Hi friends, welcome back and Happy New Year! Jon and I spent time with our families in Michigan and Atlanta for Christmas, and then made it back to NYC before the new year. We luckily didn’t have any issues with flight delays and enjoyed a quiet evening watching football, and eating our favorite takeout pizza. 2021 treated us quite well and we are looking forward to hopefully a more normal 2022! Instead of New Year’s Resolutions, I like to make goals I can achieve in the year and I thought I’d share mine with you all as my first post of 2022.
- Read 40 books – two years ago I was hoping to read ten, but now that I have my library card I’m unstoppable when it comes to reading ha! Oh how I wish the library had some kind of reward program where I could earn ice cream or cookies with each page turned 🙂
- Get TSA-Pre and Global Entry – I currently have a CLEAR membership, but not TSA-Pre so at the airport Jon and I split at security and hope neither of us have issues
- Finish legally changing my name – I changed my SSN card/ NY drivers license, but there’s so many other places to change it, most notably my passport
- See a Broadway Show – Hadestown is at the top of my list
- Go to Paris – We’re optimistic we can get to Europe for our anniversary. Jon got me Paris-related presents for Christmas and said we should go for our anniversary, sounds great to me! Depending on the time frame, I may add a few days in London to the end of our itinerary
- Spend Fourth of July in Newport, Rhode Island – We have our accommodations booked so if all goes according to plan, we’ll be touring all the beautiful mansions this summer
- Visit three new NYC museums – so far we’ve only been to the Met and Natural History Museum
- Improve my Personal Records on the Peloton
What’s your goal for 2022?
Great goals for 2022. My 2021 reading goal was 40 books and I got too busy and ended up only reading 20, maybe this year I’ll get to 40. I hope you get to Paris, what a great place to spend your anniversary!
20 is still quite the accomplishment! Thank you, we are really missing traveling abroad! Hopefully things start turning around after this Omicron wave… Happy New Year!
Hope you achieve your goals. Best wishes for a Happy New Year to you both.
Thank you! Happy New Year Marion!
Good to have goals to strive for and achieve Lyssy. An anniversary trip to Paris sounds like fun. We did that in 2007 for our 30th and went back in 2017 again. One of the agreements we made when we got married was that we would travel and see the world. We managed to do that for the first 9 years, then intermittently when the kids came along, before going back to travel in 2007. We like to pick a new destination to visit on each anniversary. This year and last, unfortunately it was in our home country, but that is OK, we were still together. Have a very Happy New Year Lyssy. Allan
Wow you have an impressively long marriage! We have the same travel goals as you guys and hope to take a trip abroad every anniversary. At the start of 2020 I wrote our 10 year travel plan including plans to send future kids to Camp Grandparents ha! but that went out the window. I am very grateful we got to spend so much time together these past few years, we never dreamed of that! Here’s hoping we can all go abroad this year. Happy New Year Allan!
Happy New Year Lyssy! 🙂
Happy New Year Allie! 🙂
Paris would be wonderful for your first anniversary. Your OH is a romantic.
He sure is, I think I’ll keep him around 🙂
😎
Good luck with achieving your goals. Paris sounds like a great choice for the anniversary trip and hopefully travel gets easier and easier this year.
Thank you Leighton! I sure hope travel gets easier and easier. I’m hoping whatever wave comes next is very mild
Happy New Year! I’ll anticipate a series of posts soon after your wedding anniversary titled “Lyssy in Paris” 🙂 (We’re about to watch the second season of “Emily in Paris” on Netflix – such a good show). Our own travel goal is to return to Ireland, where we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary ten years ago. My wife is one-quarter Irish so we felt right at home exploring the Emerald Isle.
Happy New Year! That’s a good idea!! We’re halfway through Emily in Paris season two and I am noticing a lot of landmarks from my research. It’s a good show for the January dreariness. That’s a great goal! I’d love to visit Ireland one day, I’ve heard they have the nicest, friendliest people 🙂
Happy New year Lyssy – Best of luck with your list!!
Happy New Year Marie! Thank you!
OK, so I cannot lie….the picture that shows up – doesn’t show everything. It almost looks like you are in the hospital with a baby! LOL. I love making lists like this – I think I need to put mine together – might be a good distraction. Thanks for the nudge!
Hahah maybe the 2024 list will include a baby 😂 lists are a good distraction. I’m sure you’ll be making a lot of lists for the big move!!
Thank you for sharing!
Thanks for stopping by, Happy New Year!
Newport and Paris are beautiful destinations, I hope you can enjoy them to the full. I’ll be curious to read what you get out of it. In terms of goals I’m also thinking about places, again at least 5 European capitals and 5 regional capitals in France (6 for each in 2021). Happy Travel Year!
Thank you! That sounds like an awesome year ahead for you. Happy New Year and Travel Year! 🙂
Paris always seems to be a destination. My daughter and I visited in early October 2021. Yes, there was a myriad of paper work to do. She had everything set up for when I arrived at “her” local airport (Dulles) and we went on our way to get tested so we would have that for the next day. That next day was our flight out of the U.S. and, initially, to Switzerland then to Naples and our taxi to Montepertuso. She had to fill out the European locator form for both of us. Hopefully, you will not have to deal with that. We spent time in Montepertuso (Italy) where we hiked “the Path of Gods.” We stayed in airbnbs at all places (Montepertuso, Rome, and Paris). We had fourteen days of absolutely gorgeous weather (one day of rain which worked out perfectly for a photo of the Eiffel tower after a rainstorm and at night with lovely reflections on the tile). However, make sure you know how the metro works (in Paris and out of Paris). We used trains the entire time we traveled. I do think I enjoyed Italy more than France…..maybe in my next blog you can read about why. Honestly, I loved the Amalfi Coast (I have a blog on that) and Rome so much. It just seemed so much easier to get around (maybe because more Italians speak English then French do?) Paris is still a beautiful place though. Give yourself plenty of time to explore because of differing days museums are open/shut. I definitely recommend the Opera House and the gardens. Sacra Cour is also a great place since I enjoyed the fabric “capital” of Paris and you can see where they’ve started a lock & key fence there (already quite loaded). There weres so many of my favorite spots (think original Phantom of the Opera location). The thing I was most surprised about is how the streets/sidewalks are not nearly as clean as portrayed in movies/netflix series such as “Emily In Paris.” Wear comfortable shoes. Even with metro you’ll still walk a lot. And since you like food, you have to try the Choco Clap Clap in Paris at restaurant Libertino. Go early. It is a popular spot. You will not be disappointed. Goals are great. The trip we took was planned two years ago so you know why we just accomplished the goal less than three months ago. Good luck.
Thank you so much for the recommendations Cathy! We were supposed to do Rome/Amalfi coast for honeymoon in 2020, then 2021 but now we are saving it for when things clear up a bit. It’s my dream destination so we’re hoping things will look a lot better by then. I’ll have to check out your blog for more tips 🙂 Happy New Year!
Global Entry and TSA/Pre will be great to have for your Paris trip. If they haven’t come through by then try Mobile Passport. It is a free app that actually is faster than Global Entry. You answer the CBP questions in the app while waiting to get off the plane and it sends a bar code to your phone. You go straight to the CBP officer in the Mobile Passport lane and skip the kiosks. I used it at JFK coming back from Athens. It doesn’t come with TSA/pre unfortunately.
I’m glad you enjoyed the holidays and traveled without problems. Those are awesome goals for 2022.😊
I do have that app on my phone, I’ll have to make sure it’s all updated. I think I downloaded it when we came back from Scotland but didn’t use it and had a long wait to get back in the US while Jon cruised by with his Global Entry ha!
Happy New Year, John!
Happy New Year! Stumbled upon this and enjoyed the read 🙂 Look forward to seeing your Paris post!
Thank you! Happy New Year!
Great list. Happy New Year.
Thank you – Happy New Year!
These are fabulous resolutions!
Yes go to Paris ❤️ and pass by London haha
I’m planning to go to both cities to see family and friends. We might end up being there at the same time lol (like in the movies).
I love the idea of being rewarded for reading all the books we can 😊
I don’t have that much resolutions this year, just to let go and accept what it is, there are things that I can’t control (like Covid 3.0) so I’m just gonna go with the flow 😊
Happy New Year! May you have a great 2022 year 🎉🥳
Thank you! That would be awesome if we were in Paris at the same time 🙂 I think that’s a great resolution, I love planning so going with the flow can be hard for me, but these days it’s so hard to plan. Just when it seems we’re out of the woods another wave hits. Hopefully 2022 starts to turn around.
Happy New Year! Hope you have a great 2022 as well!!
Great set of goals – Paris sounds amazing and you know where I am if you end up in London and need any recommendations or a tour guide 🙂
Thank you! Yes!! I’ll definitely need your help 🙂
I remember when growing up the local library would have a reward program in the summer for kids. It would definitely be fun if they had those for adults.
For your museum resolution, I highly suggest the Rubin Museum of Art (focus is Asian art) and the Museum of the Moving Image.
My biggest resolution for 2022 is to actually graduate from my PhD program after being here for many years… This definitely should happen!
I remember my school had a reward program for reading, and now that you bring it up I think my library had a program in the summer for kids. They should bring it back for adults 🙂 thank you for the museum suggestions! Wow your 2022 resolution is impressive!! Good luck finishing your program!
Well Lyssy, you’ve definitely got lots to be getting on with. Your travel plans sound exciting and boy, I wish I could find the time to get back into reading. Changing 40 to “4” a year would be a good start for me.
A few years ago my goal was to read 10, and now it keeps growing! Everyone starts somewhere 🙂 Reading keeps me out of trouble too haha
Read mine too motivational thaughts and poetry