Every year I love to make a list of all the places I traveled, linking the blog posts I wrote about each place and reflecting on all of the beautiful adventures of the year. If you’ve been around here awhile, you know that I am an escapist, always dreaming of the next place I’m off to. This year was drastically different in that regard, but I thought I would reflect on it nonetheless. Partially for tradition’s sake, and partially to mark this moment in time. A record of the year I did not travel, because I value the lives of the people around me, and instead stayed home to save lives during this horrible global pandemic we are living through.
I tried my best to capture the feeling of travel by exploring more of my city and the surrounding area. I’ve actually discovered so many new places in the city I’ve lived almost all of my life, and never cared to pay much attention to because I was always dreaming of elsewhere. I have also spent more time outside than ever before, I think. It has been refreshing and calming to spend time in nature, especially with friends because it’s one of the few safe things we can do now.
To look back, you can find my travel lists from 2017 and 2018 here, and my 2019 one here. Usually I write a short list of the places I hope to go in the next year too, but I didn’t do that for 2020 because by the time I rounded up where I had been in 2019, the pandemic had started and traveling was no longer a reality. Looking at my list from 2019 now, I am filled with only extreme gratitude. Gratitude I took a chance and made a 10 day trip to Europe happen at the start of the year. Gratitude I returned to New York, a city I love, and saw a few of my close friends. Gratitude I had the courage to move abroad again. Gratitude I planned so many trips, and that I lived in Rome and could do so much exploring of Italy again, like I had when I studied abroad in Florence in 2017.
This year I’m not planning to write where I’d like to go in 2021, but I know the places I will be heading first whenever the pandemic is over: Rome, Florence, Paris, New York, and San Diego. I so hope it’s 2021 that I make it to these cities, my heart yearns for them. I can’t wait until we are all vaccinated.
This blog was born out of a desire to share all of the places I have discovered on our beautiful Earth, and I really hope that 2021 sees me returning to do just that. Sees all of us traveling again. Fulfilling dreams and visiting loved ones and finding ourselves in unfamiliar parts of the world once more. I miss so much that feeling of arriving to a new place, everything foreign at first. My hope is to live my life to the absolute fullest, once it’s safe to do so again.
where I traveled in 2020:
- Tampa, Florida for New Year’s with my family
- Day trip to Duluth, Minnesota to hike with my cousin
- Nisswa, Minnesota for our annual family cabin week
![È buio il mattino che passa
senza la luce dei tuoi occhi
☁️
[Pavese]
#pavese #roma #alba #poesie #parole #amore](https://theartfuleveryday.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)