Wow — another year has come to a close which means it’s time for us to reflect on the year that has passed! Our blog started in late 2018, so our first full year of blogging was 2019. Looking back, we’re proud of what we accomplished in both the blogging world and in our personal lives. Read more about some of our highlights below. We hope that 2019 was as good to you as it was us, and we wish you a happy and healthy 2020.
Travel by the Numbers
Continents visited: 3 total
Lucy – 3 (North America, Asia, Europe)
Kevin – 2 (North America, Europe)
Countries visited: 10 total
Lucy – 10 (US, Canada, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Italy, England, Belgium, The Netherlands)
Kevin – 5 (US, Italy, England, Belgium, The Netherlands)
Travel by the Month
January
In January, we took a trip with friends to Asheville, North Carolina. We had delicious food and delicious beer (Asheville has the third most breweries per capita in the US!), and it even snowed while we were there. We participated in a food tour that led us to some of Asheville’s best restaurants, and we enjoyed relaxing over the long MLK weekend.
February
In February, we celebrated our two year anniversary with a long weekend trip to Miami. We loved staying at the St. Regis Bal Harbour and the weather while we were there was absolutely stunning! We did a full review of the resort here if you’re interested in reading more about our stay.
March
Lucy went on a work trip to Asia and got to explore Taipei, Bangkok, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. Overall, it was a wonderful experience and she loved getting to check off her fifth continent. One of the biggest perks of the trip was staying at the St. Regis Shenzhen — what a dream. She’s working on posting about her trip and writing some itineraries, so stay tuned for those in early 2020.
April
In April, just a couple days after returning from her Asia work trip, Lucy took another work trip to Hoboken, New Jersey. It was a quick trip (just a day trip actually!), but she was able to bring some some Carlos’ Bakery cannolis home to Kevin. We spent the rest of the month enjoying both being in the same place after about three continuous weeks of work trips for Lucy.
May
We got engaged on Lucy’s birthday, May 10! What an amazing experience and wonderful highlight of 2019. We celebrated in Atlanta with friends and family and it was such a special time. We jetted off on what we call our engagement-moon to Italy shortly after. We loved exploring Rome, Venice, and Florence! We’re also working on these posts — so much to write and so little time.
June
We stayed in Atlanta most of June and did most of our wedding planning this month, securing vendors and nailing down the big details. It was stressful in the moment to coordinate all of the vendors and make such big selections, but looking back on it now we’re happy that we did all of the leg work up front. It helped that Kevin was on “externship” from his consulting job and was working at a local start up, meaning he had more time and was around for things like band expositions, meeting with vendors, etc.
July
In July, we traveled to the beach with friends for the Fourth of July. It was a great time to travel since we already had time off of work. We had amazing weather and food, and overall we loved our time there. Our friends (both couples) have since moved to Baltimore, so we’d like to visit them soon.
August
We stayed in Atlanta most of August. We enjoyed doing our usual things like exploring new restaurants, visiting the Piedmont Park farmer’s market, and drinking at some of our favorite breweries. And we took our engagement photos with Eve of Eve Yarbrough Photography.
September
Lucy traveled to Canada not once, but twice! Both trips were a work trip to the Toronto area, so she didn’t get to do as much exploring as she wanted, but it was still nice to see a new country. We’d love to take a trip to Canada together in the near future! Towards the end of the month, Kevin went to Cancun for a week for training — boy did it look like a dream training location! The rest of the time, we hung out in Atlanta, hanging with friends and attending Tech games.
October
In October, we had a whirlwind of travels. We visited a friend in Boston and went to some local breweries and restaurants. The weather in the northeast was AMAZING in October! We also spent a weekend with friends in Chattanooga, Tennessee for a wine festival called Wine Over Water. We’ve been the past two years and loved it! We took a third weekend trip of the month to Helen, Georgia for Oktoberfest with a big group of friends. It was a jam packed month, but it was all super fun.
November
We planned a big trip over Thanksgiving. Since we both got time off of work towards the end of Thanksgiving week, we took 3 days off (Monday through Wednesday) to travel to Europe. We explored London, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Despite some rainy weather, it wasn’t too cold and wasn’t too crowded either! We are excited to share more about our trip. We can’t recommend Europe during the holidays enough, as the Christmas lights and decorations are like no other!
December
We wrapped up our year visiting with family. It was our last year separating for Christmas (Kevin’s family is in Georgia and mine is in North Carolina), so we’re excited to see what 2020 holds for the holidays. We enjoyed our time off from work and had so much fun drinking festive cocktails around Atlanta and seeing the Christmas light displays around the city.
Goals for 2020
Last year, we set a word of the year. It was seek. For us, we wanted to seek out new destinations, new friendships, and new experiences (to name a few). Looking back, we feel like we were successful! Our word for this year is celebrate. The definition of celebrate is “to mark something by festivities or other deviation from routine.” Too often, we find ourselves in our daily, mundane routine and we want to ensure we’re making the most of our days and building others up throughout the process. We hope to celebrate:
New cultures and experiences
The little things
Our friends and family
Our travel community we’ve built through this blog
Our life together (we get married this year!)
Tactically, we have some goals that will propel our blog further:
- Learn SEO – We know this blog has so much potential! We pour so much into our posts and itineraries, so we want to do them justice and spread their reach. We’ve seen some really great books/online courses, so it’s all about motivating ourselves to take the time and learn.
- Increase social media engagement & followers – One huge goal of ours was to reach 2,000 followers on Instagram and luckily we reached it just before the new year. We want to continue to grow our Instagram followers and hit 5,000 by the end of 2020. Additionally, we want to work on our Facebook and Pinterest content throughout the year.
- Attend a blogger meet up – This seems so silly but we want to meet other people in the industry! Lucy had the opportunity to attend one this year, but she was too nervous. Which is silly! 2020 is our year for meeting some other travel duos or bloggers in general.
2020 Travel Plans
We have our first half of 2020 planned already and we’re really excited to see what the year holds!
January – Lucy has a work trip to NYC and she’s going on her bachelorette trip to Nashville. Then, at the end of the month, we’re going to Chicago for the weekend together.
February – TBD (Lucy just got Presidents’ Day added as a holiday and Kevin found out he’ll be traveling to the northeast for work every week, so we’ll have to plan something for that long weekend!) but likely NYC or skiing in Vermont.
March – Maybe we’ll squeeze in a beach trip!
April – Kevin is going on his bachelor trip to Austin, Texas.
May – We’ll get married and head on our honeymoon to Fiji! We’re so excited.
June – We’ll head up to Chicago again but this time for our friends’ wedding.
August – We’re looking to take a big trip but aren’t sure where! Neither of us have explored the US west coast, so perhaps we’ll take a road trip out there. Or, perhaps we’ll head to Asia. Leave us a comment with your recommendation. 🙂
As always, thank you for following along on our journeys. We’re so thankful for our followers, and we hope to inspire you to travel more in 2020. What are your highlights of 2019 and goals for 2020? We’d love to hear more from you either in the comments on this post or via email!
P.S. – We participated in Helene in Between’s 2019 review link up, so be sure to check out her year in review here. She’s such an inspiration to us!
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