2021 Travel Year in Review
New year, new travel recap! I love writing these posts at the turn of the year so I can look back at my travels, share stories I haven’t gotten to share yet, and reminisce. I hope that 2021 was a better traveled year for you than 2020. It certainly was for me. I got to visit my favorite US city for a real, well-thought out trip unlike my previous two times there. I crossed something off my Southern US travel bucket list that I’ve been eyeballing for years! And I stayed in the most incredible properties that I’ll never forget.
Cheers to 2021 and I can’t wait to share more adventures in 2022!
Travel by the Numbers
Counties visited: 1 (just the US, but boy oh boy am I ready to write a recap where this is >1)
US states visited: 7
Cities visited: 6 (South Beach (FL), Asheville (NC), Chattanooga (TN), Atlanta (GA), Los Angeles (CA), New Orleans (LA))
National parks visited: 1 (Shenandoah National Park)
Total flight legs: 6
Total time road tripping: 45 hours
Miles driven: 2,048
Top Travel Highlights of 2021
1. Getting on my first plane since 2019
In May, we spontaneously decided to take a 5 day trip to South Beach, Miami. This was a BIG deal, because I am very fond of travel planning and taking that process slow. I like to get it right. But regardless, we saw an unexpected break in our schedules and a cheap flight alert and jumped!
Cut to the airport…which I hadn’t been in since 2019. We were in line for TSA and there was the cutest little girl who was probably about 5 years old wearing the biggest over ear headphones. She was the cutest! Turns out she was on our flight and she was sitting right behind us.
From some casual eavesdropping, it was easy to tell this was her first flight EVER! So exciting! During takeoff she started screaming happy/excited roller-coaster-like screams. Meanwhile, I just burst into tears.
I was so freaking happy to be on a plane to somewhere new that I couldn’t contain it. Pro: my mask hid my ugly cry face. Con: my mask was getting soaked.
The sunrise greeted us as we approached 10,000 feet and soon the flight was over.
When we landed, the girl’s mom told her “that was it, you did it! Your first flight” and she responded with “and I didn’t even cry”… well let me tell you, I had that role covered!
This was absolutely the biggest highlight of 2021 because feeling trapped by quarantine was really soul-sucking for travelers who for the life of them just want to get out there!
2. Spending Thanksgiving in New Orleans
This was the trip I was looking forward to the most for the whole year. I absolutely love New Orleans. It’s easily my favorite US city. It has all the things I love — music, food, spooky history, food, French-influences, and food. Can you tell which is my favorite?
As a broke college student, one of my favorite parts of traveling is always allocating a significant portion of my budget to food. I get to eat well and try lots of things I don’t normally have the money for or time to attempt to cook. So New Orleans is always a big treat!
This was my third time visiting and my most well-thought out. We took an incredible food tour with Dr. Gumbo tours where we got to try potato salad gumbo, various hot sauces, pralines, muffuletta, po-boys, boudin balls, bananas foster, and bread pudding all while learning about the history of these foods, why they’re so significant to New Orleans, and lots of fun facts. It was the most memorable part of our trip for sure!
We also tried lots of beignets including praline beignets and crab beignets. We sampled famous New Orleans drinks like the Sazerac, French 75, and Hurricanes. We even tried charbroiled oysters, fried aligator, and aligator sausage.
It was honestly the best trip and my tastebuds were in heaven!
3. Driving the Blue Ridge Parkway during fall
This is in the top 3 hands down! Ever since I got to Georgia in 2017, I had heard about the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s a scenic drive by the National Park Service that runs from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia all the way through North Carolina to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And the real kicker…it’s most beautiful in autumn to see fall foliage.
I’ve wanted to go every year, but there were always (figurative) road blocks. See, fall in the South is a fickle thing. It doesn’t last for months. Sometimes it only sticks around for about 2 weeks if that and one good rain storm can be the kiss of death for fall leaves.
That means that each year there is a 2 week window to cram in all the fall activities. We’ve had to split up my Southern fall bucket list items between years to get it all done. We did Oktoberfest in Helen in 2019, went apple picking in Ellijay in 2019, rode the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway in 2019, went camping in the Great Smoky Mountains in 2020, and saving the best for last, drove the Blue Ridge Parkway this year!
We drove straight to Shenandoah National Park, saw the most spectacular sunrise, drove through clouds in the park because it was overcast, and spent the night right outside the entrance to Blue Ridge Parkway.
We took a day to drive the route and even though it started off rainy and overcast, it cleared up by the afternoon so we were able to see the epic fall colors over the mountains. We even discovered a side of the road waterfall that was so beautiful!
Finally, we spent the night in a train car (!!) so that was neat. The business was super old-fashioned and a bit “this looks like the start of a scary movie” but the views were great and the train car was lovely.
You could keep driving on Blue Ridge Parkway to Asheville and on to the Great Smoky Mountains, but we were already past the elevation with peak fall colors and were running out of trip time so we headed back from there.
Anyway, Blue Ridge Parkway totally lived up to the hype and I highly recommend adding it to your never-ending list!
4. Unleashing the magic at Harry Potter Airbnbs
Back in 2020, I visited an Indiana Jones themed Airbnb and it seriously blew me away. I got to talking with the hostess and she told me she had a Harry Potter themed stay and was BUILDING Hagrid’s Hut from the ground up!
I got to visit the Common Room stay in March and Hagrid’s Hut within a month of it opening in July.
These Harry Potter spaces are so special because Kristi, the hostess, curates the collection of artifacts over years. The attention to detail is astounding.
For example, Hagrid’s Hut is to scale. Meaning the ceilings are 15 feet tall. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom is 9 feet up. The couches, kitchen table, sinks, and bed are made for a giant!
We had so much fun watching the Harry Potter movies curled up in Hagrid’s Hut and the Common Room. There was truly no better ambience. Not to mention Kristi provided butterbeer and scavenger hunts.
5. Petting my beloved stingrays
When I think of the one thing that sparks endless joy for me, it’s petting stingrays. Ever since I was little, I’ve loved these little guys. After such a crappy 2020 and even parts of 2021, I really wanted to pet my favorite stingrays at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California the next time I visited home. I am from Los Angeles so this wasn’t some impossible feat.
We were planning to visit LA for the holidays to see our families so we made it a priority to visit the Aquarium.
And let me tell you, it was the best! I had so much fun. I could have pulled up a chair and sat there for hours even though it was in the 50’s outside and the water was icy.
You can pet cow nose rays and bat rays plus there are pools to put enenemes, sea cucumbers, starfish, and even one with jellyfish.
6. Finding peace in the little moments
Travel is always teaching me new things and helping me evaluate my priorities. It helps me find my true North. Every time I’m traveling I always have moments of peace.
This definitely happened in New Orleans, but also in South Beach, Miami. You wouldn’t think that this bustling spring break destination screams peace, but it helped remind me what that feels like.
Every day, we visited the same little cafe for breakfast. It was a couple blocks from our hotel and we chose it because we got free breakfast through our hotel there (always traveling with the budget in mind). It wasn’t even that spectacular of a cafe. But, there was only outdoor seating along the main pedestrian street that overlooked the palm trees and beach.
Every day, we sat there usually in silence just listening to the ocean and the breeze in the palm trees. It’s like the world was reminding us to take deep breaths. It was so incredibly peaceful.
7. Being a kid at pinball museums
Growing up my family had arcade games in my house including a Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine. I’ve always loved arcade games so I had so much fun hanging out at the pinball museum in Asheville and another in Chattanooga.
We got to learn about the games and play them. Each museum even had the world’s largest pinball machine based off of Hercules. We played some old pinball games from the 1940’s, a double sided game for two players, and even the same Star Trek game I had as a kid!
It’s moments like these that I feel like I was born in the wrong era, because boy, could I have spent all my time after school in arcades.
I hope you enjoyed this recap and I can’t wait to share 2022’s travels with you. There are always more adventures around the corner!
