2025: My Travel Year in Review
Now that the New Year has begun, it’s time to review my travel year of 2025, reflect on its highlights, and share some fun statistics.
Travels in 2025
It’s somewhat of a New Year’s tradition for me to reflect on my travel year, so with 2025 behind us and 2026 just beginning, let’s have a look at the highlights of the past year.
Overall, I had a perfectly enjoyable travel year and embarked on a number of interesting trips, though compared to previous years it mostly involved revisiting places I had been to before rather than exploring new ones.
Feel free to start with my travel year reviews of 2021, 2022, 2023, or 2024, or continue below to read my 2025 review, which also covers the flights and trains I took, the main destinations I visited, and some interesting statistics.
Flight logbook of 2025
Let’s kick off my 2025 travel review by looking at the flights I took during the year, all of which are mapped out below.
I use myFlightradar24 to track every flight I take, as the easy-to-use website allows me to maintain a personal flight logbook and view some interesting statistics.
The orange lines on the map represent routes I flew once last year (one-way flights), the red lines show routes I flew twice (either as two one-way flights in the same direction or as a return flight), while the purple lines indicate routes I flew more than twice last year.
As you can see, I didn’t fly out of Europe even once during my 2025 travels.
Flight statistics
In 2025, I took 50 flights in total, for both leisure and work.
This represents an 11.11% increase compared to the 45 flights I took in 2024, and it is the highest number of annual flights since 2019, when I took 72 flights.
These 50 flights – 3 domestic and 47 international – collectively covered a distance of 52,128 kilometres (32,319 miles) and amounted to 99 hours and 44 minutes of flying time over the year.
In terms of miles flown, this represents a 40% decrease in distance compared to the flights I took in 2024, which is hardly surprising, as that year I did venture outside Europe.
Of my 50 flights in 2025, 25 were in economy class, 15 in business class, and 10 in premium economy – or to be precise, all of these 10 flights were in SAS Plus, the airline’s economy plus product, which was replaced with a proper intra-European business class in October.
I had a window seat on 48 out of 50 flights and an aisle seat on 2, again sparing me from the horrors of a middle seat.
My top airlines in 2025 included one newcomer compared to previous years, as SAS rose from nowhere to second place with 12 flights in total.
My number one airline in 2025 was Air France with 13 flights, while the third spot was claimed by Turkish Airlines with 6 flights.
Neither is much of a surprise, given that these are the two airlines whose frequent flyer programmes I primarily use, holding platinum status with Air France/KLM Flying Blue and Star Alliance Gold status through Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles.
Just like 2024, my top aircraft in 2024 was the Airbus A320 with 18 flights in total, followed by 7 flights each on the Airbus A321 and Airbus A220.
Just like in the previous three years, I unfortunately didn’t fly on any new aircraft types in 2025.
Airports and airlines
All my flights in 2025 were with airlines I had flown many times before.
That said, I did try out some new airline products that I hadn’t experienced before – more on that later!
In total, I visited 22 different airports in 2025, four fewer than in 2024.
Of these 22 airports, three were first-time visits: Malaga (AGP), Berlin (BER), and Luxembourg (LUX).
Although I had flown out of Berlin’s old (and now disused) Tegel Airport many times before, this was my first time travelling through Berlin Brandenburg Airport, which was certainly interesting given the controversy surrounding its delayed opening.
In 2025, I successfully retained my Air France/KLM Flying Blue platinum status for another year (until 31st August 2026), although earning enough miles to maintain my Turkish Airlines Gold status (which expires on 31st March 2026) is still a work in progress and not yet certain.
Aviation highlights
Although the aviation highlights of 2025 pale in comparison to those of previous years, I still had some enjoyable moments flying around Europe.
One of the most interesting flights was in business class on an Airbus A321neo with ITA Airways from Madrid to Rome, as it featured comfortable reverse herringbone seats in a 1-1 configuration – hardly your typical intra-European business class experience!
Similarly, I enjoyed my Turkish Airlines flights in 2025.
Turkish Airlines operates many intra-European flights with widebody aircraft, and on a trip to London I was able to try its business class product on both the Boeing 777 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner – aircraft I hadn’t yet flown with Turkish in business class.
Half a day of lounge hopping across all the Star Alliance business lounges at Terminal 2 of London Heathrow Airport – the Air Canada, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, and United lounges – was also great fun.
Needless to say, I will be writing up those flight and lounge experiences in full reviews in the near future!
Train travel in 2025
As much as I love the world of aviation, I love train travel even more.
Needless to say, I travelled quite a bit around Europe by train, including a couple of cross-continental journeys, such as from Romania to the Netherlands.
In total, I travelled 12,349 kilometres by train in 2025, a roughly 33 percent decrease compared to the distance I travelled by train the previous year.
On these train trips, I took nine sleeper train journeys, which was four fewer than the 13 sleeper train rides I took in 2024.
Train travel highlights
Although my train travels in 2025 included several familiar journeys, such as the Brașov-Budapest and Bucharest-Sighetu Marmației night trains, as well as trips along major rail axes like Budapest-Vienna and Poznań-Berlin, I also took a few journeys for the first time.
The absolute highlight was a winter trip to Rovaniemi in Lapland, which included two journeys on Finland’s excellent night train.
This Finnish night train is such a high-quality and unmissable travel experience that it went straight to second place on my list of best sleeper train journeys.
Other train travel highlights in 2025 included finally trying Nightjet’s New Generation night train on a journey between Vienna and Amsterdam, which also left me impressed.
Another train travel highlight in 2025 was taking the steam train from Wolsztyn to Zbąszynek in Poland, which is the only scheduled passenger service in Europe still operated by a steam locomotive.
Just as in 2024, I also enjoyed my train travels through Ukraine last year, although this time they were limited to shorter journeys in the border region of Transcarpathia.
Ferries
In my 2024 travel year review, I wrote about how much I enjoy travelling by ferry and expressed my wish to take more ferry crossings in 2025.
Although I didn’t particularly manage that, I did at least sneak in one ferry trip at the very last moment in December 2025, which turned out to be a fun experience.
I sailed with Brittany Ferries from Rosslare in Ireland to Bilbao in Spain, a two-night crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Biscay, which was surprisingly calm for this time of year.
Destinations
I didn’t visit any new countries on my travels in 2025, though I did explore a few new destinations in Europe.
The most eye-catching of these was arguably my winter trip to Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, a journey that certainly lived up to expectations.
Another completely new city I visited was Málaga, which I found to be a surprisingly pleasant and fun destination despite its reputation as a rather touristy place, although visiting in winter certainly helped escaping the crowds.
Apart from Rovaniemi and Málaga, I mostly visited lesser-known places in Europe, as I have already been to most major tourist destinations and have recently been preferring small, off-the-beaten-path towns to big cities anyway.
I also revisited a few of my old favourite destinations, spending a summer week in the countryside along the German-Luxembourg border, meeting up with friends in wonderful Wrocław, visiting Brașov over Christmas, and taking an autumn road trip through the Zagorohoria, an absolutely stunning mountainous region in north-western Greece.
Travel highlights
Looking back at 2025, I think my travel highlights were all about visiting smaller towns away from the tourist crowds, simply walking around, absorbing the atmosphere, and enjoying some fine food and drinks.
This included visits to places such as Znojmo in the Czech Republic, Khust and Berehove in Ukraine, and Wexford in Ireland.
Visiting a couple of great pubs in Dublin and Wexford, enjoying a Guinness, and taking in a few traditional music sessions was another highlight.
Another memorable moment was enjoying a glass of txakoli and some pintxos while taking in the superb views from the cliffs above Bermeo in the Basque Country.
As much as I tend to avoid European capitals on my travels nowadays, it was fun to return to Athens, Dublin, Prague, and Madrid in 2025, as these big cities still hold a special place in my heart.
Trad session at a pub in Wexford, Ireland. ©Paliparan
What will 2026 bring?
I don’t usually make travel plans far in advance, and looking back at my 2024 travel year review, in which I noted some wishes for 2025, it’s clear that most of them didn’t come to fruition, so it seems wise not to make too many predictions for the coming year.
The fact is that life often takes unexpected turns, with work sometimes getting in the way of potential travel plans.
Similarly, I usually partly decide my travels based on whatever airline deals might pop up, as I am generally flexible about when I can travel and quite open-minded about which destinations I visit.
Although I still have a few places in mind that I would really love to see in the near future, I won’t make any firm commitments and will just see what the year brings.
That said, I have already booked my first trips for 2026: a short city break in mid-January and a longer trip to Asia at the end of the month.
I’m especially excited about the latter, as it will involve visiting a brand-new country I haven’t been to before, which promises to be quite an adventure since it’s not a typical tourist destination!
2026 travel updates
If you want to stay up to date about my travels in 2026 make sure to regularly check the Paliparan website.
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