dog, so this little interaction made me happier than I can explain.

We've got a few quick trips between now and the end of the school year (which, for my contract, is June 28), and then a big trip to look forward to in the summer that I'm already super excited about!

Happy Tails to you!