Favorite Instagram travel photos of the year

"Everyone look at my feet. Get jealous that I'm at the beach. You probably knew I was going there…you saw my plane's wing in the air," notes a recent video parody of Instagram, Facebook's hugely popular - and hugely controversial - photo editing and sharing application.

Like many of the app's 100 million users, I was nonplussed by Instagram's recent decision to change its terms of service. The move, slated to take effect in January, suggested that potential advertisers would be able to use images with no compensation to their creators. (Instagram backtracked quickly, but not before alienating National Geographic and other high-profile fans.)

But as that College Humor parody illustrates, the app has become highly addictive among smartphone-toting travelers – yours truly included.

Here's a gallery of favorite Instagram shots from my 2012 travels, which took me from a lava tour of Hawaii's Big Island to my own backyard of Washington, D.C., where I captured a contemplative, pre-dawn moment at the Lincoln Memorial. (Those travels didn't include Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport or Siam Paragon shopping mall, ranked as the "most Instagrammed places in the world" this past year. Others on Instagram's most-photographed list: Anaheim's Disneyland, New York's Times Square, San Francisco's AT&T Park, Los Angeles' International Airport, Dodger Stadium, Staples Center and Santa Monica Pier, and Paris' Eiffel Tower.)

Share your own on-the-road memories of this year by tagging your top Instagram picks #besttravelpix, and we may feature them as well.