It's that time again: time to look back on the year and write my annual year in review post!

This post is always fun to put together, as it allows me to take a look back and remember all the adventures I've had in the last 12 months. It's always a humbling task, too, as I'm reminded just how lucky I am to still be doing what I love as my job (which is indeed an accomplishment these days, with AI constantly coming for my site).

My 2025 travels took me all over the world; I visited 11 countries on 3 continents, including several new-to-me locales (and one new country!). I traveled more than 36% of the year, spending a huge chunk of it in Europe once again (nearly 3 months there cumulatively across 3 different trips this year).

(And yes, this year I'm covering both my travel highlights and lowlights all in one post, because I'm always trying to keep it real with you around here.)

2025 travel by the numbers

Here's my year in travel by the numbers:

• Countries visited: 11 – USA, Canada, the UK, France (x2), Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and Japan.
• US states visited: 6 – I did a bit of travel within Ohio, and I also went to New York, DC, Oregon, Florida, and Massachusetts.
• Total flight legs: 31 – Only 2 more flight legs than in 2024. I pride myself on keeping this number as low as I can; I can't find many direct flights from Cleveland, but I try to take trains or drive as much as possible once I get to my destination.
• Number of road trips: 5 – I did road trips this year in Oregon (briefly), Austria, Normandy, Nova Scotia (solo road trip!), and Italy.
• Days on the road: 131 (roughly 36% of the year, and just 3 days more than I traveled in 2024)

Some notable things that happened this year include:

1. I visited a new country! – I am a creature of habit and really do love to re-visit places that I love. But I have a loose goal of visiting at least one new country per year, and this year it was Japan!
2. My sister-in-law got married – We went to her wedding in Oregon and had so much fun!
3. I started another site – Because I am apparently a glutton for punishment, I started yet another website. It's called On the Grid Travel, and it's focused on Formula 1 travel around the world! It's been fun to slot more F1-related things into my travels this year.

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My top 10 travel highlights from 2025

This is always tough to narrow down to just 10, and then to sum up those 10 highlights in just a paragraph or two — but I've done my best!

Here are my most memorable travel highlights from the last year:

10. Friends and Cabaret in NYC

I go to New York City every January for a travel media event, and usually try to tick at least one new “touristy” thing off my to-do list each year. In 2025, my travel BFF Ashley actually took the train down from Boston to meet me in NYC for a few days, and we did several memorable things.

First, we went to the Friends Experience, where there are sets and costumes and props from the TV show Friends, which we both LOVE. We had so much fun taking so many photos there, and even enjoyed a coffee at Central Perk.

And then, on the complete opposite end of the emotional spectrum, we also went to see Cabaret on Broadway with Adam Lambert and Auliʻi Cravalho in the lead roles. The show was raw and (sadly) really spoke to current times (the show is set in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis). Seeing this just a couple days after Inauguration Day hit us hard, but we both loved it; I'm really sad the show run is over.

9. UK winter trip

Elliot and I rather impulsively decided to go to London and Edinburgh in the dead of winter — and it was kind of great! I was headed to Europe anyway, so we decided to tack on a week in the UK together so we could visit an F1 Arcade and see the F1 Exhibition when it was in London, plus spend a few days in our favorite city (Edinburgh). In Edinburgh, we toured the castle, went to the Johnnie Walker Experience, took a day trip to St. Andrew's, and had the BEST meal at Makars Mash Bar.

>> Read more: Is the Formula 1 Exhibition Worth It? and 25+ Awesome Things to Do in Edinburgh, Scotland

8. Crater Lake in the snow

We flew out to Oregon for just under a week for my sister-in-law's wedding in the spring, and added a couple extra days so we could explore a bit more in Bend (which included visiting the very last Blockbuster on earth, of course) and take a day trip to Crater Lake National Park.

Crater Lake is still partially closed in late April/early May, but we were able to make it to the Rim Village and see the lake under a (very thick) layer of snow. The lake is SO beautiful this time of year, and we both were losing our minds at how tall the snow drifts were! (They were 10-12 feet tall in some places.)

Check out this video about our visit:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Amanda – Travel Tips & Inspiration (@dangerousbiz)

>> Read more: The Perfect 10-Day Road Trip Itinerary for Oregon in Summer

7. Nova Scotia road trip

In August, I finally made it back to Nova Scotia for a fun road trip and some unique stays. I LOVE Nova Scotia and also have several friends there, so it was great getting to catch up with people like the Hecks and my friend Cailin from Nova Scotia Explorer AND then also do a nice solo road trip.

Highlights from my road trip included having a picnic with bison, walking on the ocean floor at low tide in the Bay of Fundy, and staying in a luxurious glamping dome that I did not want to leave. This was such a perfect summer road trip without hordes of other tourists, and I would gladly do it again!

>> Read more: The Perfect 7-Day Nova Scotia Road Trip Itinerary

6. Exploring the Austrian Alps

Ashley and I have started an annual tradition of doing a road trip around Europe; we've done Slovenia and Poland in the past, and in 2025 our destination of choice was Austria. I enjoyed our entire 2-week trip, but the highlight for me was the time we spent in the Austrian Alps (what can I say? I love to look at mountains!).

We explored towns like Innsbruck and Zell am See; took cable cars and funiculars up mountains (my favorite was definitely visiting Dachstein Glacier); and drove some scenic alpine roads. The highlight of highlights for me was the day we drove the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, which takes you past glaciers, snow fields, and Austria's tallest mountain. It was so beautiful!

5. Going to the Monza GP

Having a new Formula 1 travel site means Elliot and I now have an even better excuse to travel to F1 races! And in 2025, we headed to one of the classics: the Italian Grand Prix in Monza. This is Ferrari's “home” race, and the vibes of the Tifosi (Ferrari fans) are just unmatched.

We based ourselves in Como and then took trains and shuttles to the track each day, and lucked out with good weather that wasn't *too* hot. The race weekend itself wasn't perfect (we ended up doing a LOT more walking than anticipated on our first day at the track), but overall we had a blast!

Here's a video I made about how much the race cost us:

@dangerousbiz How much does a trip to an F1 race at Monza really cost? 💸🏎️ We went to the Italian Grand Prix in Monza this year, and here’s exactly how much we spent to attend 2 days of race weekend! 🛌 Accommodation in Como: €960/$1125 for four nights (€240/$281 per night) – Como is 30 minutes from Monza by train, and we were able to find a reasonably priced option there. 🚂 Train to/from Monza: €32/$37.50 total (€8 per person per day) – Train travel in Italy is fairly inexpensive, and the train to/from Como wasn’t too busy. 🚍 Black shuttle bus to track: €20/$23.50 total (€5 per person per day) – The shuttle system from the Monza train station to the track was well-organized; lines were long in the morning but moved fast! It was much slower/less organized going from the track back to the train station. 🎟️ Race tickets: €1030/$1208 total – €310/$363 for 2 tickets on Saturday, and €720/$844 for 2 tickets on Sunday. 🌭 Food at the track: €76/$89 total over 2 days; we didn’t buy any alcohol, and water was free if you brought your own plastic bottle of 500ml or less. 🧢 Team merch: €100/$117 – We each bought a hat at the track, though I don’t usually recommend buying team gear at the race as it’s always more expensive there! 💸 Total spent for the race: €2218/$2600 total, or €1109/$1300 each. Is this more or less than you would have expected? #italiangrandprix #monza #monzagp #f1travel #formula1grandprix ♬ original sound – Amanda | Travel Inspo

After the race weekend, we did a little road trip through Motor Valley. We visited the Ferrari museums in Maranello and Modena, took a tour of the Imola race track, and also toured a Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese factory in Parma and explored Verona for good measure. It was such a fun trip overall (you know I love a themed trip!).

4. Cat tour of Japan

Speaking of themed trips… As the latter half of the year was approaching and I didn't have any travel plans after our trip to Italy in September, I panicked slightly and booked a slot on a tour that my friend Sherry was running in Japan: a cat-themed tour!! It ended up being my favorite impulsive travel decision of the whole year.

We started out in Tokyo by visiting the Lucky Cat Temple, doing a food tour around a cat-loving neighborhood, and making some cat-related crafts. Then we took the train north into Japan's Tohoku region where we went to a tuna auction, visited the famous Cat Island for a day, and stayed at a cat-themed hotel. We did some non-cat-related things, too, including dressing up in kimonos for an afternoon, visiting a sake brewery, and taking an e-bike tour. The tour was SO fun, and such a great mix of activities — perfect for my very first trip to Japan!

Follow @catladytours to see what Sherry does next; more Japan cat tours are in the works!

3. Visiting Kyoto

After the cat tour, I stayed in Japan to explore more on my own. I saw a lot around Tokyo, and also spent time in Kyoto and Kanazawa. But Kyoto was by far the highlight for me; I spent 4 nights there, and it still wasn't enough time! I could have easily spent a whole week exploring Kyoto and taking day trips.

As it was, I did some of the most unique things in Kyoto, including taking a ramen cooking class, spending time with a maiko (apprentice geisha), eating my way through Nishiki Market, and walking over real nightingale floors at Nijo Castle (as a longtime fan of Across the Nightingale Floor, this was SO cool to me). I also visited some unique temples/shrines in Arashiyama, and spent the better part of a day hiking the “back way” up Mt. Inari to get away from the crowds at Fushimi Inari.

For me, Kyoto lived up to all the hype, and I'd love to visit again someday.

2. Lapland in winter

We have to rewind to earlier in the year for this one — which should speak to how epic it was since hardly anything else was able to top it this year! I went to Finnish Lapland for a week with my friend Kat from World Wide Honeymoon back in late February, with the goal of chasing the Northern Lights. Well, the weather didn't cooperate for more than one aurora showing, but wow did we have a fun trip!

I'm in love with the Arctic in general, and this trip was equal parts exciting and relaxing. We did fun things like met Santa Claus, went dogsledding, explored a hotel made entirely of ice, took a showshoe hike, hung out with reindeer, sauna'd just like the Finns, and stayed in a glass igloo cabin. Seeing the Northern Lights only once honestly did not dampen the experience at all.

>> Read more: A Perfect 10 Day Finland Itinerary in Winter (Helsinki + Lapland)

1. Versailles Grand Masked Ball

And now for my favorite thing that I did this year… and for once it wasn't difficult at all to decide which trip/experience would take the top spot! The most epic thing I did in 2025 was going to the Grand Masked Ball at Versailles.

This annual costume ball takes place at the opulent Palace of Versailles just outside of Paris, and is an all-night EDM dance party in the Orangerie and gardens of Versailles. (Yes, really!) It's so incredibly epic, and was made even more fun because I went with a group of friends.

The ball takes quite a bit of planning to attend (you have to get lucky with tickets, find a costume to rent, make a plan for getting there, figure out your hair, and then stay up all night to dance!), but it was 100% worth it. I'm not usually a party person and I haven't been to a club since maybe 2008, but I had the absolute time of my life at this event.

Tickets are already sold out for the 2026 ball, but I really do recommend putting this on your bucket list for a future year.

>> Read more: A Complete Guide to Attending the Grand Masked Ball at Versailles

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Whew, what a year! And that's not even all of it. In 2025, I also spent some time in Prague, saw the cherry blossoms again in DC, had beach time on Anna Maria Island, spent quite a lot of time in Paris, also went to Kanazawa in Japan, finally visited Normandy in France, and went to Boston to see friends.

I'm excited to see what adventures 2026 will bring!

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4 worst travel mishaps of the year

This post mostly focused on my travel highlights from the year. But I never want to make it seem like travel is only ever perfect and fun — because it definitely is not!

I have plenty of bad days on the road, too; days where I feel tired or sick or lonely, or days where nothing seems to go right. Those are also reality, especially when you travel as much as I do! So I want to acknowledge some of those days, too.

Here are some of my worst travel mishaps from 2025 (thankfully there weren't that many, and none were a big deal in the grand scheme of things):

4. Being let down by Hallstatt

During our 2-week road trip around Austria, Ashley and I ran into a few snafus (she wrote about more of them in her own 2025 recap), but I'd say the one that made me the most sad was being completely let down by the town of Hallstatt. The tiny little lakeside town has gone viral all over social media, and so it wasn't really a surprise that overtourism has come for it.

Part of our experience was our own fault; we had originally wanted to stay overnight in Hallstatt to be able to experience the town in the mornings and evenings without the bus tours and day trippers. But there aren't really that many hotels in town, and by the time we were booking our accommodation, all the good spots were already full (or way outside of our budget).

So we did the thing we didn't want to do, and visited Hallstatt as day trippers. We had a plan to have lunch, do some shopping, and see some local sites to at least contribute economically to the place. But it ended up being harder than we imagined! Finding parking was a whole debacle; finding a place to have lunch was also difficult; and 3 out of the 4 things we'd planned to do while in town ended up being closed!

Needless to say, after a couple hours of being elbow-to-elbow with busloads of other tourists and disgruntled service workers, we could not wait to leave. Right now, Hallstatt is being loved to death, and I personally would not recommend visiting unless you go in the off-season and stay in town for at least a night or two.

The lesson: Overtourism is a real thing, and sometimes it's honestly worth skipping a place so you aren't contributing to the negative affects. Remember that you don't *have* to go to a place just because it's all over Instagram; there are always other options! (In our case, we enjoyed the nearby town of Bad Ischl infinitely better.)

3. Lake Como ferry stress

During our fall trip to Italy, Elliot and I based ourselves in the town of Como for 4 nights in order to go to the F1 race in Monza — one more day than we really needed so that we had time to explore a bit of Lake Como, too. I thought I had a great plan for our one day, which included a couple ferries to visit two of the most popular towns on the lake (Bellagio and Varenna). But what I hadn't counted on was the fact that buying ferry tickets around Lake Como makes zero sense!

We needed fast ferry tickets from Como to Bellagio and back (45 minutes vs. 2.5 hours for the regular ferry), and then quick 15-minute ferry tickets from Bellagio to Varenna. Except that you cannot buy any fast ferry tickets online; you have to stand in a physical line at the ferry office. And if you need return tickets? Well you can't buy those together. You can buy the ticket *to* Bellagio, but then you need to stand in line again in Bellagio to buy your return ticket to Como.

We ended up missing the initial fast ferry we wanted to take because the line was so long/slow, so we had to wait 3 hours for the next one. And then it felt like we spent most of the day standing in lines to either buy all the various tickets we needed, or waiting for the boats themselves (most of which were late).

Overall we saw what we wanted to see and got some beautiful photos of Lake Como, but the in-the-moment experience was much more stressful than anticipated!

The lesson: Always have a Plan B (and sometimes a Plan C) when traveling — and especially when traveling in Italy. Sometimes the way things work just don't make sense, but you have to roll with it and do the best you can. Other than getting up extra early to stand in the initial ferry line when it opened, there wasn't anything we could have done differently to make our Lake Como day go more smoothly. If you want to spend just one day exploring Lake Como, I would not recommend Como itself as a base; stay in Bellagio, or just book a day trip from Milan!

2. Terrible weather in Lapland

There are lots of things you can control and plan for when it comes to travel. But one thing that's entirely out of your control is the weather. When Kat and I were initially talking about planning a Northern Lights trip last winter, she originally wanted to go to Iceland; but since I've been to Iceland twice in the winter and never once saw the aurora there due to clouds, I suggested we try Finland instead.

The joke was on me, because we ended up visiting Lapland during a stretch of truly terrible weather! It was unseasonably warm (hardly any snow on the ground), and completely cloudy the whole time. We did manage to see the Northern Lights one night, thankfully (we had to drive to Sweden!), but I know we had both hoped to see them more than just once!

At least there was lots to do in Lapland, though, and we had no trouble filling our days. It was an amazing trip overall, but the weather definitely was not ideal.

The lesson: Even with the best intentions and planning, the weather might still do you dirty on a trip. I always, always counsel people planning Northern Lights trips to manage their expectations, and always plan other things to do that don't revolve around clear skies.

1. Nightmare Airbnb in Paris

I don't tend to use or recommend Airbnb any longer, as I have a lot of concerns about how short-term rentals affect local communities, and also know how easy it is to scam people these days on Airbnb. But, in some cases it still is the best option. Like when there were 5 of us all headed to Paris to go to the Versailles ball and we wanted to stay together in one place where we could cook some meals and all get ready together.

Finding any sort of room in Paris that can accommodate 5 adult women is tough — especially when you're traveling in June and looking for somewhere with air conditioning! Kat found a few apartment options, and we all agreed on one that appeared to offer what we needed.

The apartment was relatively close to the metro, had an elevator in the building, and was listed as being able to sleep at least 6 adults. It also was listed as having 2 bathrooms and air conditioning. The photos made it look a bit quirky in a very Parisian way, but there weren't any big red flags about the place as a whole.

And then we got there. On the one hand, this apartment represents what I wish Airbnb still was: it was a very clearly lived-in apartment that the owners rent out when they aren't in town (or, in this case, probably rented out because there were a bunch of big events going on in Paris that week and they saw an opportunity to make some money).

But the apartment was a little *too* lived-in. There was clutter and too much dusty furniture in every single room, to the extent that there was nowhere to open a suitcase. There was rotting food and mold in the kitchen. There were actually 2 *half*-baths, meaning just one toilet and one shower (which was stained, slow-to-drain, and littered with literally dozens of almost-empty bottles of shampoo and feminine care products).

And the kicker was that the advertised “air conditioning” was actually one portable A/C unit that was broken. We were willing to overlook everything else, but when we reached out to the owner about the A/C stating that we really needed it since it was 90+ degrees in Paris that week and we had a ball to get ready for, she then proceeded to flat-out lie to us for DAYS about getting the unit fixed. And then tried to gaslight us about it when we called her out on it.

We ended up getting ready in 94-degree heat, blasting fans at ourselves and opening every window in the place. That part of the day was beyond miserable.

I also found it really difficult to shower, and by the third day of bathing in 2-inches of standing water as a questionable shower curtain stuck to me, I'd had it. I actually went and booked a hotel for myself for my last 2 nights in Paris because I just needed out of there.

If I hadn't already been anti-Airbnb, this experience would have turned me.

The lesson: I will stick to hotels from now on. (Which I already mostly do, but in hindsight I wish I would have pushed more for a different option in Paris, even if it meant paying a bit more for multiple hotel rooms.)

All in all, my travel mishaps were mere inconveniences that didn't really put any dampers on my trips in the end. I definitely consider myself lucky, and know how privileged I am to only be whining about cloudy skies and crappy Airbnbs. Here's hoping my travel mishaps remain this “easy” in the years to come!

I already have a few exciting travel plans for 2026, so I look forward to seeing you back here again next year!

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How was your 2025 in terms of travel? Did you have any big highlights or major mishaps?