[yankeetravels]

Hey guys. Now that the holidays are over with the calendar year not far behind, I thought it would be interesting to look back and recap our travel experiences this year. This can be a memorable girl you were with, a destination, an experience, or just an interesting day or night out. I'll start:

Best:

I didn't get abroad this year but I was able to discover the culture New Orleans had to offer in my own country. The unique sounding jazz, loose free for all vibes, along with owning their southern charm allowed me to not give up hope on the US still having culture frontiers.

I also had one small nature stop in the middle of a road trip this year. I went to some sand dunes by a lake and walked around those solo for hours. The day started out cloudy and I saw one dune on the other side closer to the water. I decided to walk over to find a lake view despite sand being blown all over there. When I walk to the top, something amazing happened. The clouds suddenly cleared up as I got there after being overcast all day. The sun came out right there and then, I put my headphones on and was just at inner piece for a while sitting there solo enjoying the view.

Worst:

I don't know if anyone still vacations with family sometimes for reunions and such, but I was offered a free trip with family so I took it. A lot of issues came out between family members on it, so we all kind of knew that was the nail in the coffin on doing future trips together. Only kind of sad as a leaving my childhood behind kind of thing. We used to go on some pretty memorable vacations together.

I kind of realized cities of temptation are a weakness for me that I probably need to address. Basically anywhere that has 24/7 drinking available, I'd normally take full advantage and sometimes get into other stuff. In New Orleans I drank for 15 hours straight one night that caused me to miss half of the event I flew in for the next day. In another 24/7 city I used the open bar for about 12 hours and ended up getting tossed by hotel security for being drunk at 10 am.

I've pretty much been cold turkey since the last one, thinking twice about going back to 24/7 environments in the near future.

I'm sure a lot of you have more epic stories on both sides from this year, so what's yours?

[JimBobsCooters]

Interesting thread...

Best - Iguazu Falls - Went to a lot of really cool places but this was the one that was the most exceptional. I went in with the expectation of it just being another waterfall having seen a ton of waterfalls all over the place but it really isn't just another waterfall, it's a fucking gargantuan waterfall that you really can't believe until you see it.

Honourable mentions - Carnival, Death Road in La Paz, Golfing in the DR, World Cup, Budapest and some awesome castles all across Europe.

Worst - Probably for me was golfing Black Mountain in Hua Hin, it's a lovely course but I was playing solo and for some reason they love putting super slow 5 and 6 balls on the course and then had the genius idea to put the 1 ball off after 5 of them, I gave them a 5 hour window, no one teed off after me that I could see and could have easily put me in front of them, anyway, taking over 7 hours, most of it spent watching these guys take as long as humanly possible to do anything ruined an otherwise beautiful course that was meant to be a signature course in the area. Just terrible course management. Unfortunately a couple of the other Thai courses were similar, the marshalls just don't give a fuck about 5+ ball groups, don't do anything about speed of play and unfortunately Asian golfers take the idea of being played through as a savage attack on their pride and basically forbid it ever happening so once you catch one of the 6 balls, and you will because they're incredibly slow, you're fucked.

To be honest, as far as worst goes, that's pretty good. Been a great year, seen a bunch of new countries, a bunch of my favourites, packed on way too many KG enjoying the food of said countries (Argentinian steaks, Brazilian BBQ, Peruvian cuisine, German, Russian, Italian, Thai, Mexican... just too much) and now spending the end of the year trying to get back in shape for the next year!

[Heuristics]

Best: visiting London and not getting stabbed or ran over. I was able to have a beer and banter a bit without getting arrested for saying anything offensive. Maybe I just got really lucky this time, credit to Sadiq Khan for no truck attacks the week I was there!

Worst: Seeing this smaller town I love in Central Europe being destroyed by English football hooligans. They'd completely overrun this beautiful town, they were laying on the ground groaning and vomiting, smashing beer bottles, singing in the streets, shirtless, yelling non-sense and generally behaving anti-socially. The whole town ground to a halt as it anticipated a wave of violence from England's finest. These were not young men, although there were a few, they were guys that were usually 35-50 age range-- these are probably grown men who have families and who should of stopped behaving like boys 15+ years ago. I don't know who is willing to employ this dolts, because I'm surprised any of them are able to hold down a job given level of alcohol consumption mid-week. International travel usually brings out the worst in these chav types, and they are poor ambassadors for their country.