2025 Year in Review: Dreams in Motion

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It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to title my recap for this year. There were a lot of incredible experiences had and I watched my little travel blog surge with growth. “Epic” was the first word that came to mind, but I thought it sounded a little cheesy. And then I realized that dreams (and goals) I held for a long time had finally been realized. Voila, “Dreams in Motion!”

For the most part, this year presented me with a lot of positivity. For starters, I got to visit two bucket list destinations that included some very surreal moments (and lot’s of delicious food, which you can read more about in my Best Bites & Foodie Highlights of 2025).

I was also able to hit some big milestones with the blog (thanks to you readers!) – things I honestly had given up hope on. I’m so grateful for this year’s wins and I hope for more of that going into the new year!

Personally, I feel like this year went by really fast. Maybe it was the increase in travel or simply trying to keep up with the chaos of an extremely busy year with my day job. I feel like time flies much more than it used to when I was younger. I need more time!

That being said, I was able to fit in so many wonderful things in 2025. Let’s look back on them!

Best 2025 Travel Moments

This year was a goooooood year for travel! We got to travel internationally twice, something we don’t often do – first to Spain and then to Iceland. These two trips were both amazing, yet very different from each other.

In Spain, we ate our fair share of pintxos, drank txakoli wine daily, and soaked in the food culture of the Basque Country and Madrid. In Iceland, we laid eyes on one of the most stunning destinations on the planet. I kid you not when I say this was probably my favorite trip of all time!

Back here in the U.S., we explored more of California – well, we revisited San Luis Obispo twice (I blame Marriott for giving us an annual free night and making it hard to redeem in destinations I want to visit). We also added a new state to our list (Illinois) and visited Chicago with our friends. Chicago was such a fun trip and I was really impressed with its architecture and food.

And finally, I made my annual trek home to Maui (in first class, no less) to visit my family and eat all the things.

Travel Summary

• Countries Visited/Traveled In: 3 – U.S.A., Spain, and Iceland (two new countries for us!)
• States Visited/Traveled In: 3 – California, Hawaii, and Illinois (+ South Carolina for the husband for a work trip); Illinois was a new state for both of us!
• Nights Away From Home: 36 (for me)

San Luis Obispo x 2

SLO has been kind of a home away from home – my husband and I have been three times in the last two years! I love this area for its food and proximity to beach towns nearby.

This year, we went up to San Simeon to see the elephant seals, had a surprise spotting of zebras along the coast (yes, zebras!), and did a clam chowder crawl in Pismo Beach. We also ate a ton of good food and worked on my challenge of hunting down all the painted cows in San Luis Obispo County.

During our December visit, the weather was blue skies for miles and 73+ degrees. After nearly a month of being covered in a gloomy, cold layer of fog where we live, the beautiful weather was the recharge I needed to push into winter.

Our First-Ever Business Class Flight

Just call me bougie from here on out because we took our first-ever business class flight on our trip to Spain. Ya’ll, I am now spoiled. Please don’t mention the word “economy” to me ever again! JK, the reality is that economy is still in my future on occasion but I will always be striving to maximize our points and miles to fly in comfort.

For this business class flight, I snagged a decent points redemption by transferring Capital One points to Flying Blue (Air France & KLM’s rewards program). With a transfer bonus, I spent 94,500 points per person to fly business class from SFO to Paris, and then Intra-Europe business class from Paris to Bilbao, Spain.

Worth. It.

The experience was very cool, from being able to access the Air France Lounge at the SFO airport to laying flat across the Atlantic. I will say, the lay flat seat wasn’t as comfortable as I would have hoped. It was also quite warm in the cabin and I slept horribly. However, the food was great and so was the service. I would 100% do it again because it beats economy any day!

Pintxos Bar Hopping in Basque Country

Basque Country was a foodie dream realized for me! As one of the world’s top gastronomic destinations, it was high on my list of places to visit. I dreamt about floating from restaurant to restaurant eating gourmet bites of Spanish food and drinking wine. This was the year to make it happen.

First up – bilbao

We started our Spanish adventures in Bilbao, the largest city in Basque Country, where we went on an awesome food tour and got the perfect intro to the world of pintxos.

Bilbao is also very a artsy city and went from being an industrial port town thanks in part to the building of the Guggenheim museum (which, of course, we had to visit).

This city felt so livable – I could totally see myself living there for a few months out of the year. With the architecture, food, and access to a decently-sized airport, it would be a great spot!

San Sebastian

After Bilbao, we hopped over to San Sebastian – a must-visit city for foodie travelers. The food in Bilbao was excellent, but the dishes in San Sebastian blew me away with elevated creativity and flavors. If I thought I could live in Bilbao, San Sebastian may have inched its way ahead in line just for the food.

The old world architecture and stunning seaside location of San Sebastian was everything. We spent our days here eating, walking, taking naps, and eating more. Could life get any better than that?

I will, without a doubt, return here again just to continue making my way through all of the pintxos bars the city has to offer.

A Long Weekend in Chicago

I’m not sure why it took us so long to make it over to one of America’s largest cities, but I’m glad we finally did – driven in large part by attending the NASCAR Chicago Street Race.

In full tourist fashion, we did all the things one would do to explore the Windy City, from eating Chicago Deep Dish pizza to watching the Cubs dominate on 4th of July!

Here are some of my favorite Chicago highlights:

• Ate 3 different Chicago Deep Dish pizzas, 5 different Italian beef sandwiches, and 5 Chicago dogs
• Attended a Cubs game at Wrigley Field (Baseball bucket list! This was honestly one of the top things we got to do, and on 4th of July no less.)
• Went up both 360 and Willis (Sears) Towers
• Took a very cool architecture river boat tour
• Popped into the Art Institute of Chicago to see my favorite painting (Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Seurat), and spent hours wandering through the Field Museum
• Attended the NASCAR Chicago street race!

Upgrading to First Class on Hawaiian

I took my annual trip home to Maui this year to visit my family (and also to eat and get some updates for my Maui Food Guide). This time, however, I treated myself to a little upgrade!

Hawaiian Air had the audacity to tempt me with bidding for a First Class upgrade – something I’ve never flown before. Granted, First Class on Hawaiian from California is domestic, which is nothing like international First Class. However, the universe was telling me to bid on this so I did.

I put in the minimum of $300 about a week before my flight and waited to see what would happen. I got it!

Was $300 worth it for 5 hours of comfort? I think so! I didn’t feel too much regret over the extra spend since I had used a $300 travel credit to book my flight in the first place. Trust that I made sure to get some of my money’s worth in drinks, at least 😉

Would I do it again? Uh, yes (if I could bid for it and not pay full price). It was so nice to be in a comfortable seat, have a hot, plated meal, and enjoy the drink service. Bougie Level: 2.

Seeing the Northern Lights in Iceland

Last year, I had a fall trip on my travel wish list but I wasn’t quite sure of where to go. It was a toss up between going somewhere that we could see the Northern Lights or doing a fall foliage road trip in New England.

What swayed me to Iceland was being near the peak of the current solar cycle. Plus, I knew seeing the Northern Lights was very high on my husband’s bucket list. Lo and behold, I found myself pricing out a trip to Iceland and roping in two of our friends (who had never been out of the country no less) to go with us on this adventure.

Seeing the Northern Lights is extremely unpredictable. I booked a tour for a night earlier on in our trip (in case we failed and needed to reschedule) but fate was on our side that night and we got what we came for.

So many people chase the lights unsuccessfully and I can’t believe we were this lucky!

Everything Else About Iceland

The Northern Lights were cool and all, but Iceland in general took my breath away. What a beautiful country with so many different landscapes and incredible food!

We explored Reykjavik, road tripped to the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, and explored the South Coast by car.

I’m officially obsessed.

Every corner we explored of this country was stunning, from endless waterfalls and canyons to the rocky black sand beaches (and even a glacier lagoon).

And the food was something else. All seafood lovers must come to Iceland and spend all your life savings on food! Jokes aside, I’m already mapping out a list of things to see on a return visit (and things to eat).

Blog Highlights

This was a pretty awesome year for the blog, thankfully! Last year, things looked bleak at the start but then picked up in the second half of the year. I’m happy to report that the growth continued into 2025 and it’s seriously shocking to me how well I did!

Growth Update

When I wrote my 2024 recap, I made a modest goal of growing my page views by 50%. Well, I blew that out of the water by growing 380%. I am still in disbelief over here considering the numbers aren’t as kind to many of my fellow bloggers!

Mediavine – I’m in!

The great readership boom of 2025 helped me to transition from Mediavine’s Journey ad program to Mediavine “Official” in July. Does this mean after 11+ years of having this blog I’m an “official” blogger? This was a years-long goal finally realized.

What does this change mean for readers? Thankfully, nothing really changed from a reader perspective from when I first joined Mediavine Journey in 2024. It’s really just more income for me which gives me more to reinvest in travel experiences (so I can continue providing free content here!).

The extra bit of ad income I get will go a long way – if I’m being transparent, it will probably go to my food habits (but hey, readers do like my food guides).

Visit Idaho Article

I don’t do a lot of freelance work, but I was asked to write another piece for the 2025 Idaho Travel Guide for the second year in a row (and actually, I wrote another for the upcoming 2026 Guide too!).

My piece for 2025 was all about unique winter dining experiences around Idaho. These are always a challenge for me to put together, but the experience helps me grow as a writer and I get to learn some pretty neat stuff about destinations in the process!

Top Posts of 2025

My food guides dominated this year, which is on brand. It’s clear that I’ve found my people! If you want to check them out yourself, here they are:

• The Ultimate Maui Food Guide
• Kauai Food Guide
• Portland, Oregon Food Guide
• A Foodies Guide to San Luis Obispo, California
• Dublin, Ireland Food Guide

2026 Blog Goals

I’m excited to see what 2026 brings, though I’m still being cautious with how volatile blogging and content creation has been lately.

• Page view growth goal: 60%. Even though I grew by a lot in 2025, the growth has slowed down a bit so I want to be modest with my goals. Heck, if things just stay the same for 2026, I’ll still be happy.
• Have a 125,000 page view month – This could most likely happen in October where I have some strong fall content. Hopefully, I can bang out my Iceland posts by then to boost my chances!
• Grow my newsletter – This is something I’ve done a terrible job at, but I’d like to come up with a strategy to get more email readers (you can sign up here if you haven’t already!).
• Tackle TikTok – I resisted this for a long time and I’m late to the party at this point, so I don’t know if I can use that platform to grow or not. I did start an account with IG cross-posts that seem to reach more people (but also, damn, it brings out the very opinionated people of the internet too). If you’re sick of not seeing the right content on Instagram, join me over on TT!

Personal Updates

I don’t really have too much to share on my personal life. This year was largely focused on travel, writing, and just trying to find some balance in my day-to-day life while running this blog and still working a full-time job.

Like anyone else, my life is never perfect. I have stressors with good days and bad; I deal with mundane and routine things – like doctor appointments and procedures that I’d rather avoid but are necessary, especially as time ticks on. We had a turnover on our rental home that was extremely costly (like we could have taken a trip to Antarctica kind of costly). Eesh.

I am also sad to report that I let some of my house plants die. When we moved into our current home, I was determined to become a plant lady, but I failed miserably at that – especially this year. I’ve been slowly replacing them with fake plants that don’t require as much effort.

I will also say, I did a crappy job with trying to balance my health with life and travel. I did so great from 2022 – 2024 and this year, I don’t know what happened, but I fell off the wagon. So, I’m taking the next couple of months (at least January and February) to get back into a better routine, refine my habits, and focus more on balance.