2024 End of Year Thank You!

End of Year
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Jenn: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the travel mug podcast. This is it. This is our last episode of 2024 and it's just going to be a really short few minutes. We just really want to say thank you for our best year yet. Um, amazing. And then sort of talk about what's in store for 2025, which is our fifth year of podcasting.

Meggan: Goodness gracious, we're all grown up here.

Jenn: can't believe it. First, though, if you want to give us a belated Christmas present, we would love to see some new reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That's a free gift that you could give to us. It just takes a few minutes. Or if you're feeling very generous, you can support us through Buy Me A Coffee. That would be amazing as well.

I would say over these past coming up on five years of the podcast, we have prided ourselves on providing a variety of episodes, including guests, travel tips, destination planning, the beginner's guides, which has really kind of become our cornerstone content and up to date travel info.

And it seems to be working. There's more of you here. And that Amazing.

Meggan: Agreed, agreed. It's bringing the people to our yard, you know?

Jenn: Mm hmm. Yeah. So 2025, you can expect more inside information from trips that we take ourselves. Interesting guests, including authors and experts in their communities. We have a few lined up for the first quarter of 2025 already, and I'm so excited to talk to them. but if you have a topic that you really want us to cover, please let us know.

Let us know, like, send us a message. I would really like to, personally, would really like to deep dive into some, like, travel hacking, credit card hacking type things. So I have been educating myself on that. But hopefully we will bring on a true expert guest to really get you on here. And yeah, I would say, like, we just have So much fun doing this podcast.

And I think that's why we're still doing this almost five years later. Is that Meggan and I, well, first of all, we just really like talking to each other and it's, um, awesome that you guys like to listen to us talk to each other.

Meggan: Yeah, I mean, it's not a bad gig that way.

Jenn: Exactly. It is a labor of love. It is a lot of work. We aren't getting paid much. We got paid a little bit this year, which was very exciting. So thank you. Thank you so much for, uh, helping us grow and allowing us the ability to, offset a little bit of our costs here. We have day jobs. We do this because we love it.

And we're really grateful for every time you listen, every time you You, uh, send us a message. We've heard from listeners who have, like, taken our advice on restaurants or tried a new place because we suggested it. And it just, like, really reinforces the goal of what we are doing here, which is to help you travel and try new things.

So, uh, yeah. Amazing.

Meggan: Yeah, no, that's exactly it. And I think that that is, The fulfilling part. I mean, you know, we're not we are doing this for fun, but we also, of course, want to try, you know, and provide a service as well, whether it's just informational, whether it's actual practical advice, whatever the case might be. So I, we really do appreciate each and every you know, OG listener, every new listener that we've picked up this year. Um, we are so grateful, , for, for you just being here essentially.

And in terms of 2025 travel, so talked about this a bit. So we don't have much on the books. We have lots of planning to do apparently. So we're gonna try to take some of our own advice, I think, and get to planning. We have Mexico in January. Other than that, nothing right now. But. You know, we have some things we're thinking about, but nothing for sure, and I know the same sort of goes for you.

Jenn: Yeah, yeah. We don't have anything booked, which feels, like, really strange and like a little sad to like not have anything on the books to start counting down for but we are kind of Planning to let the seat sales guide us in 2025

so I know it's something very different for us, but we like I said don't have anything booked. We are not going on our sort of usual Disney trip At this point, my husband does not believe that I will not, uh, well, that I'll make it a year without going to Disney World, so

Meggan: We did it during the pandemic. Anything's possible.

Jenn: I did it once, but I don't like doing it.

Um, you know, it might be the year that, uh, we get to Disneyland in California. I'm not sure. We're, we're thinking about it, but like Uh, the weak Canadian dollar makes travel to the U. S. so expensive right now and Disney's already expensive, obviously, so Not to say that Europe's any cheaper We're we're seeing what happens We have our 10 year wedding anniversary and my husband's 40th birthday coming up this summer.

So lots of things to celebrate with travel We'll see what happens do you have any sort of um Destinations that you're hoping you might get to or are you kind of also just seeing what happens?

Meggan: Yeah, like, I never thought of, like, the seat sale thing. I'll have to talk to Peter about that. He's got, like, Surprisingly, a little bit less travel mojo than I do right now. So it's almost trying to convince him to talk about it at this point, because I'd love to get something booked. But it has to be both of us.

And we, it's a very democratic system here in this household. So we'll get there eventually. We were thinking maybe the Pacific Northwest. I would love to see that in the U. S. But again, the dollar is trash. So we will see what happens there. And you're right, Europe is no cheaper. But Um, I was thinking maybe the fall we could go to Italy, but then next year is some big religious thing throughout the entire year in Italy.

I, I can't remember what it's called right now, so that might be, and I turned 50 in 2026, so maybe that could be more of like a 2026 trip. So, not really. It will be very interesting where we do end up, if I guess we end up anywhere. I mean, heaven forbid. What if, what if we go nowhere? I will, I will go into a spiral. I mean, not that Mexico is nowhere. I'm very, very much looking forward to that. But that is January. There's 11 months after that. And it's a big world. So I don't know what's going to happen. I guess it's going to be a mystery we'll all solve together.

Jenn: yeah, I mean we'll see what happens, um, but yeah, just thank you so much for Being here, uh, we really appreciate every single one of you who has listened to us and interacted with us on social media or sent us a message. And we hope that you have a very happy new year. And we are looking forward to providing you with more fun episodes in 2025.

Bye.

Meggan: Bye everyone.