2014 is almost over and many travel magazines pay tribute in special feature articles to the places that meant the most to their readers and editors this year.

These lists include high profile destinations that drew thousands of tourists in 2014 as well as less popular places that had a profound effect on the person who visited them.

Condé Nast Traveler editors have gone a step further and described the experiences that made those places so special to them. Hanya Yanagihara, who chose Paros and Antiparos in Greece as her favorite trip for 2014, sung the praise of the two beautiful Greek islands. More specifically, she wrote the following description of her experience there:

“I finally went to Greece—Paros and Antiparos—for the first time this year, for my 40th birthday. And although the water was terrifically, impossibly, almost comically blue, what I loved most was the pace, the torpor that sets in when you’re on an island. Our days consisted of swimming, moseying over to the ferry, moseying off the ferry, and swimming. It was the most intense sensory experience I’ve had in a long time: the feel of the water on my skin, the feel of the wind on my face. Before I went, people kept asking me “What’s taken you so long to get there?” Once I was there, I wondered the same thing.”