Category: theyearincities (Page 1 of 3)

Many of the newsletters I read are publishing “best of 2025” wrap-ups where they rattle off the posts that either got the most attention or made their authors most proud. Which is nice and all, but I saw that content already. I guess the digital cadence means it’s better to do the newsletter version of a clip show than just not hit send for a week?

Here at the Ideapad, where there’s never been a post schedule, one thing that hits like clockwork is the Year in Cities recap. Herewith, the twenty-first edition. All the places I went and spent the night. A procession of weddings and ballparks, pretty much.

As with last year, the commitment to sleeping over eliminates some of the nuance: we went from Pittsburgh back to New York by way of Baltimore, because baseball. And that Kentucky stay was over the river from Cincinnati, a pedestrian bridge away from a Reds game, which was the point of our visit. But we’ll stick with the system, which allowed us spend a night in Kentucky, after all.

Repeat visits are noted with an asterisk.

New York *
Coral Gables, FL
Chicago, IL *
Palm Beach Gardens, FL *
Cleveland, OH *
Detroit, MI
Newport, KY
Pittsburgh, PA
Edgartown, MA *
Montecito, CA

Somehow I’ve been doing this for eighteen years. This past year was a good one, as I got back on an airplane for the first time since the pandemic started, for both work and fun, and took multiple interesting road trips. Away we go:

New City, NY *
New York (home base) *
Richmond, VA (somehow we did that more than once, too) *
Palm Beach Gardens, FL *
Plymouth Meeting, PA
Las Vegas *
Zion National Park, UT *
Bryce National Park, UT *
Grand Canyon Village, AZ *
Sedona, AZ
Scottsdale, AZ
Mexico City
Owls Head, ME
Greenport, NY
Gloucester, MA *
West Tisbury, MA *
Surfside, FL
Boston, MA *

Seventeenth year! Despite not getting on a plane, because 2021, we managed to take half a dozen trips out of town, see several new places, and spend a whopping 58 nights sleeping somewhere besides my apartment. (That’s a remarkably high total for me, and is due largely to our pandemic snowbirding in February.)

Richmond, VA
Palm Beach Gardens, FL *
Savannah, GA
New City, NY *
Pittsfield, MA
Asbury Park, NJ
Newport, RI *
Gloucester, MA *
West Tisbury, MA *

Interesting firsts from this year include: throw my son a triumphal bar mitzvah; drive from New York City to Florida (so NBD we almost did it twice); play tennis on grass, in tennis whites, on the showcase court, at the Tennis Hall of Fame; get an entire new sunroof, headliner and carpet for our car at no cost; work 8-4 with daily tennis or golf for an entire month; run errands on a Citibike e-bike, and on a Revel scooter; bring a dog on the beach at the Jersey shore; eat Rhode Island clam chowder; turn a side hustle into a career opportunity; break 100 on a round of golf (for the first time in several years); find a starfish in a Bass Rocks tide pool (first time in at least 20 years); play paintball (first time in 29 years); get a virus vaccination at the Javits Center (first time ever).

Now in its sixteenth year, and as expected, a bit of an exercise in futility. But here we go, for tradition, all the places I went in 2020 and spent the night, repeat visits denoted with an asterisk:

New York *
Palm Beach Gardens, FL *
New City, NY * (for approximately 180 days)
West Tisbury, MA *

Hitting publish on my annual Year in Cities post made me think it’d be interesting to compile the past ten years of overnight travel into a single entry.

I suspected the first decade of the century was arguably more interesting—I got my passport in 1999, and in the ’00s went to Europe, China, and Central America. But this decade I seem to have ventured as far as Australia, and to twenty-one states (plus the District of Columbia) and ten countries, so there’s some meat on these bones. Let’s see where I’ve been:

Domestic

Akron, OH
Alexandria, VA
Arlington, VA
Athens, GA
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Baltimore, MD
Bellevue, WA
Blue Bell, PA
Bolton Landing, NY
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Cleveland, OH
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
East Hampton, NY
Edgartown, MA
Gloucester, MA
Grapevine, TX
Groton, CT
Hanover, NH
Hawley, PA
Hershey, PA
Jacksonville, FL
Lake Buena Vista, FL
Lakewood, NJ
Las Vegas, NV
Lenox, MA
Livingston, NJ
Longboat Key, FL
Madison, WI
Montauk, NY
Mooresville, NC
New City, NY
New York
Newton, MA
North Creek, NY
Orlando, FL
Palenville, NY
Palm Beach Gardens, FL
Plymouth Meeting, PA
Portland, ME
Portland, OR
San Diego, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Saratoga Springs, NY
Short Hills, NJ
Washington, DC
West Tisbury, MA
West Warwick, RI
Wheeling, IL
Williamstown, MA
Winter Haven, FL

International

Avignon, France
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Hong Kong
London, England
Paradise Island, the Bahamas
Paris, France
Positano, Italy
Punta del Este, Uruguay
Rendezvous Bay, Anguilla, British West Indies
Rome, Italy
St. Thomas, USVI
Sydney, Australia
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Now in its fifteenth year! Not a very exciting year, as it were, we had enough going on at home that there wasn’t much venturing going on. Next year is setting up to be more interesting.

As always, here are all the places I went in 2019 and spent the night. Repeat visits denoted with an asterisk.

New York *
Palm Beach Gardens, FL *
Plymouth Meeting, PA
Lenox, MA
Edgartown, MA *
Lake Buena Vista, FL *
New City, NY *

Now in its fourteenth year, because a 20-year-old blog deserves some traditions, however unexciting.

As ever, all the places I went in 2018 and spent the night. Repeat visits denoted with an asterisk. Interestingly, for the first time in many years, I don’t think we spent the night in either Livingston (with my parents) or New City (my wife’s).

New York *
Arlington, VA *
Palm Beach Gardens, FL *
Grapevine, TX
San Diego, CA *
Alexandria, VA
Williamstown, MA
Gloucester, MA *
Edgartown, MA *
Portland, OR *
Lake Buena Vista, FL *
Wheeling, IL
Orlando, FL *
Washington, DC *