I hate the word “influencer.” It has taken on a bad connotation: young people, generally female and white, who claim “influence” through pretty poses on Instagram. Articles circulating on social media accuse them of all sorts of bad behavior: buying followers and demanding free rooms and meals from hotels in exchange for pictures, posing for…
10 Travel Risks NOT Worth Taking
The following is a sponsored guest post by Globelink travel insurance. I’ve added an extra bit of advice at the end as well. While travelling is an experience that opens you up to the world and challenges your entire world view, there are certain things that are just not worth the risk when you are…
25 Real Tips for Women Traveling Alone
A recent article from The New York Times has been making the rounds in Facebook travel groups. Written by Shivani Vora, it’s called “Tips for Women Traveling Solo, From Dining Out to Hotel Safety.” The title is misleading. Rather than a collection of tips, the article is an interview with Suzanne Randolph, founder of Alix…
Gifts for flight attendants: an experiment
Despite all the uproar over United Airlines’ treatment of a man who resisted being bumped from a flight, I think it’s safe to say almost every flight attendant acts in a professional way, and they show remarkable patience. In praise of flight attendants Passengers misbehave: the internet abounds with examples. (See this article, or this…
Trip of a Lifetime: Bloggers Pick their Must-See Destinations
For this collaborative post, I asked fellow travel bloggers about their idea of a trip of a lifetime: If a person who’s never traveled far from home asked you to name the one place they should visit on their one-and-only trip ever, what would you say? I got so many different answers! I’ll start with the…
Where should I travel? How to choose a destination
Sometimes it’s hard to choose a travel destination. Let’s say you have only two weeks’ vacation, and you want to get the most out of it that you can. At the same time, if you’re like me, you want to see pretty much the whole world. You know that in just one lifetime, and in…
Choosing a destination in a time of terrorism
Note: I wrote this a couple of years ago, but the argument I make here still applies. Where I mention a terrorist attack from some time ago, just fill in whatever the most recent one was. The attack on a Berlin Christmas market last week got me thinking about how terrorism affects travel and tourism….
Eagle Creek Backpack Review
For the two solo trips I took this year—one to Guadeloupe, Martinique, New York and Spain, and one to Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea—I needed a very specific kind of luggage. The problem Since I was traveling solo, I needed to travel as light as possible. I also needed luggage I could manage…
5 Tips for Helping a Fearful Flyer
You’ve boarded a plane and found your seat, stowed your things and buckled up. The plane makes its way onto the runway and, after a short wait, the acceleration for take-off begins. You’re reading the book you brought along and don’t pay any attention to what the plane is doing, but, as it speeds up, something…