Year in Cities 2011

My Year in Cities 2011 is both awesome and terrifying. Awesome because … not to get all braggy, but look at it! And terrifying because I’m not sure any other year of my life will live up to this one in its sheer volume of travel.

San Francisco from the air, February 2011

2011 brought a European adventure that was practically a decade in the making and took months of planning and researching and money-stockpiling to pull off. I will be thrilled if an opportunity on that scale arises again, but if it never does, I’ll know I made the most of this one.

Vigeland Sculpture Park, Oslo, June 2011

I’ll be closing out 2011 in the same place I started the year, surrounded by friends and good food and great beer at our rental house. Travels this year managed to be both friend-centric and friend-incidental; we always had multiple reasons for going somewhere, and if we could buy our friends a good meal and crash on their couch, even better. Not as many repeat visits, though, which suggests there are plenty of folks who need to claim a spot on our 2012 itinerary.

Mojave National Preserve, March 2011

Speaking of which: We already know a couple of places where our adventures will take us. We’re hoping to get to the East Coast for the first time in way too long. We’ve got a Michigan lake trip on the docket for the summer, and I have three bonus days off work that essentially have to be used to create long weekends rather than folding into a larger vacation, so anywhere with a short flight or a red-eye is fair game. I can’t wait to see what it brings.

Walking in Budapest, May 2011

Year in Cities 2011

San Francisco, CA*
Cloverdale, CA*
Los Angeles, CA
San Luis Obispo, CA
Barstow, CA
Palm Springs, CA
Eureka, CA
St. Helena, CA
Miami, FL
Chicago, IL
Midland, MI*
Portland, OR
Hillsboro, OR
Seattle, WA
Barcelona, Spain
Budapest, Hungary
Munich, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Stockholm, Sweden
Oslo, Norway
Copenhagen, Denmark

(And transit nights: Three on trains (somewhere between Barcelona and Zurich, somewhere between Zurich and Budapest, somewhere between Berlin and Malmo, Sweden), one on a ferry (somewhere between Oslo and Copenhagen), and a handful spent on various airplanes.)

About Year in Cities: All listed cities are those in which I spent at least one night between January 1, 2011, and December 31, 2011, with * denoting those cities in which I spent multiple non-consecutive nights. 2009 here, 2010 here, and as always, the whole shebang stolen from Lydia.