In many ways, any looking back on 2024 is going to be, at best, a melancholy one for me. Not that there weren’t many amazing and awe inspiring things I encountered as part of my travels… but in many cases this past year, my travels were a lot about coping with and taking some next steps on a journey of grief after losing both of my parents in the spring. With that said, here are my favourite memories and moments from my travels over the past year.

(1) Cocktail night in Vancouver – Simpler times. We were in Vancouver for an international wine festival with friends. It was a cold, rainy evening. My wife and I ventured out to two cocktail bars – the Chickadee Room and Keefer Bar – and enjoyed an amazing selection of drinks (and the free happy hour gluten free fried chicken at Chickadee Bar!). The night was silly, simple and cozy, and we still talk about revisiting these places on our next trip to Vancouver.

(2) Meeting Mariner Moose – I took a few days to visit Seattle after a conference in Vancouver so I could cross seeing a game there off of my ever dwindling list of places I have yet to watch a major league game. I’m always excited to meet a mascot, especially one with such a wonderful back story and history and Mariner Moose. You can see the pure joy on my face (and maybe the perplexed posture from him as he is usually saying hi to humans about 40 years younger than me) – this was a favourite memory from this visit to Seattle!

(3) First brewery for our new dog – We were in Bathurst, NB, cleaning out my mom and dad’s house for sale and getting the affairs of my late mom and my hospitalized dad in order. At this point my wife and I had come to accept Tia, my mom and dad’s dog, was going to be our dog. We needed a break from the physical and emotional labour and took Tia to Four Rivers Brewing for a drink not knowing how my dad’s death in two days would upend both of us. Tia’s rambunctious personality and the story of what I was dealing with brought a lot of strangers together to share stories and love in a way that all feels surreal now looking back on this. It was a true hour or so of joy in what was a very bleak time.

(4) Feeling love in a new way – In that same timespan, a couple of weeks earlier, late one evening I laid down on the floor of my mom and dad’s house in Bathurst on a temporary bed made of pillows. My mom was in hospital with late stage cancer that was only diagnosed a few days earlier. My dad was struggling through his dementia to understand what was happening with mom and all the changes in their house. At the end of this particular day, I was exhausted… visiting mom a couple of times, dealing with doctors and social workers, stupidly trying to squeeze some work in and taking care of dad with my sister and wife, I felt ready to give up. And then my wife, just standing above me, reached down and held my hand, and I felt a love for her I did not know existed until that moment. Though all of this, she was there with me and I knew she would be for what at the time felt like would go on forever. It is the single most powerful emotion I felt this year.

(5) Flying away to Montreal – I just needed a break. Getting on the flight to Montreal I was giddy at the thought of some “me” time in a favourite city. For the entire flight I knew in my bones I needed some time off after all that happened and I was simultaneously happy to be getting that and also a touch regretful I hadn’t tapped out earlier for the rest I needed. On final approach into the airport, I looked out the window and enjoyed seeing Olympic Stadium, the location of and reason for so many of my memories in the city. Montreal didn’t fix everything, but it recharged my battery just enough and gave me a sense of joy that I had lost since my mom and my dad had passed away.

(6) A day in Kentucky – I planned a bourbon tasting day in northern Kentucky, just across the river from where I was staying in Cincinnati, and what a day it was. It started with a fortifying southern-inspired lunch of fried green tomatoes and a fried oyster po-boy at Libby’s Southern Comfort (with an amazing Pinhook bourbon!). A short walk away at Revival, I sampled liberally from their vintage bourbon tasting bar and had a wonderful hour-long conversation on the history of bourbon with one of the owners. I took a brief pause from bourbon to do a beer tasting at Braxton Brewing and focused on their amber and dark beers which were all lovely and warranted a return trip on my way to the airport on my last day. And I capped the day off with a tour (and a lot of bourbon tastings) at New Riff… the bottle I brought home from there is a dwindling delicious reminder of this amazing day.

(7) Cincinnati baseball games – My baseball trip hit different this year. I needed the break desperately when I left in August. Baseball always makes me think of my dad so it all just felt a bit… I don’t know the right word here, “special” maybe, to be in a ballpark watching so much baseball over a few days. There were lovely encounters with Expos fans and all of the games were outstanding and entertaining. Joy returning and starting to take hold in me… that’s how I’ll remember Cincinnati last year.

(8) First class to Europe – My wife and I were supposed to be in France in May when everything was happening with my parents. When we cancelled that trip and then eventually chose Italy in October, I decided that an indulgence was in order and we traveled first class (oh, those lay flat beds!) to Milan. Giddy like a child doesn’t even describe it. Here we are with the first of a large number of glasses of Champagne enjoyed at 35,000 feet, this one, somewhere over northern New Brunswick. The food was amazing and this flight felt like a vacation itself.

(9) Revisiting a favourite restaurant – When we were last in Milan thirteen years ago we had a memorable meal at Be Bop. Astoundingly, it was still there, and better yet it was located right around the corner from where I booked our apartment, so we revisited this restaurant on the first and last nights of our trip. The magic of the place was still present for us – amazing gluten free food for Jodi, great wine and their tradition of closing the meal with shots of their homemade limoncello was still a thing all these years later. When my wife asked on the first night if she could buy a bottle of their limoncello, they found a way to package up some in what looked like a maple syrup bottle and also gifted us another bottle. We enjoyed that limoncello every night of our travels until we finally polished it off around Lake Como a week and a half later.

(10) Yatzhee with a view – In Milan, before heading to the ballet, we snagged a prime patio seat with a view of the Duomo. Out came the Yahtzee dice my wife carries on every trip and I was slaughtered in a couple of games. The cocktails, the people watching, and the backdrop were amazing. It was a wonderful way to spend an hour or so with my wife, even if the Yahtzee gods weren’t smiling on me this time.

(11) A night at the ballet – My dad was an enormous opera fan and getting to see a production at Teatro alla Scala was an enormous highlight of our Italy trip this fall… he would have loved to hear all about this night. We got dressed up for our box seat (fancy!) and marvelled at the architecture and beauty of the hall. The ballet, La Dame aux Camelias, with music by Chopin, was tragic and beautiful. The performances of the dancers and the featured pianist were magnificent. The ending brought me to tears. This entire evening in Milan was incredibly special.

(12) Best meal of the year – We were on a wine tour of Barolo and Barbaresco wines and had already had an amazing tasting at Stroppiana winery in La Morra when we were dropped off for lunch at La Gemella. Everything here was perfect including what ended up being the single best thing I ate all year – their agnolotti in broth, which was perfectly paired with one of two Barolo wines we had over lunch. This was a heavenly interlude on an incredible day of wine tasting.

(13) Sunrise over Turin – I woke early one morning, bundled up, and watched a spectacular sunrise over Turin from the balcony of the apartment we had rented. As the sun came over the hills, and with the sound of church bells ringing at 8:00am, I could feel its warmth touch my face. I closed my eyes as my skin warmed and let the sounds, smells and light of the day greet me… this morning it felt like peace was returning to me and I cherished it.

(14) Sunsets in Dorio – Three nights with a patio with this view overlooking Lake Como meant my wife and I would gather some snacks and a bottle of amazing wine (oh, the wine!) and just watch the sun sink behind the mountains every night. Each evening the view was stunning, the wine danced on my tongue, and the company of my wife had me present and in the moment in a way that had escaped me for a lot of 2024.

(15) A beer tasting day – On a work trip to Atlanta in November, I really only had part of one day free, and my lovely wife agreed to do a craft brewery crawl with me (even though she is a not a beer drinker). I picked places that would have gluten free snacks and delicious non-beer drinks for her, and we had a blast exploring some neighbourhoods in Atlanta we would have otherwise missed. We talked and joked, we sat on patios enjoying the warmth and she beat me handily at Yahtzee… it was a perfect way to spend an afternoon.

(16) Cocktails in Atlanta – In what has become a nice new tradition in our post-pandemic traveling, we found JoJo’s Beloved, a great cocktail bar and thoroughly enjoyed a couple of expertly made drinks before we headed out to dinner. It took some sleuthing to find the bar and its somewhat secret entrance, but when we did we laughed the time away and soaked in its great 1970s vibe.

(17) Conversations along the way – In the second half of 2024, maybe as a way of borrowing from my late dad’s way of approaching life, I had wonderful conversations just about every day I was away from home. They were random. There was a hefty dose of serendipity in a couple of cases. I chose human contact over staying in my shell. And they all brought me joy as connecting with the world and people should do. One conversation was with a winemaker in Trieso, Italy, and while we didn’t share a language, we still shared stories. I chatted with a man in Cincinnati at a Reds game for half an hour – he was wearing an Expos hat and had spent 30 years living in Montreal and had family in Halifax. I talked bourbon for an hour in Kentucky and art history across the river in Cincinnati with two gems of human beings. A couple of days before my dad passed away I had a wonderful conversation with a musician at a craft brewery in Bathurst, NB, and we traded some stories of our favourite bands over the years. At another craft brewery, this one in Montreal, a conversation that had all kinds of unexpected connections started a wonderful friendship. As I look back, I can see my dad coming out in me more and more, and I love that.