Currently: January 2025

January has been wild. I was telling my husband this past weekend that it’s hard to believe that it’s still January, even though we’ve only been back for a short time. Our return from our winter holiday was delayed twice because of the snow storms moving across the US, so we didn’t get back until January 11. That resulted in me missing a work trip to San Diego, which was a little sad… but there are worse places to be stuck than Florence.

We went to Houston the following weekend for one of my former student’s white coat ceremony (!!!!!) and family stuff. And, we went back to Houston this past weekend for more family stuff. Thankfully, we’ll be home this weekend. Next weekend, I have a couple of work events. We’ll take a few days around Valentine’s Day to ourselves. The end of February will be crazy for Tom for work. So – I’m just trying to take the next best step and be present.

Disclosure:  This post contains affiliate links for tours and products I love at no additional cost to you.  You can read my full disclosure policy here.

Wellness:

I am currently participating in a 100-day wellness challenge with Peloton, even though I haven’t touched my bike. I have been highly focused on mediation this month because of (obvious) Reasons. The best thing about the Peloton meditations are the different themes: gratitude, morning, sleep, kindness, etc. It’s been a really fantastic addition to my routine this month. I think I am going to try and add stretching as part of my February goal. If the last week has been any indicator, we are going to need a lot of mental capacity to get through the things coming our way in the next few years. I’m doing the best I can.

Feeling pretty thankful that it has warmed up a bit in Dallas, and I’ve been able to squeeze a couple of walks in this week. Overall, my walking was down in 2024 compared to 2023, so I want to make sure that I’m moving more this year. Trying to stay focused on the next best step every moment.

I’m also very proud that despite our holiday travels, I maintained my weight. There is so much to be said about real food and being in places where you can be more active as part of your daily life. Overall, I’m down about 35lbs since the end of August. I’ve also identified that much of my hip pain and inflammation really seems to be attributed to my stress level at home… which is a whole different can of worms to think about… later.

Travel Planning:

Part of my challenge to us this year is to go new places. We’re trying to find the right balance between places we love and places we’ve been. Ultimately, everywhere is good (at least briefly), but I want to make sure that we’re continuing to stretch and grow. I also don’t want us to get tired of places we love! They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, right??

Our first trip of 2025 will be familiar. We are doing a quick getaway for Valentine’s Day. Spoiler alert: We are hoping to sneak in a few good meals and pick up some wine we couldn’t ship to Texas. We are planning a special wine and cheese experience as part of that trip. I’m super excited about that because it will give us the opportunity to learn more about wine pairings!

Spring Break 2025:

I think everyone will be proud of us. Despite some back and forth, we have kept our plan to visit Chile in March for spring break. I’ve had a couple people ask me why Chile in the last few weeks, and to be quite honest, I was a bit stumped because I haven’t done a lot of planning yet. First of all, we’ve been talking about visiting South America. Buenos Aries was at the top of my list, but the Santiago flight was cheaper at this time. It’s also a direct flight from Dallas that fit our schedule really well. Obviously, we’re interested in learning more about Chilean wines, and it will actually be the harvest season while we are there. In the next few weeks, I’ll be fervently reading more about the culture and book tours. Some of our best new-to-us trips, from our road trip through Croatia to our week in Istanbul, have been the ones where we didn’t have a long list of expectations. It left us more open to new experience.

Summer in France (Part Three):

We have decided to do another immersive trip to France this summer. As is becoming tradition, we have rented the same house in Mont St Michel and will spend a week there. After reflecting on how lovely it was to spend two weeks in Normandy in 2023, we’ve decided to do a little more immersion in that area. We’ve decided to visit Bayeux and Honfleur again, but we will also be adding Rouen this year. (We’re probably staying in a new hotel in Bayeux and the same hotel in Honfleur!) And, I will be taking yet another intensive pastry class at the Ritz Escoffier in Paris. I’ve got a few things to still figure out, but I’m almost done planning this trip!

Photo Editing:

The end of December gave me plenty of time to write and edit photos. I started catching up on my France posts from last summer. Most recently I finished my post about our 3 days in the Champagne region of France. I finished my post about our 4 nights in Beaune, Tom’s favorite place we visited last summer. (And – coincidentally – the only place that he’s said that he will be sad if we don’t return to this summer.) I updated my favorite Florence restaurants post with a new wine bar that we visited more than a few times. (I think we ended up spending 16 days in Florence this winter!) Keeping with the holiday spirit, I wrote about our 4 nights in Krakow for the Christmas Markets! And, I wrote about our stay at a chateau near Saint-Emilion in November that was downright amazing!

I finished the dedicated post about one of my favorite hotels in Alsace. We’ve stayed there twice, and I might have booked our third stay already.

Looking forward: I’m working on a personal post about my feelings about loyalty in travel (and life), inspired by one of my favorite hotel managers that we’ve known for a few years.