At a broad glance, the last year encompassed quite a lot of traveling. There were three family trips to foreign destinations, a dedicated overseas World Heritage-centric trip, several business- and special occasion-oriented trips to various states within the Union, and an epic journey by my better half that put her on the ground in three different countries (with a long airport layover in the fourth).
I visited 5 foreign countries: the United Kingdom, France (and separately a French overseas collectivity), Greece, Italy, and a constituent country of the Netherlands in the Caribbean. Number “5” has become a sweet spot over the last few years (as evidenced by the summaries of 2024 and 2023). Although some of the locales were new and heretofore unexplored, most of the targets were repeat visits, which was a departure from my often stated preferences for going to places I haven’t been to in the past. No country was visited for the first time.
Unexplored World Heritage sites were hard to come by in the proximity of repeat targets. None, in fact, featured on my itineraries until the aforementioned dedicated trip, during which I added 6 more entries to my roster. UNESCO chipped in with another two, by inscribing properties on Crete and in Germany that I had visited on past travels.
So, I suppose the feelings are mixed. There was plenty of travel within the constraints of my corporate time-off allocation, and yet there was little new that I saw.
There are usually more plans for the upcoming months – either concrete or conceptual – by this time of the year. In the case of 2026, the plans are mostly aspirational. There will be travel, but I cannot yet identify with any degree of certainty when and where to.
As tradition demands, I am including a few of my favorite perspectives from 2025. For the purposes of this section, the cutoff is defined as everything that I processed and published during the year, so you’ll see a couple of pictures taken in 2024, while most of the last two trips of 2025 will be up for inclusion in January 2027.
Vajdahunyad Castle in Budapest.
The village of Hollókő.
In the Arikok National Park, Aruba.
A hummingbird in the Japanese Friendship Garden of Balboa Park, San Diego.
The Millennium Bridge in London, as if hanging in the air with no support.
Love locks on Passerelle Debilly, Paris.
Panagía Kapnikaréa in Athens, almost dollhouse-like in this perspective.
The Acropolis as seen from Filopappos Hill.
A square in Lefkes, Paros.
The boats in the inner harbour of Naousa, Paros.
The sunset on Naxos.
The vineyards of the Monferrato, Piedmont.
Colonne di San Lorenzo, Milan.
We will continue with retrospectives from the last two trips of 2025 in the upcoming installments.