This was travel in 2020...
This year has been interesting, to say the least. I extended my mat-leave for another 10 months in order to travel, to see our family in the U.S. and Canada, and to show our daughter the world. We had loads of travel plans. We wanted to go to South Africa and Japan, to do our yearly Greece trip and some other quick weekend travels around Europe. Even the Faroe Islands were up there as a 2020 destination.
As always, it all started in January, when we exchanged Vienna’s grey skies and bone-chilling cold for Southern Spain’s sunshine, warmth, and great food. It was wonderful. With our 11-month-old girl, we got to travel by train through the beautiful Mediterranean country, meet old friends and make some new ones in Malaga, Cordoba, and Sevilla. Our train trip through Spain was a hit! Annika was so chill on flights and so interested in seeing and experiencing all new things; she simply loved it. We were on a travel high, so to say, ready to explore the world with her again in 2020.
We returned to Vienna and not long after celebrated our daughter’s first birthday at home. We were getting ready to fly to the U.S. to do the same with our American family. And then, a couple days before our departure: LOCKDOWN due to COVID-19. And we all know what happened next: Everyone bought a bunch of toilet paper and baked lots of bread. Some even started to workout daily, I was told.
We went from traveling to Spain to not even being allowed to leave our house. Stuck inside, and at that point, with little to no actual knowledge about the virus and our future. It was hard, mentally, and as well physically! Being locked inside with a toddler who just wants to play and explore.
All that went on for quite some time, until “the big opening” in June here in Austria and slowly but steadily, things started to return to feeling a bit more normal again. A new normal.
So we decided to roadtrip to Ljubljana & Bled in Slovenia and Venice and Grado in Italy. Two weeks of pure travel bliss. Famous and usually heavily frequented cities we got to see completely void of tourism and our daughter got to show off her new amazing skill that she acquired during the first lockdown in Austria...walking. It was just us three, wandering the canals in Venice, and swimming in the Adriatic Sea in Grado. Us and a couple of other masked locals. It was beautiful, something we hadn’t seen before in cities we knew so well. But there is one thing it wasn’t: normal. Walking around these places all by ourselves was not normal. You knew the world wasn’t right. Something was off. You could see and feel it: the pandemic. In these empty famous cities, life was everything but normal.
Despite that, we had a wonderful time, we enjoyed ourselves, talked a lot with the locals and ate a bunch of delicious food. And the locals seemed to enjoy it too. The quiet. The calm. And to have their city for themselves for a while. It’s what they told us!
After this amazing experience of traveling shortly after countries opened up again after a lockdown, we made the plan to join my husband during his business trip to Amsterdam and stop over in Nuremberg, Germany on the way. That was in August. Downtown Amsterdam wasn’t as slow and empty as we had expected, so we decided to explore the lesser touristy spots and outer districts and spend all our travel credits on staying at the famous Hilton where John Lennon and Yoko Ono had their bed protest for peace in 1969. In a nutshell: An awesome trip!
In August we had not seen our American family for almost a year, so we thought if not now, then when? Hence, we jetsetted off to North Carolina. We departed from an empty airport with only 40 other passengers on the same plane. Reuniting with family was amazing and Annika got to form a closer relationship with her grandparents, aunts, and uncles. It was the best decision. And amidst all this Corona craziness, we even were invited to meet our favorite travel podcasters of Extra Pack of Peanuts and their two sweet children at their North Carolina beach house. It was an instant connection we had with them: talking all things toddlers and travels.
And how did our last trip of 2020 end? We went from a completely empty Washington Dulles airport to board a completely empty flight, arrived in Vienna to be greeted by the Austrian military and instead of going home and sleeping off our jetlag, we had to get tested for Corona in order to avoid quarantine. The new normal!
Travel-wise, there isn’t much to say about the rest of the year. Just thankful and grateful we got to make these memorable experiences as well as enjoy lots of time with my little family.
But one thing for sure is ironic: That I feel inspired to write for my travel blog again after a year of barely doing any traveling. But there it is. A new and shiney blogpost.
Happy New Year 2021! May we never take for granted again that we get to travel on airplanes.