Best of Travel 2014

2014 will go down as a year I won’t forget. It was a hard year in the beginning, but difficulties in life are offset by embracing things that give you joy in life.

In October of 2013, I thought of the idea for this website as well as the name, but I finally launched it around July of 2014. And so far, it’s continuing to grow in the direction I hoped. In 2014, I saw for the first time the direction I want to go in both photography as well as writing so in a lot of ways, this year blessed me with a lot of clarity in my career life. For the first time in three years, traveling was no longer a priority and I found even more happiness in my pursuits. However, we still managed to get away a lot this year! It seems no matter what, the travel bug just won’t go away, hence the name of this site. I fear it never will. We have thousands of travel photos that I’ve never shared before so here are some favorites and hidden unpublished gems from 2014. Best of Travel 2014.

New Zealand

We took our second trip to New Zealand in a year. We literally fell in love with the country on our first trip in 2013. It was our favorite place in the world, so we decided to go back again for another New Zealand winter to see Milford Sound and the rest of the South Island. People say New Zealand is beautiful but that’s a complete understatement. I haven’t seen that much of the world, but I’ve seen a lot of nice places. And well, NO place compares to the beauty of the South Island. It’s a whole other realm of beauty. Another definition of beautiful. It’s truly surreal. It’s no wonder why a lot of movies like Lord of the Rings choose to film there. It’s so fuc*king beautiful.

We spent a lot of time in Queenstown and then drove to Milford Sound and Lake Pukaki. We visited Lake Pukaki in 2013 and were awestruck with its landscape, so this time around we stayed alone there. We road-tripped the South Island, stayed in a remote cabin, hiked through another world, drove through Paradise, created a series of hitchhiking photos, photographed the famous Wanaka tree, and stargazed in one of the world’s best International Dark Sky Reserves. As much as I’m a city girl, this is my other half.  We’ve decided to have our second home there one day. This goes down as my top travel experience of 2014.

Australia

We visited Sydney for the first time and we both fell in love with this city. I honestly never fancied traveling here, but I’m so glad we did. It’s such a special and beautiful city!! It’s one of the few cities I’d love to return to again and again. We spent days wandering around The Rocks District, lounging in the parks, and watching sunsets over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, and over Bondi Beach.

Japan

We did a lot of traveling in Japan this year. I went to Senjojiki Cirque in Nagano and took a number of day trips to see gardens. We had close family visit Japan for the first time and went to Takayama and Hiroshima. We also visited Kyoto at the height of Autumn, Tokyo Disneyland for our anniversary, and spent a lot of time around Tokyo.

Vietnam

We visited Hoi An in 2012 but came back for a weekend during Thanksgiving after spending the last two years longing to return to the place we ate our favorite banh mi sandwich. We spent days wandering the French Colonial streets, eating street food, and bicycling the nearby villages and rice paddies. It was an intense change in scenery from Tokyo, but a very nice one. We love Vietnam.

Autumn in Kyoto & Tokyo

Here are some autumn shots from Tokyo University as well as Eikando Garden and Daigoji temple. Our trip to Kyoto was brilliant. Here’s my post on Kyoto in case you didn’t catch it.

Istanbul

We spent three nights in Istanbul on our way to Belgium. I’ve always wanted to see this city and I hope to return again one day to explore even more of its history.

Belgium

We always wanted to travel to Bruges so after getting a couple of weeks off in December, we made it happen. If you haven’t read my article already Christmas in Bruges, be sure to check it out!

Daniel captured this awesome and quite hilarious shot of me in complete exasperation when we just arrived at our hotel in Brussels. This was definitely one of those awful travel stories. Our cab driver from Bruges to Brussels turned out to be an absolute psychopath. There was a national strike that day too. A good note to end on.

I hope you enjoyed our quick journey around the world again this year! I skimmed on a lot of details so be certain, there is A LOT of content in the queue for this site!