Jen here, and it’s always a pleasure to have Michelle on the blog. I’ve been on some recent trips, and I love collecting travel tips. Thanks for sharing your wisdom, Michelle!
What Travel Guidebooks Don’t Tell You
I love to travel, and with a big trip planned for this fall — part book tour, part visiting friends, part vacation — I’ve realized how much I enjoy anticipating travel too. The research, the daydreaming, imagining what if.
Throughout my life, I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve backpacked through Europe, Central America, and Southern Africa and helped rebuild communities after war across Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific. Along the way, I’ve picked up a few travel tips you may want to consider while you’re planning your next trip.
Know your travel vibe
There are two ways to travel: to see or to savor.
Travelers who focus on seeing optimize their visit down to the last detail, booking much of their trip in advance. They know the top restaurants, which side of the train to sit on for the best view, and which sites they want to see at each destination. It’s efficient, yet it can result in traveling by checklist, skimming the surface, not exploring what’s underneath.
When time allows, I prefer to savor. I’ll book transportation to my destination and most likely where to stay, then let the rest of my trip unfold with the weather and my mood. I’ll meander down a charming street, board a bus with no set destination, pick a restaurant by the ambiance I view through the window. It takes more time, but you get a better sense of a place, and in my opinion, a fuller experience.
People-watch with gusto
Nearly everyone likes to people watch, but most feel a bit guilty about it and look away the moment they’re caught. I’m an anthropologist, so I watch people constantly; even more when I travel, because people are the place, way more than any monument or museum. I like to find a park bench or window seat and see who strolls by or what drama unfolds. Watching these types of daily interactions can tell you more about a destination than any guidebook can.
Talk to strangers
Engage with strangers, but skip the small talk and dig a bit deeper. Ask a baker what she’d eat if she could only pick one thing from her own shop. Ask the older man sitting next to you on the bus what the town was like twenty years ago. People will continually surprise you with what they have to say.
Pack half of what you think you need
If you travel a lot, you eventually learn that you need a lot less than you think. If in doubt, leave it behind. You’ll move easier, worry less, and if you truly need something, you can always buy it wherever you go (and then you have a cool souvenir that brings back good memories).
Leave room for the unexpected
Think of your itinerary as a menu, not a legal contract. When something unplanned catches your fancy — a market, an alley, a conversation — go with it. In my experience, the best moments of any trip have been the ones I didn’t plan for, the ones that took me in totally different directions.
Take pictures, and notes
Photos capture what a place looks like. But they can’t capture what you felt when you saw the Mona Lisa or the emotions that surged through you with your first glance of the Grand Canyon. Write these things down, a few lines in a notes app or notebook. This helps you remember not just what you saw, but what you experienced.
In the end, the best travel advice I have is simple: pay attention. What you bring home isn’t really about the places you visited, it’s about what happens when you slow down enough to experience them.
Happy travels.
Do you have any travel tips that you’d recommend, or examples of a hard lesson learned from traveling?
ABOUT A FIELD GUIDE TO DEATH & DECEIT:
Widower and anthropologist Harry Lancaster and his Gen Z colleague Emma are back for more murder and mayhem when they stumble upon a dead farmer.
This delightful sequel to A Field Guide to Murder is perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Benjamin Stevenson.
When an odd request leads Harry Lancaster to agree to meet his former sweetheart Willow at a farm on the outskirts of town, Emma’s suspicions run high, and she insists on joining him. Instead of Willow greeting them when they arrive, they discover the farm’s owner dead, with a corn rake embedded in his back.
After being interrogated by the police, Harry and Emma return to his home to find a bereft Willow, who admits she lost her life savings in a real estate scam involving the farm. Worried Willow will become the main murder suspect, Harry decides to help her, despite Emma’s concerns.
To bring the swindlers—and murderer—to justice, Harry recruits his potentially shady, financial-whiz brother and a neighborhood teenage hacker. Then Willow’s realtor is declared missing, and Harry’s brother is caught up in the fray.
As the team unearths clues, they increasingly dodge danger in their race to save Willow and Harry’s brother before anyone else turns up dead.
ABOUT MICHELLE:
Michelle L. Cullen has lived, traveled, and studied all over the world, from working as a bilingual secretary in Paris; to backpacking around Europe, Central America, and Southern Africa; to helping rebuild communities after war throughout Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific. She earned her master’s degree in anthropology at Melbourne University and her PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics. A fan of adventure, she has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, has summited nine-hundred-feet rock climbing, and has flown a helicopter. She currently lives in Annapolis, Maryland, where she’s either doing yoga, playing outside, or plotting murder.
Chicks on the Case 