It’s that time of year again. The end of December is when everyone looks back over their year and makes lists. So far be it for us to not follow the trend.

2014 was one hell of a year for us. In addition to starting this blog, we still found some time to travel around the world while working full time. We were on the road almost once a month in 11 separate trips. We finally got to cross off Australia and Peru from our bucket list, which were over 2 years in planning. We’ve even literally flown around the world – flying only eastward to Australia through Abu Dhabi and then eastward home through Los Angeles. We also visited our 6th continent – only one more to go! The more we see on our travels, the more we wanted to see.

Some of the more impressive stats include: over 91,000 miles flown, on 42 individual flight segments. 7 countries, 5 continents. We spent over 26 hours flying in first class, 70 hours in business, and countless hours in coach.  12 of those flights were over 8 hours long, and 5 of those 12 were more than 12 hours – thats a lot of long-haul flying.  Even with all that however, we fell short of of the re-qualification threshold for American Airlines Executive Platinum status – 100k miles. It looks like next year we’ll have to settle for being just Platinum. This means no more unlimited domestic upgrades, and no 8 SWUs for international flights, but we still get lounge access and priority seating/boarding, etc. We also have a stash of points built up this year we’ll work on using up in 2015.

Our trips in 2014 included:

• Jamaica
• London and Dubai
• San Francisco
• Peru
• New Orleans
• Hong Kong
• Trips to Toronto
• Austria
• Australia

This past year we specifically planned more travel than normal in order to maximize the benefits of our status. This resulted in a lot of busy weekends and running around packing, unpacking, and repacking. In fact, it felt like we spent most of 2014 living out of our suitcase. All this travel definitely took its toll on our bodies.  Between the long-haul flights, meals in airport lounges, time changes, jet lag, busy weekends, and packed schedules to fit as much in as possible on our trips we both feel a bit worn down.  Even though we loved every minute of of our whirlwind year, we’re also looking forward to some R&R time at home this winter. For 2015, we have a lot of ideas of where we want to go, but nothing concrete planned. We are excited to start planning our next adventure around the world (any suggestions?).  It’ll be hard to top 2014, but we can’t wait to see what 2015 brings. We wish everyone a safe and happy new year!