The end of 2020 marks the second year of running this little blog. This post is now my 90th post in total! When I first pressed publish on my website I was so concerned that I only had 3 posts ready to view but seemly in no time I have managed to make it to nearly a hundred posts.

This year of course has been a huge blow to the travel industry, and has left many of us wondering what we were supposed to do with our websites. I had been planning and saving for all of 2019 to go on a massive trip to Europe and Scandinavia, which as you can imagine was going to be the main focus of my content for this year. Within the space of a few weeks I went from ordering a woolen beanie to wear in Iceland to pleading with airlines for at least part of my airfares back.

I am extremely grateful however, that my job is in an industry that has so far not been affected by the pandemic, and I live in a city where we have gone most of the year with no community transmission and barely any restrictions on our day to day life. I am very aware that things have not been so great in other parts of the world, and my thoughts are with my readers experiencing impacts to their health and livelihoods.

For me, continuing to blog in 2020 has helped me stay connected in some way to traveling, by reliving past experiences and giving me a reason to explore my own home town and state more than I ever have before.

My top performing post of the year was Indian Ocean Drive – Perth to Jurien Bay mainly boosted by the post unexpectedly being shared to a Facebook page, which was a lovely surprise. We actually did this trip right before the March lockdown came into effect, thinking that it would be our only adventure within Western Australia for the year. Once our international travel plans disappeared, we ended up doing some more exploring of WA and spending a weekend in Albany, three weeks driving up the Coral Coast, and a lot of time in Perth visiting new places for brunch.

My second best performing post was my USA coast to coast road trip – Boston to LA. I originally posted this back in April 2019 and received enough views for it to come in at second place in 2019. During 2020 it seemed to continue gaining momentum and increased by a crazy 900% in views. I had heard that some posts can take a long time to reach viewers but it was interesting to see this for myself! I am still only part-way through writing about each place we visited so my goal for 2021 is to finish writing about the rest of the trip.

My worst performing post of the year was my overview of 12 South Nashville, which I think is a shame as it contains some of the coolest street art I have ever seen! I may need to review my post and make sure it is reaching the right audience.

With not a lot of travel on the horizon for 2021, I will likely have to keep my focus on Australian travel and tips. For those that aren’t aware Australian’s international borders are closed and most likely will be until there is a wide-spread vaccine. Currently our internal state borders are (mostly) open, however Western Australia seems to be quite strict at re-instating border closures where there are flare ups. The situation can change within a couple of days, so right now it seems too risky to plan a trip just for fun due to the quarantine requirements alone, let alone the risk of exposure to the virus itself.

I have also wanted to do a series of posts about how to start a blog, and pulling together some of the tips I have learned over the last two years, and so perhaps a year of limited travel will give me some time to focus on this.

Wishing you all a very happy new year, and hopefully by the time I write my 2021 year in review there will be a lot more travel on the horizon!