Pop the Champagne and string the streamers because Trip Styler just turned three years old! In a birthday celebration of MAH-JOR proportions, I leave for Dubai tomorrow on one of the world's most glam airlines, Emirates. Honestly, I cannot think of a more appropriate {read: lavish and lucky} way to celebrate a milestone.
I started dishing out daily trip style tips for aspiring jetsetters in 2009, and never thought I'd be writing a "world of thank yous" at the end of 2012. In a time when many travel publications fail and everyone wants to be a travel writer, I'm grateful you've given me the opportunity to find my captain's voice and be your official travel tester the world over.
If you asked me in university what I was going to become when I grew up---which I guess is now?---I would have said advertising executive, not travel writer, but this is where I've landed, and planting my feet in a new destination every few weeks keeps life hovering between pipe dream and poetic.
- Merci to our readers for opening your inbox and your minds to our daily trip style tips. Your readership and feedback makes me feel like it's the '70s and I'm sipping scotch {while wearing a polyester suit, of course} in Pan Am's first class. On the off day I want to cancel all Trip Styler flights, you remind me to keep flying.
- Gracias to the Trip Styler flight crew {Leah for Healthy On The Road, Keryn for KinderHop, Lauren for Travel Beauty, Nicole for Jetset Jingles and Heather for Fashion Friday}; your expertise, voice and perspectives are the wind beneath my wings.
- Mahalo to my BFF and husband, for being the ultimate co-pilot encouraging me onwards and upwards, even when *i think* turbulence threatens my flight path.
- Khob khun mak krab to the tourism organizations and travel companies that partnered with me in 2012: Phoenix, Scottsdale, Vegas, Banff, Victoria, Vancouver, Okanagan, Whistler, Montreal, Canada, Oregon, Maui, Mexico, Rocky Mountaineer, Transat, Fodor's, Jetsetter, ShermansTravel and OnBoard.
- And last but not least, grazie mille to Expedia: never in a million years did I think part of my life's story would be a travel tale worth telling.
Please continue to like, share, tweet and insta-love Trip Styler, we've come a long way baby, but there's still a world of trip stylin' out there.
xoxox, Trish
[photo by and of @tripstyler]