Hello 2017

Whilst 2016 has been a somewhat traumatic year for the world in general, my own personal experience has been mostly pleasant and lacking in drama. Steve and I are beginning to appreciate living in Wimbledon a bit more plus I'm still enjoying my job and am ever thankful I made the switch to science communications. My little sister is living in Bali now which is totally crazy. I have no idea when I'll next see her but I really hope it's during 2017 as I won't be able to visit until 2018.

2016 was an incredible year for travel for Steve and myself. I started the year in SE Asia with my family as we celebrated my Mum's 60th birthday. Steve and I enjoyed a weekend in Luxembourg followed by long weekends in Porto and Gothenburg a few months later. I took my friends to my family home in Northern Ireland which was utterly lovely. I spent a weekend in Aberdeen for a wedding and celebrated my 30th birthday in Japan and South Korea which really was an out of this world trip. I still can't quite believe how incredible those 3 and a half weeks were, it'll be a long time until I do another holiday like that. Steve and I nipped over to Nuremberg to experience Germany's best Christmas market and we finished the year with a week in Ireland visiting both our family homes. Five new countries (Myanmar; Luxembourg; Japan; and South and North Korea) and an absurd number of flights later I think it'll take a while to top 2016.

We also went to our beloved Indietracks festival as well as experiencing Latitude for the first time which was wonderful.

So what does 2017 bring? Again, I think it's going to be another good year without any major changes but that's not to say it will be dull. We have a host of holidays planned including a long weekend in Romania over Easter, a 2 and a half week road trip around Denmark in June, a week in the Netherlands for my birthday and a long weekend in Lichtenstein come December. I didn't make it to Paris last year but I've got a little weekend trip with my Mum planned for next weekend. I'm also hoping Steve and I can pop over to Berlin or Glasgow for a weekend and find some time to make it over to Ireland. It sounds like a lot and I guess it is for the average person but YOLO I like to travel. And we are sticking to Europe so at least flights are cheap(ish).

We will of course be visiting Indietracks come July but will also be on the lookout for another festival to visit in the summer. Depending on lineups I'd love to finally visit Green Man or Festival Number 6, maybe even Bestival or something smaller. We will wait and see who's playing.

In other matters I'd love to take up running again. I think I said this last year but alas I'm a lazy bum who enjoys being in a horizontal position most of the time. In more boring news I really want to start getting more serious about my savings. I'm not planning on bankrupting myself to save up for a deposit (lol have you seen how many holidays we're going on) but it's time to step things up a notch. Anyway, we will see how that's going this time next year.

So there you have it. 2016 was great and if I had to pick a stand out moment I'd say celebrating my 30th birthday in Tokyo was most definitely it. I might not do anything as exciting during 2017 but I'm definitely going to try.

Happy New Year!

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