2025: The Year in Travel

This year’s travel was fairly standard though I did have an extra segment on Southwest, an airline I hadn’t flown in years.

January

2025 opened up with my 4th-annual long weekend to Crested Butte to ski with my Denver-based family. I flew United Airlines into Gunnison, Colorado on a Thursday. On the Sunday night I once again stayed at the Quality Inn in Gunnison (which had been re-branded from an Econo Lodge) where I hibernated for one night, trying to fight off what I later learned was the flu, before boarding the plane home on Monday morning. My apologies to the folks on the plane.

Less than a week later it was off to my favorite ski resort, Big Sky, Montana, where I flew United into Bozeman. Still fighting sickness I only got to ski about the last 3 days. That wasn’t all bad as it was extremely cold the first few days we were there. Our ski club stayed slopeside at the Huntley Lodge. I flew United via Denver but got rerouted via Houston on the way home.

My 2025 domestic travel. The line between Memphis and Denver should be 3 colors!

February

In late February the ski club visited Copper Mountain, which is right off I-70 west of Denver.  While our club was spread out over several condo complexes, I stayed at Passage Point.  The United Memphis-Denver route doesn’t have any flights that arrive very early in the morning, so to be sure I’d be there on Sunday when the club arrived from Nashville, I flew in on Saturday. A Colorado Springs-based friend drove up and we had a nice drive through the Arsenal (which is now a wildlife preserve) and a nice catch-up lunch. I used my IHG free night certificate at the Atwell Suites, a relatively new property with a free airport shuttle.

April

Each year the Crescent Ski Council (of which the Nashville Ski Club is a member) has a spring convention. For a number of years it’s been in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. While the resort where the convention is located is large enough to stay on-property all the time, one of the club members who was going was originally from the area and would be driving so that she could visit family. So I drove to Nashville and rode with her. But she had to stay for a meeting on Sunday and I needed to get back, so I flew back on Southwest, my first trip on the carrier since 2019. It was a very uneventful trip, noteworthy only because I did not get my PreCheck. When I got home I realized my PreCheck had expired recently and fortunately I was able to renew it without having to go back for an interview.

October

This year’s international trip began as a Viking river cruise on the eastern portion of the Danube River. As the cruise was only about 10 days, my friend and I decided to expand the trip to two weeks by visiting Krakow, Poland first. We flew from Chicago to Krakow on LOT Polish Airlines via Warsaw. We spent four nights at the Hampton by Hilton Krakow, which wasn’t luxurious but worked just fine for us.

My 2025 international travel.

We then took a Flixbus to Budapest, where Viking booked us into the Corinthia Hotel Budapest for two nights before moving to the Viking Ullur. After leaving Budapest, we had ports of call in Kalocsa (Hungary), Osijek (Croatia), Belgrade and Golubac (Serbia), Vidin and Ruse (Bulgaria), before docking in Bucharest, Romania.

After a day tour in Bucharest, we spent the night at the JW Marriott Bucharest Grand Hotel. Our stay was very short as we had early flights and had to leave the hotel around 3:30 AM. I flew back to Chicago in business class on SWISS back to Chicago via Zurich while my friend flew economy on KLM via Amsterdam. I’m still working on the trip report but hope to have it posted early in the new year.

In the end

It was a very average travel year with ski trips and an international trip. 2026 is shaping up to be similar although it looks like there won’t be a long weekend ski trip. I also have yet to figure out the plans for out international trip. But I’m sure it will all work out!

What was your 2025 travel experience?