Travel

After my dream trip in 2015 to Egypt, 2016 felt like a bit of a mild year in comparison. I didn’t travel internationally, instead I had 2 quick business trips (Las Vegas and Orlando), a road trip to Santa Fe, and then a proper little vacation to San Francisco over Christmas.

I’d never thought I’d…

• Visit the Winchester Mystery House. We were driving down the coast when my mom remembered she had visited it 50 years ago. I got really excited when I could prove to my parents that it was on the way back to San Francisco and they agreed to make a stop there!

Best Unexpected Pleasure…

• Meeting and speaking to Penn and Teller after their show. They were very kind and humble and just amazing in general.

I pushed myself to…

• Ride a rollercoaster! I rode the Seven Dwarfs Minecart at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. I was terrified!

Favorite Museum Experience…

• The Neon Museum in Las Vegas just blew my mind on how fun it was to photograph!

Favorite Food Experience…

• Eating in both the Leaky Cauldron and the Three Broomsticks on the same day.

Blogging

Christmas is actually the anniversary of this blog! It is now 4 years old with almost 400 posts and 1,555 images! Almost half of all those posts were from 2016 alone!

This past year my New Years resolution was to post more. In 2015 I was posting consistently with Mondays having either a Museum or Misstep post, and every other Saturday having a Souvenir post, while every other Thursday was a Travel Tip. This year I introduced an every week Photo Friday series.

I also attempted to post 6 days a week in early February by posting a daily travelogue of my Egypt trip. It was much harder than I thought, mostly because the sheer amount of photos I was editing. (For example, Egypt was 32 gigs of photos, my recent trip to San Francisco is over 8 Gigs.) The editing of photos became just too much and I fell behind. Usually this time of year I’ve written out my re-occurring weekly posts for the year. Going into 2017…I’ve got pretty much nada. So I am already anticipating missing some posts. I want to keep up with the blog, but I get so little traffic that I don’t want this to become a second job.

Favorite Photo Friday post…

• Has to be my first one of the year, of light shining on hieroglyphics at Edfu temple.

Favorite to write post…

• I really enjoyed writing a detailed guide about visiting the ATM caves of Belize.

Favorite Mistake of the year…

• Surprisingly isn’t one of my travel missteps, but a story of how I spazzed out after hours at my work’s office.

Favorite new recipe I created…

• Moroccan Honey-Orange Chicken was really a “what do I have in the kitchen” idea that turned into everyone at my work going “No really…where did you get this?” as it smelled (and tasted) amazing.

Favorite new “Series”…

• While it still is a work in progress, I’ve enjoyed the attempt to blog about my Egypt trip on a day by day basis.

2017 Plans…

Actually, I literally have no plans. I need to beef up my savings again before I can go on an international trip. That likely means I need to finally get that roommate I’ve been talking about. Beyond that? No plans.

New Years Resolutions for this coming year? I want to give up soda, drink less alcohol, and work on losing weight.