Past Favorites & Future Plans
- Emily Patterson
- Dec 31, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 21, 2022
In the past seven years, we have had the privilege of traveling to 10 states (California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia) and eight countries (Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, and Switzerland) together. After a year of minimal travel due to Covid, we reminisced on our top 3 favorite destinations, hikes, foods, and even tried to pick our top destinations to visit in the future.
Top 3 Destinations
Narrowing down our favorite destinations to only three was hard because we have loved so many of the places we've traveled! If there weren't so many beautiful places yet to see, we would have gone back to all of these already! (If I could pick a fourth destination, it would probably be Santorini). Over the years, we've realized that we love anywhere there are mountains, and the bigger, the better.
Switzerland (and Belgium) was our first trip to Europe, so the newness of traveling overseas along with the majestic snow-covered mountains has left this trip forever a favorite in our minds. New Zealand is a beautiful country with pristine coastlines, rolling hills, and plenty of mountain adventures. And lastly, the Dolomites. Reminiscent of Switzerland's mountain landscape has so many great hikes and mountain views.
Top 3 Hikes
Again, it is no easy task to narrow down our favorite hikes. Chad would add Lago di Sorapis (Italy) to this list, and any one of the hikes we did in the Dolomites could easily make this list. Hiking is one of our favorite parts of traveling.
Roy's Peak in New Zealand was tough on our legs because of the incline, but the picturesque views were well worth it! Panorama Ridge in Whistler was the longest hike we have done to date at 17.6 miles (plus another two miles since we made two stops to go down to Garibaldi lake). And the Murren hike in Switzerland was our first hike in the Alps!
Top 3 Foods
Emily: Belgian Nutella Waffle - Nutella Croissant - Pizza from Italy - Baklava
Up until this point, we pretty much overlapped on our top three favorites. It's not shocking that I had more than three foods and that my list was mostly sweets. (I should also add I was not very adventurous in the foods I would try when we first started traveling, but hopefully, this list will be more diverse in the future as it turns out I like almost all the foods now that I use to say I didn't like!)
We both agreed that the waffles in Belgium were one of our favorites! I also included Nutella croissants and pizza from Italy and baklava from Greece! Chad's other favorite foods, freshly made pasta from Italy and meat pies from Australia.
Top 3 Future Destinations
Picking our top three destinations to go to next is probably the most difficult list to narrow down because there is so much more of the world we would love to see. (And this list is constantly changing depending on the day.) We wouldn't complain about going anywhere, especially after this year!
Emily US: Alaska - Glacier National Park - Oregon Coast
Chad US: Alaska - Yellowstone - Pacific North West
Emily Abroad: Norway - Africa - Phillippines
Chad Abroad: Iceland - Slovenia - Norway
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