It's always interesting to see the difference in games that get nominated and win the Spiel des Jahres and those that get a lot of buzz in the sort of hobbyist communities that I get most of my news from. I had heard a lot about Machi Koro, which lost, but I know virtually nothing about Colt Express. And I don't know Broom Service, either, even though the Kennerspiel des Jahres caters much more towards the hobbyist community. I'll have to check these out at some point.

I'm cheating a little because it's not actually my favorite, but if you're ever in the Midlands of South Carolina, definitely check out Congaree National Park. It's not the largest or the most beautiful, but it's very different from anything you've probably seen before. It's technically a "bottomland hardwood forest" -- I would call it a swamp -- and there is very little of that biome left in the US. Much of the park is a floodplain with endless cypress trees with their little knees sticking up out of the water. There's a boardwalk near the visitor's center because it's almost always too wet to walk through that area, but even the boardwalk floods when it rains a lot. It's perfect if you want a break from the breathtaking mountains, valleys, and canyons that dominate many of the National Parks.

Galápagos finches, though, are also famous amongst evolutionary biologists because of the work of the illustrious Peter and Rosemary Grant at Princeton, whose work on these birds over the course of decades has provided invaluable findings on rapid evolution to a changing environment, as well as other topics.