2011-in-Review: the MAP edition!

I am an avid consumer of social media, and am often excited to try new apps, but only after people I like start doing it first (I like to think of myself as a follow-my-friends early adopter. which probably makes me not an early adopter at all). One of my favorites if Foursquare, which, as you probably already know, allows you to “check in” to the places you go. Some think this is creepy (and I agree, in some contexts it totally could be), but you’re able to check in without sharing your location with anyone if you so prefer, and I think you can even make that your default setting.

What I really love about Foursquare is the ability to make MAPS. As you know, I’m a bit of a map nerd (read: huge map nerd). And Foursquare lets you export a KML feed on Google maps to make awesome maps of the places you’ve been. I already did this once on the blog for my trip cross-country with Miriam, but thought that in lieu of the this-is-what-I-did-this-year-post, I’d be a bit more creative and share in map form. I might still do one of those posts, since they’re funsies, but let’s wait and see.

So to start off with, here’s EVERYWHERE I went (or at least checked into) this year. You’ll notice there’s no international travel (2010 didn’t have any either, but 2009 had Costa Rica). Luckily, 2012 will be a great international travel year, with the very exciting ITALY trip in May to look forward to.

Nonetheless I did get to visit some new places, like:

Denver! (there’s not so much to see from this trip, since we spent a considerable amount of time on the couch. win. Slash, blame it on the margs):

And LA:

As usual I made quite a few trips up to NY, although perhaps not as much as in the past. Nonetheless, trips in April, July, and October (and stop-throughs in January and March) yielded a bunch of new favorite spots, chief among them the Waffle Truck, Fort Tryon Park/the Cloisters, and fantastic brunch spot Centro Vinoteca.

I also started a new job in the middle of 2011, leaving the wonderful non-profit I worked at for 2 ½ years for the equally wonderful, but very different energy efficiency software company where I now work. It’s located out in Courthouse, which means I have visited some (but not enough) new places in the Courthouse/Rosslyn/Clarendon area:

It was also a fantastic year for theater, but I cannot for the life of me isolate just Philly, New York, and DC in a way that has enough resolution to see theater locations, so that will have to be saved for another day.

Finally, and most wonderfully, I now live in an exciting part of a dynamic city -- so there's not often need to leave what some friends affectionately call "the radius." This year yielded more new favorites -- Stoney's grilled cheese and the guac at El Centro D.F., and lots of visits to old favorites Pica Taco, ACKC (which is closing the neighborhood location :( !), and Teaism.

All in all, a fantastic year for being places -- I added 5 new states (Indiana, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona), went to lots of new cities, and got to explore more of my wonderful adopted city, D.C.!