AK Monthly Recap: January 2025

A brand new year and here we are. Let’s take a look at everything that happened in January 2025!

Destinations Visited

• Prague, Czech Republic

Highlights

A nice, quiet month at home with the cats. This is our third year in a row of not going anywhere in January (other than day trips) and it was SO good. The best way to start off a productive year.

A month of Dry January. I do a sober month every year and highly recommend it! It’s a good reminder to take a look at how much alcohol can permeate our lives — and remember how to socialize without defaulting to drinking.

Getting back into strength training. One of my goals has been to get back into strength training and actually be consistent with it. I was in the gym six days a week when I lived in New York, but I haven’t been able to keep that level of consistency in Prague.

Honestly, there have been lots of fits and starts in resuming lifting weights over the past few years. This time, I think it’s working because I started slowly and am adding to it bit by bit.

I have a Peloton subscription (just $12.99 per month) and a few sets of weights. First, 10-minute strength workouts three times a week. Now, 15-minute strength workouts four times a week. I know I’ll keep growing from there.

Beyond that? Not a lot happened this January!

Challenges

A scary near-accident on the tram. I was sitting in a seat on the tram and suddenly the driver hit the breaks HARD to avoid hitting a car that pulled out. It was so abrupt, I flew onto my feet and smacked hard into the plastic divider on the side of the doors.

I was fine, but in pain the rest of the day — and thought to myself, “If this happened in America, someone would be suing the city.” That said, we actually get healthcare covered here, and I’m grateful that the driver was able to stop so quickly and avoid an actual accident.

Lots and lots of vet visits. After Murray’s many medical issues of December, this month was all about Lewis. He hurt himself in the eye somehow, and while the first round of meds helped initially, his eye got much worse after we finished them.

Lewis is now on different meds, prescribed by a different vet, and I really hope that they work this time. I want my sweet little bear to be back to his usual self.

And giving a cat two sets of eye drops — 10 minutes apart, five times a day — is a pain, especially when he was at his sickest and wanted to hide under the bed. At one point I had to lay on a blanket and drag myself under the bed, grab Lewis, and have Charlie pull me out by my feet. Fun times.

Blog Posts of the Month

• 15 Fun Things to Do in Portofino, Italy
• 11 Best Things to Do in Rapallo, Italy
• 11 Fun Things to Do in Camogli, Italy

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A post shared by Kate McCulley | Travel Blogger (@adventurouskate)

Most Popular Reel on Instagram

My top reel of the month is which city NOT to visit in 2025. I don’t do much of this anti-influencing, but here it’s warranted.

The city is Rome. 2025 is a Jubilee year for the Catholic faith, which will keep the city extra crowded and extra expensive all year long. If you’re looking to go, I’d suggest waiting until 2026.

You can watch the reel here and follow me on Instagram at @adventurouskate.

What I Listened To This Month

I’m listening to all 500 of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, which I am enjoying immensely. I am loving discovering new artists and listening to albums I’ve somehow missed my entire life until now!

This month, I listened to albums 479-436. Here are the highlights:

Favorite discovery: Eli and the Thirteenth Confession by Laura Nyro. WHAT A STAR. I had never heard of Laura Nyro — she was a WILD singer and songwriter, insanely talented, with a gorgeous soprano voice, and songs that switch tempos and melodies wildly, that would be at home on Broadway.

In fact, Laura Nyro inspired a LOT of major songwriters, including Elton John and Stephen Sondheim, and she wrote songs for artists like Barbra Streisand, Three Dog Night, and Fifth Dimension.

She died young of ovarian cancer, as did her mother. It hurts knowing that if she were born a few decades later, she could have taken action to prevent that. I’m grateful that more options, including genetic testing, exist today. And now I want EVERYONE to know her.

Other favorite discoveries: #1 Record by Big Star, 3+3 by The Isley Brothers, Close to the Edge by Yes.

Favorite revisited album: BLACKsummers’night by Maxwell. This is one of my all-time favorite albums — it helped me get through 2010. I hated my job then and took a long walk during my lunch every day while listening to it.

My favorite thing about this jazz-influenced R&B album is how intimate it sounds — you can tell it’s a small band, everyone playing off each other perfectly, and you can hear all the individuality of the musicians. Highly recommend giving it a listen.

Favorite songs: “Donde Quiera Que Estés” by Selena and Barrio Boyzz, “Ghetto Children” by Juvenile, “Lu” by Laura Nyro, “You Ought to Be with Me” by Al Green, “Why Should I Be Sad” by Britney Spears, “Trouble in the Message Centre” by Blur.

Get the playlist: I’m creating a playlist of my favorite songs from the 500 albums — maximum one per album — on Spotify. You can listen to it here.

Lowlight of the month: Ege Bamyasi by CAN. This German band apparently pioneered Krautrock — that’s a thing! Most of the album was quite listenable, but in the middle they made this AWFUL cacophony full of noises like nails on a chalkboard, but turned up to 11 — why put that on an album?!

Random thought: The perfect length of an album is 35-45 minutes or so. Once you go beyond an hour, it starts dragging. A LOT of artists needed to be edited down — particularly hip-hop artists from the 90s (and I say this as a HUGE 90s hip-hop fan). Some albums start out SO great and end up turning into a drag because they have to include everything.

What I Watched This Month

It’s officially Oscar season! The completionist in me tries to see all the Best Picture nominees and everything nominated for the major awards.

The highlight of the month was definitely Conclave — a perfectly plotted, twisty, tense political thriller about the cardinals choosing the next pope. And perhaps the most perfectly cast movie I’ve seen in quite some time. I hope Ralph Fiennes wins the Oscar.

I also enjoyed A Complete Unknown, which made me want to dive into Bob Dylan’s and Joan Baez’s music (there’s a LOT of that coming on the Rolling Stone list!). Anora was a fun nail-biter of a movie, with an incredible performance by Mikey Madison — though I wish the film were a bit less male gaze-y.

This month we also watched the second season of The Diplomat. A GREAT drama on Netflix, starring Keri Russell as the US ambassador to the UK, appointed after an act of terrorism, who uncovers a lot of Really Bad Stuff and has a husband who is a brilliant former ambassador himself, but the kind of guy who makes me yell, “HER HUSBAND IS A DING-DONG!” at the screen once per episode.

They really need to do more episodes, though! The first season has eight episodes and the second season has six. It has been renewed for season.

Coming Up in February 2025

Back to Mexico, baby! I love Mexico SO much and it’s now been three years since I’ve been there — it’s time for a return.

Charlie and I, along with our friend Nick, will be visiting four places: Mérida, Bacalar, Mexico City, and Oaxaca. Four of my five favorite places in Mexico! (Sorry, Guanajuato, we’ll miss you.)

Our agenda? Enjoying all our favorite Mexican things, from a day at Los Rapidos in Bacalar to a night out at Lucha Libre in Mexico City. And working on my Mexico content, of course.

(I took a break from writing about Mexico after COVID hit and a million travel bloggers moved to Mexico and started niche Mexico blogs, making it hard for my content to rank — but now that pretty much all of those blogs have been hit hard by Google updates, I feel like I’m ready to jump back in, especially when adding quality videos on Instagram and TikTok.)

And as usual, our dear friend and cat-sitter, John, will be moving in to take care of Lewis and Murray in our absence. They might love him more than they love us.

Any plans for February? Share away!

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