Recap of 2018: Review of the Year

So I’ve published my trip specific recaps of the year (if you haven’t seen them please do after reading this post!) and I wasn’t planning on posting anything else but I was thinking back on my year (as is natural at this time of year) and wanted to give an overall review of my 2018!

On a personal level, it’s been an overall happy year – one of settling in further to my (not new anymore) home and job. Aside from the trips I’ve already spoken about, my boyfriend and I have adopted a lovely little cat, redecorated about half of our house and both got new jobs! During our trips we’ve also had some great highlights of the year… attending our friends’ wedding, celebrating our 4th anniversary and going to a Grand Prix for the first time ever.

For me, the travel obsessed, it’s also been great to realise how much travelling I can still do while maintaining a full time office job. In the UK, as well as our Northern Ireland trip, we also went camping in the Peak District, a beautiful area of our beautiful country! Although being England, we did get rained on for the majority of the time.

I visited stunning Greece twice in 2018, which I had never even been to before the year began! Santorini and Mykonos are two of the most iconic islands in Greece, and had been on my list (as well as many other people’s I’m sure) for a while. I had no plans to make the trips until I spotted the opportunities online. I’m so happy I took them and got to satisfy my Greek cravings! It really is a beautiful country and I can’t wait until I visit many other of the beautiful islands and the mainland as well (partly because gyros are so good).

The first trip of the year for me however, was actually to Malta. We visited this tiny country in March and I thoroughly enjoyed soaking up everything it had to offer. It sort of paved the way in how I planned the rest of the year’s trips – staying in one place for the duration of the trip and renting a car/taking day trips to the sights we want to see. I’ve also been trying to make sure that I see everything that I want to in the area to avoid the familiar feeling of “I have to go back one day because…” Leaving with a feeling like that every time you visit somewhere isn’t very productive!

Our main ‘summer holiday’ was to Budapest, Hungary where we went to the Grand Prix and also celebrated our anniversary. It was really hot here, and actually we had good weather on the whole for all of our trips – but Northern Ireland probably took the biscuit! It was a gorgeous May bank holiday weekend and there wasn’t a cloud in sight for the whole trip. Not necessarily what you would expect for Northern Ireland – the grass is so vibrantly green for a reason (it rains a fair bit).

Top 9's version

Finally, a quick look back on my “Instagram top nine” which is the top 9 photos you posted on the platform in terms of number of likes. I’ve created my own personal top 9 so compare above and below! There are only 2 pictures that feature in both, but one similarity is that both are made up of primarily Greek destinations which just seem to be unmatched for being photogenic.

Vs my version!

I hope you all had a wonderful 2018 and a great Christmas to top it off! My 2019 plans post is coming in the next couple of days so stay tuned for that!