I’ve never had a bucket list—I detest the term. But I have been gratefully keeping track of my peak adventures and experiences for nearly as long as I’ve been writing about travel.
The year 2021, was, of course, one of reduced expectations and gratitude for ever-smaller little pleasures and tiny glimpses of magic. Maybe transformative travel was too tall an order this year; maybe just getting out and feeling alive was a thing to celebrate.
With that in mind, here are my peak experiences of 2021—the things that made me feel happily, gratefully alive.
Flying over Armenia
My host during a culinary exploration of Armenia liked to throw out comparisons to both James Bond and Indiana Jones. The country especially lived up to those pronouncements during a ride on Wings of Tatev—a five-kilometer journey on the longest double-track cable car in the world, at some points suspended some 1,000 feet above the ground. Afterward, the trip back to the capital of Yerevan was in an Airbus H130 flown by Armenian Helicopters, zooming (the good kind) over the mountains of the Syunik Province as the sun was setting.
Truffle hunting in Le Marche
Paolo Ciccioli knows his truffles. Long before he opened Agriturismo Ramusè, his rural accommodation in his grandparents’ house in Ascoli Piceno, he worked as an exporter of Le Marche’s black and white truffles to posh London restaurants. Now he hosts guests with warm hospitality—lavishing black truffles over their pasta at dinner and their eggs at breakfast—and lets his visitors in on the discovery. Every day during the truffle season, he goes out with his excitable hunting dogs, who traipse across the ground and then dig for their treasures.
Canyoning in the Azores
São Miguel is known as the green island of Portugal’s Azores, thanks to all of its rain. (Tour guides like to trot out that cliché about “four seasons in one day.”) Once you accept that the trade-off for all of that beauty is that you’re going to get wet, you may as well get all the way wet. At least that was what I told myself as I geared up in a wetsuit and carabiners to go canyoning with the understatedly named adventure outfitter Fun Activities. They lead canyoning excursions all over the island, starting with the beginner-friendly Ribeira dos Caldeirões, an easy downstream trail with waterfall rappelling, rock slides and small jumps into the bracing water. (The hiking around the island, also guided by Fun Activities, is not too shabby, either.)
Horseback riding in New Mexico
Growing up in the Mountain West, I’ve ridden my share of horses. It’s rarely been as uplifting as it was at Vermejo, Ted Turner’s massive reserve in my home state. The vastness is difficult to explain: wide-open skies, snow-clad mountains rising in the distance, herds or buffalo grazing freely on the alpine tundra.
Driving the craziest road in Transylvania
Romania Tourism’s website lists several nicknames for the Transfagarasan highway. My favorite is “a spectacular monument to earth-moving megalomania.” The engineering that went into it is undeniably impressive, but the experience of being a passenger on it is pure adrenaline, trusting my colleague to handle the hairpin turns, long S curves and steep ascents and descents, while also taking in some truly stunning territory—and five bears spotted by the side of the road in as many hours, living up to Transylvania’s reputation for wildlife.
Cruising through the Dalmatian Islands
The main thing to do at Croatia’s new ultra-luxury Villa Nai 3.3 is nothing. But for guests who want to explore, it’s on an island—Dugi Otok—at the edge of the Kornati National Park, a group of 89 stunning islands, some with dramatic cliff formations and others with Roman ruins. They’re mostly uninhabited, but a few have fishing villages where a few dozen residents live a life outside of time. Because the islands rise nearly straight up from the depths of the sea, a skilled captain can get right up next to them, making the geology all the more spectacular.
Hiking in Albuquerque
During a visit to my family in the spring, the one thing that got me through two weeks with no human contact was my daily hikes in the foothills of the Sandia mountains on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Winding my way past yellow chamisa and prickly pear starting timidly to blossom, I asked myself every day how it was that I failed to notice this majesty as I was growing up with this in my backyard.
Celebrating the wine harvest in Portugal
In 2019, it would have been a pleasant party. In 2021, during that fleeting lull in the pandemic, the Harfeast celebration at the Morgado do Quintão winery in the Algarve felt like one of the greatest luxuries I could imagine. People gathered, calmly, on the lawn. Children played. An entire pig turned on a spit, slowing becoming pork sandwiches. A band played, wine flowed, people laughed, and for an evening, being alive didn’t feel so complicated. It felt radically normal.
Discovering the courtyards of Córdoba
The Andalusian city is known for its colorful courtyards—small urban gardens whose owners take such pride that the city it has organized an annual competition for the past 100 years, a tradition that managed to land itself on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. Owners decorate their spaces, a relic of Córdoba’s Moorish history, with colorful flowers in ceramic pots that hang from the walls. Each one is more dazzling than the last.
Cycling in Ibiza
It took a trip to Atzaró Agroturismo in November to show me that there’s more to Ibiza than parties. In its municipality, Santa Eulària, there are 12 interconnected cycle trails that wind through countryside and villages and end up at the beach. It wasn’t particularly adrenaline producing (especially not on Atzaró’s electric bikes) but it was a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
