Our year 2024 in review: coliving in the mountains really gets us going :)

Ehhh yes it’s already the end of 2024 and so it’s time for us to take a look back at this crazy year. We’ve been doing it since 2014, sitting down at the end of the year to take a step back, write down our thoughts and set ourselves new goals (wohoo 10th edition of the year in review!!!! By the way, you can find past reviews here). So we’re continuing this nice tradition and hope to carry it on for another decade 😉

After the difficult Covid years, during which we strongly felt the need to embark on a new project (you can revisit our 2020 and 2021 reviews if you like 😉 ), 2023 was clearly the most intense year of our lives! The purchase of our house, its collaborative renovation, the creation and launch of our coliving project… We finished 2023 proud of the work we’d accomplished, but a bit drained. Gone were our quiet lives as bloggers/travelers and our mental lows caused by the complex mess in which we live (divided society, ecological crisis, energy crisis, inflation, war…), we took action to invest ourselves fully in this new passion project!

So, in 2024, I think we’re starting to reap the rewards of our hard work, and the future in our beautiful mountains looks exciting! So, let’s tell you all about it. Let’s get on with our 2024 review!

Our year 2024 in images

January to mid-April: our 1st full house coliving winter in the Val d’Hérens

After 2 weeks of well-deserved rest, we welcomed our first colivers before the new year for a first winter season at coliving that was going to be pretty epic! It started well with 50cm of fresh snow on the new year’s eve, Austris (who is now our partner, but I’ll come back to that later), 2 great volunteers Carmen and Holly and a joyful team of colivers, some of whom were already coming back for the 2nd time ( right Robert and Chris 😉 ? ).

The winter program was pretty straightforward: lots of skiing (especially in the mornings), working in the afternoons and on bad-weather days, lots of socializing (meals together in the evenings, activities, board games, the Evolène carnival and so on). Winter went by really quickly, and I have to say that the atmosphere among us was amazing!

With our neighbor David and our friend Louis, we’ve also started to ski tour fairly seriously! Our valley is a ski touring paradise, and once you’ve had a taste of the freedom this sport offers, it’s hard to go back.

On the other hand, it’s not an easy activity to get into, and requires a lot of gear and experience. So I’ve put together a comprehensive guide with lots of advice on how to get started in this sport, if you’re interested (and we plan to talk more and more about ski touring on the blog in the future 😉 ).

mid-April to mid-May: another month of renovations (and ski touring)

At the end of winter, we closed the coliving for a month to embark on a new round of renovations with a team of well-motivated volunteers to help us. The idea was mainly to renovate our basement (to make a gym, a bouldering wall, extend our laundry room and make a ski room) and to redesign the layout of the spaces in the house (in particular, we transformed our coworking space into a dining room, and created smaller but more varied workspaces).

We also made a number of other small improvements to the house, creating various pieces of furniture (benches, shelves, ski racks)… and we’re very happy with the result. From now on, the whole ground floor of the house is social (kitchen, living room, dining room and social coworking space) and the upstairs workspaces are quieter… And our gym area is really nice 🙂

By the way, if you are interested, we wrote a whole article on the coliving blog about these renovations 😉

And we were also wondering what spring would be like in the mountains for outdoor activities, and we were rather pleasantly surprised! We quickly got back to outdoor climbing, hiking (not too high up) and even ski touring until May 9th ;). You can judge for yourself!

mid-May to September: hiking, climbing and community life in the mountains (+ some getaways)

We then reopened coliving to the public to welcome the summer team! I have to say that we have continued to be very lucky with the people we attract to coliving, both the colivers and the people who help us on a daily basis! Overall in the house we have people who are always motivated for everything, open-minded, who suggest things… The result is that we do so many activities together that it’s like living through several summers in one.

It’s hard to describe all the different things we’ve done this summer, so the easiest way is to share a few photos with you 😉

To keep a healthy balance with Fabienne, we’ve also started to take weekends off from coliving (thanks to the people who help us, this is now possible). So during the summer we went off for a few days to explore the French Jura or the Binntal, not far from where we live.

These outings always help us a lot. After all, it’s important to keep a little time for ourselves and recharge our social batteries 😉 . We always come back refreshed and ready to share new adventures with our friends, which is really great!

We even set off from home for a 4-day hike – bivouac with Winchy to do the most alpine part of the Matterhorn tour. It’s not an easy hike (especially with some exposed sections and glacier crossings), but the scenery is just incredible. And who hasn’t dreamed of bivouacking at the foot of the Matterhorn once in their life 😉

end of September: our 1st vacation since the opening of coliving

At the end of September, we handed over the keys of Alpiness to Austris and 2-3 volunteers to take our very first vacation since we embarked on the coliving project. We set off with Winchy and the van on a road trip to Liguria and Tuscany in northern Italy.

Who knows why we’d never traveled much in Italy before! So as we didn’t want to wander too far from the coliving for our 1st vacation either (in case the house started to burn down lol), this was the perfect opportunity to fill that gap.

We really liked Liguria for its villages and beautiful mountains close to the sea, and Tuscany for its vino and picturesque landscapes. We weren’t super spoiled by the weather, but it was a great vacation all the same, and we’ll be coming back to Italy for sure 🙂

October to end of December: autumn and early winter in our region

We came back from this little trip refreshed and ready to tackle our favorite season (for the landscapes) in the Val d’Hérens: autumn. We keep repeating it, but this time of year is incredible in our region, with the larch trees turning completely orange! Of course, we took advantage of this to go hiking, but also to continue all the great activities we do at the coliving (climbing, games nights, meals together, etc.).

Then, at the end of November, winter slowly set in, with the first snow covering the larch trees. Snow obviously meant a return to snowshoeing, ski touring, snowball fights and fondue evenings in the warmth of the coliving (although we never actually stopped making fondue lol). The circle is complete 😉

Our 2nd year of coliving in review

Just like last year, the results of this 2nd year of coliving (our 1st full season) are super positive. We must have welcomed around a hundred people (104 to be exact) this year at Alpiness, all of whom stayed between 2 weeks and 3-4 months… and apart from 1-2 exceptions, all our colivers were super happy with their stay with us (the messages we received in our guestbook or our reviews are really awesome and super motivating).

Obviously, when we embarked on this project, we weren’t sure we’d succeed in attracting remote workers to the bottom of our valley… and now we’ve just had a full season where we’re approaching 100% occupancy. It’s just INSANE!

But I’ll give you a quick rundown of the most important points:

Being surrounded by fantastic people every day

From the very beginning, Alpiness has been run thanks to the help of a few invaluable people who have supported us in this project:

Austris

He arrived at the very beginning of the adventure to help us renovate the house, but has never left and has now settled in our village 😉 . A passionate mountain climber, he’s also a developer, entrepreneur and, above all, one of the most positive individuals I’ve ever met.

His enthusiasm for life and his passion for mountain activities are contagious… in fact, he was behind the project to build a climbing wall in our basement, and he’s always keen to share his knowledge and/or go on adventures. His favorite expressions like “Tuurrbbooo”, “Meeggaaaa” are used by all our colivers and are an integral part of the “Alpiness vocabulary” 😉

Since the middle of the year, he has officially become our partner, having bought shares in Alpiness and thus officially joined the team. It’s great to be able to count on him around the house, to benefit from his positive energy and ideas… Over time, he has become a precious friend and one of the best things that has happened to us in the Alpiness adventure!

Louis, Lucie, Carmen, Marcis, Giulia, Holly, Alejandra… Our incredible volunteers!

With us, the most important people in the coliving are without a doubt the volunteers who help us on a daily basis in the house! We’ve been extremely lucky so far, because virtually all the people who have come to help us are much more than just volunteers. They share our values, participate enormously in the community, bring new skills to the house… and contribute significantly to the development of the Alpiness project because they identify with a way of life that makes sense to them.

Each in their own way, they contribute to the project, and we’re so grateful that they all come back to help us again and again (they’ve all been back several times already). We feel like we’ve got a great little team on our side, without whom we absolutely couldn’t run a project like Alpiness:

• Louis for his kindness, his DIY and baking skills, his availability and his involvement in the project at every level (gardening, outdoor activities, games…).
• Lucie for her positive energy, her communicative smile, her constant enthusiasm for board games and good food, her unwavering reliability…
• Carmen for her involvement in the project, her unfailing motivation, for always being up for a new adventure, for her desire to learn…
• Marcis for being the most organized guy on the planet, for his always relevant suggestions, for all the hikes he organizes, for his pragmatism 😉
• Giulia for her amazing energy, her involvement in the community, her kindness, the many discussions with everyone.
• Holly for her involvement in the community, for always being up for absolutely everything… even if it can play tricks on her 😉 for her sewing skills (she even saved my favorite ski jacket, which is over 20 years old)
• Alejandra for her reliability, her kindness, her availability to everyone, her positive attitude and her beautiful, colorful outfits!

Thank you to each and every one of you for your help and involvement! We’re so grateful to have met you, to count you as members of the Alpiness family and as friends. Without you, none of this would be possible and we look forward to building the future of the coliving with you (and hopefully integrating some of you even more into the team 😉 ).

Customers who become friends (and even settle in the valley)

If we’re very spoiled on the coliving team side, we’re also lucky on the customer side! This year, I have the impression that we’ve had very few casting errors and that we’re attracting people who really fit in with our lifestyle… People who work online, who want to be close to nature and meet new people, active people, who like community life, sharing, sports, game nights and couch discussions.

As a result, we naturally connect with many of the people who come and stay with us. We share meals, evenings out, mountain adventures, morning coffee… and develop sincere relationships that sometimes become real friendships. Of course, it’s not just with us, and we can see that people connect with each other very easily, which is really great because that’s what coliving is all about, in our opinion.

One thing we’re really excited about is that, besides having people who’ve already come back 3-4 times to the coliving, some people have even settled in the valley. There’s Austris of course, but also Marta, Tobias & Lore and we know a few others are thinking about it. It’s pretty incredible because it expands and keeps the community going for the longer term outside the coliving walls. It’s obviously something we’d been secretly hoping for in the back of our minds, but never thought we’d see so soon.

Remote work allows people to come and spend several weeks to several months in a small mountain village like ours. But what makes them stay, or even settle, is first and foremost the existence of a dynamic community where they can forge lasting connections with local people. And creating this community within and outside the coliving walls in the years to come is something that Fabienne and I are very much looking forward to.

The newly opened public coworking space

As part of this spirit of dynamism, community and not being confined to the walls of our coliving, we have just opened a public coworking space in the center of our village (it’s called “espace Trava”, which means “work” in the local dialect).

The idea had been in the back of our minds from the start, and we’d already discussed it with the president of our municipality even before we bought the coliving building. We like the idea of a third space in the heart of the village where anyone can come to work (whether locals, tourists visiting the area, people with secondary residences or colivers) or organize events. A place to work, of course, but also a neutral meeting ground where anyone can suggest activities, a place that encourages cooperation and solidarity.

So it’s all very new, and we’ll see where this project takes us… but we hope that people from different backgrounds will make this space their own and bring it to life.

For our part, we really like the concept and already come here to work several times a week. It’s just good for us to get away from the coliving setting for a while, to work quietly and meet other people. This space will undoubtedly also be used by our colivers, especially those who have settled in our valley for good 😉 .

Finding the right balance between coliving, private life and our other activities

Even if the overall outcome of the coliving project is very positive, if there’s one area where we still need to improve, it’s this one. It’s not easy to find the right balance between private and coliving life… we also find it hard to free up enough time to work on our other projects, like Novo-monde for example.

It’s obviously the lifestyle we’re looking for, living in a “community” (I swear it’s not a bad word lol), surrounded by people who have a similar lifestyle to ours, sharing quality time… and I sincerely think that’s what’s made Alpiness such a success so far.

But I also think that we all have a kind of social gauge that we have to respect… and that to be available for others, it’s first about giving ourselves (and our couple) enough time. We’ve noticed this year that when we no longer manage to have enough time for ourselves, we become more irritable, getting annoyed over nothing…

So it’s up to us to set up habits (and stick to them 😉 ) to recharge our social batteries and consciously choose the moments we share with others. But I think that with the incredible people we have on the coliving team, we should manage to improve on that front next year (and it’s already a lot better than last year 😉 ).

Our blogging year in review

As we told you last year, we don’t spend as much time on Novo-monde as we’d like. It’s improved a little this year, but I hope we’ll be able to work on the blog even more next year.

Admittedly, we don’t travel as much as we used to, but we still go on quite a few trips, whether in our valley or a little further away… and we just need to take the time to share them with you on the blog. We’ve also seriously taken up ski touring in winter and rock climbing in summer, and we’d love to talk about these topics in a bit more detail on the blog (especially as there’s not a lot of info on these subjects online).

We haven’t lost our passion for blogging and sharing our adventures with you on Novo-monde… But writing quality articles takes time, and we don’t like to do things half-baked. So we prioritize quality over quantity, and do the best we can with the time we have at our disposal. But once again this year, it’s a good thing we’ve got Hélène on the team, because she’s still the one who’s done the most work on the blog!

We’ve also cut back on the amount of time we spend on social media… and if you want to see what our day-to-day life in the mountains is like, it’s more on Alpiness coliving’s instagram profile that it happens (although we sometimes repost stories on novomonde).

Novo-monde in numbers in 2024

Most of the people who visit our blog actually come from Google, searching for information on a particular subject. And since we’re generally not too low in the search engine rankings, that’s a lot of people visiting our site (it’s called SEO).

But since October 2023, Google has made a number of updates to its algorithms, with varying degrees of impact on the number of visitors on the blog. Having read and exchanged thoughts on the subject with a number of other bloggers (and also worked hard to try and change things), it seems we’re still on the lucky side.

In 2024 there were over 1,300,000 (-20% approx.) visitors on the blog for over 2,400,000 page views (-13%).

So compared to last year, this still represents a significant drop, bringing us back to our pre-COVID numbers, more or less. But I’ve talked to quite a few bloggers and read about some horrific experiences where some creators have literally lost more than half (or even all) of their visibility.

Hélène and I have tried to analyze the situation and make changes (such as removing all broken links, improving internal linking, removing as many pages with low-quality content as possible)… Of course, we continue to create new articles and update old ones. But nothing helps! Our site traffic goes up and down (more down on average) with the rhythm of Google’s algorithmic updates. Honestly, we don’t really try to understand all of it anymore… (but we’re always curious if other bloggers have opinions on the subject or experiences to share).

A trend that may also be weighing in the balance is the increasingly common use of ChatGPT and co. to do research. We’ve seen it ourselves at the coliving, but more and more people are using these tools to plan their trips for them. They ask them to plan a 1-2 week trip to this or that destination, and these tools come up with itinerary proposals. Why bother reading travel blogs if ChatGPT can come up with a complete travel itinerary on demand in 2 minutes 😉

That doesn’t mean we’re demotivated! But this is the 1st time since we started blogging in 2012 that we’re thinking there could be major upheavals in the search engines… and that the possibility of losing a good part of our visitors overnight isn’t completely zero. So we’re keeping a close eye on things, even if we don’t feel we have any control over the situation.

Hélène helped us enormously again this year

Once again this year, it’s without doubt Hélène who’s done the most work on the blog. And if we’re doing not so bad statistically, it’s mainly thanks to her. She’s been working with us for 2 and a half years now, and we’re still extremely happy with her work. Behind the scenes, she’s been updating:

• all our articles from South America (and it was a hell of a job)
• all the parts of our guide to prepare a round-the-world trip (and the free ebook which is now over 150 pages long).
• and a whole lot of other stuff you might not see.

One of the highlights of the year was her 2-month visit to Alpiness with her partner Xavier. It was the 1st time we’d met in real life, which gave us the opportunity to get to know each other better, to show her our little mountain paradise and to discuss our blog projects together (and I think they enjoyed their 2 months, as they’ll be back next year 😉 ).

With coliving taking up a lot of our time and energy, we hope she’ll still enjoy it, because it’s true that we’re a little less (pro)active than when we started collaborating. But I think that in 2025 we’ll be able to dedicate more hours to the blog and that we’ll have the opportunity to set ourselves new goals/projects. So if you’re reading these lines, Hélène, thanks again for all your hard work, and we look forward to continuing the adventure with you in 2025!

Blog financial review in 2024

As a reminder, over 90% of our income (apart from coliving) comes from affiliate marketing (62%) and the sale of our books (33%) (and if you don’t know what affiliate marketing is, it’s all explained here). We still don’t display ads because we think they’re ugly and irrelevant to you… same goes for partnerships, which are usually constraining and don’t reflect our way of traveling.

So this year our income has logically dropped a little (by 18%); around 15% from affiliates and 20% from book sales. While this isn’t a tragedy, it is a little frustrating given the number of hours Fabienne, Hélène and I have worked on the blog. After all, we wrote 16 new articles in 2024 and updated so many others… So overall, the number and general quality of articles on the blog is increasing (take a look at our guide to Torres del Paine or the Choquequirao trek, for example, to get an idea of Hélène’s work).

If we’ve always preferred affiliate marketing (and the creation of products such as books), it’s because these are the only ways of monetizing our blog that are in line with our values and give us complete editorial freedom. We like working this way, taking the time to share our experience of a place with as much useful information as possible, without any constraints…

But of course, for the affiliate part, we’re pretty much dependent on Google, which could completely wipe us out from the search from one day to the next. And despite our passion, to continue devoting so much time to the blog, we still need to make a decent living out of it. So we’ll be keeping a close eye on all this in 2025, hoping that the wheel will turn.

Our books in review

So, as you can imagine, we didn’t publish any new books in 2024… so it’s quite normal for sales to drop a little from year to year, given that the novelty effect has faded (i.e., fewer media are talking about them than when they were first released). But in spite of this, in 2023 (we’ll have the figures for 2024 in March 2025) our books kept on doing their little bit, and sales were only down 20% compared with the previous year.

Here’s a brief overview of our book sales in 2023, in order of numbers:

• Beer hiking in France: 5650 copies sold
• Beer hiking in Britanny: 1750 copies sold
• Destination tour du monde: 730 copies sold
• Dents du Midi tour guide: over 170 copies sold
• The Via Alpina guide: 40 copies sold
• Chablais hiking guide: 14 copies sold

So to be honest, it’s great to see that these books, into which we’ve put a lot of hard work and love, continue to sell. Beer hiking in France will soon have sold 45,000 copies, Beer hiking in Brittany and Destination tour du monde are well on the way to selling 10,000 copies. That’s really great!

Even if we don’t plan to write a new book just yet, we’ll certainly come back to Beer hiking in France when we’ve got some time to make sure that all the breweries and itineraries are still valid. This book is still selling so well that it would be a shame to let it sit on the shelf 😉

Carbon footprint

2025 is just around the corner, and we’re still convinced that individual and collective actions are all important if we’re to take care of our beautiful planet (and we still recommend this reading, which shows that our individual actions are not completely insignificant… but obviously far from sufficient). That’s also why we keep talking about it and recommending carbon footprint assessment tools online (like this one), because even if they’re imperfect, they help you understand which are the most impactful actions you can take on an individual scale.

In a divided society where facts no longer count and everyone sticks to their positions, it’s very difficult to talk serenely about these subjects. It’s all the more difficult because, from a collective point of view, nothing seems to be moving, and we’re stuck in the dogma of endless growth… when a little sobriety seems to be essential.

As far as we’re concerned, we’re obviously continuing our individual efforts begun several years ago… but what motivates us and gives us energy on a daily basis is investing ourselves in Alpiness, which is a project that is meaningful to us. It’s super gratifying to see our little community grow, our residents thrive in our little village, to make new friends inside and outside the coliving, to share lots of good times, to try to create things for the village like the shared workspace… we find our satisfaction in action and we don’t have time to think about the constant bad news.

And even if it’s hard to quantify in a carbon footprint, we think it’s a project that’s heading in the right direction, and that’s what motivates us to keep going 🙂

Ben’s personal review

I’m writing these lines after rereading some of the messages our colivers have left us in our guest book… and I’m slowly realizing what an incredible year we’ve had! I’m so proud to have created a place that brings together people from so many different backgrounds, but which allows us to forge such strong bonds so quickly.

In my personal review for 2022, I dreamed of, and I quote: “this big house lost in a small mountain village and full of people from different backgrounds. A lively place, full of people who work online but also want to meet new people and live closer to nature. This place would not be a bubble disconnected from the village, on the contrary! Everything would be done so that there would be a maximum of interaction between the residents of this house and the locals. The work space would be open to the public…”

And now, in just 2 years, the dream has become reality! We’ve built our own little paradise in the mountains, a place to bond, share quality time, go on adventures (and work too 😉 ). We’ve just opened the public workspace in the former village school, several of our colivers have moved into our valley for good (and we know others are seriously considering this option) and we even made a garden for the coliving last summer.

So, of course, we still have some work ahead of us to get the new shared workspace up and running, to get a bit more involved in local life, to break the coliving “bubble” etc… but what a joy/pride it is to see our house living like this, to see people thriving in our little village, to see them coming back (for some already for the 4th time 😉 ).

We’ve met so many beautiful people this year, shared so many good moments! Coliving is like a relationship booster… it’s an intense environment where weeks go by at breakneck speed, and new friendships can be made in the span of a few days. We’ve met more people who really count in our lives since we opened Alpiness than in the 10 years before. I’m extremely grateful for all the people who have come through our door this year, and even more so for those who want to get more involved in the coliving, like Austris, Louis, Lucie, Carmen… It’s just incredible to have people like you by our side!

On the other hand, this intense life can sometimes be double-edged! We’re still having a bit of trouble balancing the coliving life, our couple life, family/friends, travel and work on the blog. Even if it’s already much better than last year, it’s up to us to put habits in place to improve on these points (but as long as we’re surrounded by such good people, it should be fine).

Otherwise this year I’ve also had more time to enjoy the crazy playground we literally have on our doorstep. I’ve started doing a lot of trail running and climbing in summer, and a lot of ski touring in winter! I really enjoy getting out in the mountains, pushing myself and sharing these moments with Austris, Louis, Fabienne, David (our neighbor), Winchy 😉 and the colivers. It feels really good to get out in the mountains, to be more and more in shape and I hope to continue this in 2025 (and also to take up mountaineering more seriously). By the way, I’ll try to share a bit more of all this on the blog in the coming months, and you can follow me on Strava if you’re interested.

Lastly, without a doubt, my greatest satisfaction of the year is to be so well surrounded in these different projects. Fabienne, of course, who complements me perfectly and who makes all this possible; but also Hélène on the blog, Austris, Louis, Lucie, Carmen… at the coliving! I think the greatest reward, beyond the financial aspect and the satisfaction of our colivers, is to have people like you by my side, who share my values and the long-term vision in these projects. Working alongside you is what motivates me the most every day!

Fabienne’s personal review

Hello, hello 🙂

Like every year, I’ve slipped into Ben’s review to write a few more personal lines about the past few months. And what a year 2024 has been! I have to admit, sometimes it’s hard to believe… Putting this project together has required an enormous amount of energy, and in 2023, I told you that I was exhausted. This year, however, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve really begun to reap the rewards of our work.

Of course, there have been more difficult moments and always a little (quite a lot) of physical fatigue linked to our fast-paced lifestyle… but we’re well on the way to finding a better balance. As Benoit said earlier, we still have some effort to make in this area and we still have to learn to “ take our foot off the gas ”. Easier said than done, but we’re going to try! The thing is, coliving demands a lot of energy, and when we have a moment “off”, we generally go and do something in our little corner of paradise: skiing, ski touring, climbing, hiking, and so on! Good for the spirit, but not exactly the definition of rest haha.

And everything has a price, and I think that this year, the price we had to pay was once again the lack of time dedicated not only to Novo-Monde, but also to our friends and families. We didn’t really see this coming, but it’s true that our daily lives are now hyper-stimulating from a social point of view, and when we leave the coliving it’s often because we need to be a little more “quiet” and “among ourselves”. Not necessarily compatible with invitations to celebrate birthdays, weddings or big family celebrations. On several occasions this year, I’ve surprised myself by being much more withdrawn than usual at gatherings with people outside the house. In short, in 2025, the goal is to ease off a little more, accept to have some real days off and continue our little getaways with Ben and Winchy!

But don’t misunderstand these few lines… I can officially say I’ve never felt so fulfilled and happy! We can be very proud of how far we’ve come, and to see that today our “crazy project” has turned into an incredible everyday life. When I feel down, I try to think back to our life when we were employed in Zurich, looking forward to the weekend to escape for a while. Today, we live full-time in paradise! All we have to do to escape and enjoy the beautiful countryside is step outside. Not to mention that our coliving is 100% booked for the coming months, and even our winter 2026 is already almost full… I think even in our wildest dreams, we didn’t see this one coming!

I’m also infinitely grateful for all those beautiful people who decided to walk through our door this year (and for those who ended up never leaving, like Austris). So many wonderful friendships have been made in the last 18 months! I realize more and more that human relationships are at the heart of my happiness, and with Alpiness I’m truly fulfilled.

As far as the blog is concerned, I regret that we haven’t published as much as we would have liked (and perhaps we didn’t travel enough), but I’m infinitely more motivated than I was last year and I think that 2025 will surely bring us some lovely surprises!

Once again, a big thanks to all of you for following us over the years and for all the lovely messages we receive so regularly. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and wish you all the best for 2025!

Final words

That’s all, folks, for this 2024 review, and congratulations if you’ve read all this far. The year 2025 is shaping up to be a busy one for us, with our Coliving already almost booked for the whole year… but mostly because we’re closing from April to the end of August for a major renovation of the house (we’re redoing the roof, the windows and all the external insulation) which is going to be a bit stressful.

But even though it’s going to be a busy year, we’re looking forward to a crazy winter with the coliving crew, a few nice getaways during the renovations, and a well-deserved vacation in the fall. Of course, we’ll tell you all about it on the blog 😉

All that’s left is to wish you all a great 2025, and thank you for keeping up with your favorite blogging dinosaurs after more than 12 years online. If we continue to do this, it’s mainly for and thanks to you!