I know this is such a cliche but 2017 just flew by for me.  It was a very busy year for work and we had quite a bit of travel, both personal and work, as well. Given my type A personality, I like to have things planned well in advance.  Steve are I are rounding out 2017 and starting 2018 with a 5 night stay in Santa Barbara and the nearby wine country (Santa Ynez Valley).  My husband also just completed his 15th year at his company which means he finally hits the maximum vacation mark and now gets 6 weeks of paid vacation per year!  Probably sounds sad to Europeans but we are pretty psyched about it!

February will be a fun weekend trip to New Orleans with some friends to catch the first weekend of Mardi Gras and to stuff our faces with great food.

We have nothing planned in March so far so that may be a quiet month at home but in April we are off on a week trip to the Virgin Islands where we plan to stay 4 nights in the USVI on St. John and then 4 nights at a small hotel on Tortola in the BVI.  This trip was tough because we booked the airfare and the St. John rental home before the hurricanes struck.  The damage to the Virgin Islands was severe.  We have been informed that the rental home did not sustain any real damage and any minor damage will be fixed well before we get there.  St. John does have power now for the most part and the beaches are being reopened already.  Many businesses have also reopened but many remained closed.

The hard part was that SO many hotels sustained such major damage that they will not be reopening until late 2018 or even into 2019 so I had a hard time finding a decent place to stay after St. John.  My original options of Peter Island Resort, Ritz Carlton St. Thomas, Caneel Bay, Guana Island Resort, Bitter End Yacht Club or Rosewood Little Dix Bay are all closed for the remainder of 2018.  It was that bad – some places were literally wiped off the map.  I finally found a small 4* boutique hotel on Tortola that somehow sustained little damage and is reopening in January 2018.  We know they need the tourist dollars and American Airlines will charge us well over $400 in change and fare fees so we decided to keep this trip on the books.

I’ll likely plan a brief weekend trip in late June or early July.  My #1 option is Big Sur, California and a stay at the Post Ranch Inn but I am also considering Santa Fe or maybe Colorado.

I just now (like today) booked for a big trip at the end of August/early September.  We’ll be heading to France for a 9 day stay that will include 3 nights in Paris and 6 nights on the French Riviera.  I’ve been to Paris before a few times and it’s still my favorite big city in Europe (Steve likes Madrid but I think that’s only b/c he speaks some Spanish) but we have never been to the French Riviera.  I’ll be working with a Virtuouso travel agent to help with hotel bookings but right now I am thinking that after a few nights in Paris, we will fly to Nice and spend 3 days there and then I’d like to spend 3 days in or around Cap D’Antibes.  We would do day trips to visit Monaco, Eze and some Cote du Rhone or Chateauneuf du Pape wineries.  Super excited about this trip and was able to use miles for two round trip business class tickets!

I often take a weekend trip to New York in October to attend a work conference so that may happen again.  No plans after that until November and this isn’t booked yet but I am pretty set that we will do a 6 or 7 day trip to Nicaragua and Costa Rica and stay at an eco-resort called Mukul that I have been obsessing about for over a year now.  They just got accepted into the Auberge hotel family and the hotel is near the boho surf town of San Juan del Sur so we would likely spend 4 or 5 days there and then 2 days at beach hotel in Costa Rica.  The flight is to/from Costa Rica so I’d like to be able to see a little bit of that country as well.

After that, I’ll probably be out of vacation days (Steve won’t!) and hopefully will be ready to book a big trip to Asia in 2019.  I was really wanting a trip to Japan or Thailand next year but we’re just a little short on miles for business class so I needed to push it out one more year.

Looking forward to the Xmas holidays and our last trip of the year!