Episode #29 – Unplugged Travel – On the road without a phone

In this episode of the Solo Female Travelers Podcast, Mar is joined by Lisa Abend, freelance journalist and creator of The Unplugged Traveler, to explore what happens when we put our phones away and rediscover the joy of traveling without digital distractions.

After noticing how social media, online recommendations, and travel algorithms were making travel experiences increasingly predictable, Lisa decided to try something different: visiting unfamiliar destinations without using Google Maps, researching attractions, or booking accommodation in advance.

Lisa shares how her unplugged adventures across Europe have brought back the spontaneity and unexpected discoveries that made travel so exciting before smartphones. From asking locals where to find the best Bolognese in Bologna to stumbling upon a science fiction convention in Glasgow, she reveals how traveling without a phone can lead to memorable experiences and meaningful human connections.

Together, Mar and Lisa discuss the practical challenges of unplugged travel, including finding hotels without reservations, navigating with paper maps, managing unfamiliar currencies, and overcoming the fear of missing out on must-see attractions. They also explore how our phones can unintentionally make us less approachable and why even small changes, like putting your phone away during dinner, can open the door to conversations with strangers.

Whether you’re an experienced solo traveler or simply looking to be more present on your next adventure, this conversation will inspire you to embrace a little more spontaneity, connect with the people around you, and discover the world beyond your screen.

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About Lisa:

Transcript:

Mar: Hi everyone, I’m Mar Pages, one of the hosts of the Solo Female Travelers Podcast. Welcome to the show. If you travel alone, you probably know that your phone is basically your best friend. It is your map, your train ticket, your restaurant guide, your translator, and in many ways your lifeline. It’s also your best friend. This is why we bring power banks everywhere we go, so that we don’t run out of battery and therefore cannot use our phones. Now imagine landing in a city you have never visited before, you know nothing about and have no bookings in, and choosing not to use it. This is what our guest today, journalist Lisa Abend has been doing for more than two years.

Lisa is based in Copenhagen now, but before she taught Spanish history in Ohio, moved to Spain, became Time Magazine’s correspondent there, wrote a book about a season inside a Noma restaurant, and spent two years leading communications at MAD, a global food nonprofit in Denmark. She’s now back to full-time freelance journalism and writes The Unplugged Traveler newsletter, a reader-supported Substack newsletter that grew out of story ideas that media editors rejected and she will tell us more about this now. Hi Lisa.

Lisa: Hi, thank you so much for having me here.

Mar: Yeah, welcome to the podcast. And to start with, I’d like to hear a little bit more about yourself, and for our audience to get to know you a bit better and how the idea of The Unplugged Traveler was born.

Lisa: Well, as you mentioned, I am a freelance journalist and with that one little two-year exception, I’ve been doing that for quite some time and always based in Europe. And as a journalist I’m a total generalist, I cover everything, politics, culture, the occasional sports story. But food and travel were always, I guess, my specialties. They were the kinds of stories that there was most interest in, especially when I was living in Spain. And they were frankly just the easiest for me to come out of the pandemic, I started noticing when once we all got back into traveling. I started noticing for myself in my own travels, that I felt like even though we were all so excited to be able to be back doing it, that there was this kind of flattening of the experience because we were all traveling, we had all done our Google searches, we had all scrolled the same feeds on Instagram, gone to the same websites with. Lists of the restaurants we were supposed to be you know visiting all of the bucket list stuff and it just seemed to me that travel which you know when I started smartphones didn’t exist travel which had always been so much about discovery and serendipity and the unexpected had become almost entirely predictable like you knew not only which restaurant you were supposed to go to, but which dish you were meant to order and how it looked and you know the best angle to shoot it from and you would be surrounded by people like yourself in that restaurant because everybody else in there was reading the same lists.

And so that’s really what gave me the idea and I did. I pitched it around to a bunch of the travel publications that I wrote for and I had this idea of actually doing it as a column where, every month or two they would send me some place and I would try and do this to see if it was possible. And every single one turned me down, at which point I just thought, well, I’m just gonna do it myself. And that was the birth of the Substack.

Mar: And it seems like it would have been a great idea, right? Clearly, you have a following, clearly it’s something out of the ordinary. Why were they not thinking it was a good idea?

Lisa: I don’t know. And I think maybe it was a little too early when I was pitching it, because since I started doing the newsletter, actually one of those editors, like I did an unplug travel story for the New York Times that was based on where I used my newsletter as kind of the launching point. So I do think that it took people a little while to get used to this idea. And now, of course, there are plenty of articles out there by people who dared to do this for one time. I think that was part of it. I also think that there’s so much more discussion now, public discussion around the costs of being perpetually online. And I think that there is a broader sense of fatigue with how plugged in we are at all times and what the algorithm is doing to us. So, I do think that maybe it was just a little before its time.

Mar: Right, we were still not yet worried about all of us doing the same because it was the beginning after the pandemic, so we were still not doing anything. So we were not all going to the same places and five or six years down the line people are now realizing that we all go to the same places. And it’s not so much yeah, you just you just go where you’re being told by social media and the algorithm and the articles going at the top or ChatGPT or whatever it is, and that’s only the surface level. It’s only the best twenty, thirty places, but you don’t stumble upon something. We used to stumble upon it.

Lisa: Exactly.

Mar: And how do you define unplugged? Because you do have your phone with you, you just don’t use it. So what would qualify as an activity, as an experience that’s unplugged and what do you still use your phone or your computer for before or during the trip?

Lisa: I do take my phone with me. It is there in case of an emergency, which so far I’ve never had to use it for. But I also do use it to take photos that I use in the newsletter. And I keep thinking I need to buy a proper phone, a proper camera, excuse me, so that I don’t have to use it for that. But that’s the only thing I use it for while I’m traveling and in terms of the internet, the only thing that I use it for for the trip is to book the flight there, the transportation there. Other than that, I don’t do any research ahead of time. I don’t make any hotel or restaurant reservations. And then of course, once I’m on the ground, there’s all kinds of things. Some things like you almost like it’s been a process of remembering. How much we use it for. 

There was one time I was in Croatia and I was far off from the city and had to get back and I saw you know one of those, a kind of city bike and I was like great I’ll take a city bike and then realized of course that you needed an app to unlock it. So, there’s all kinds of things like Uber and Airbnb and city bikes and things like that I also do not use or do while I’m traveling.

Mar: Right, and even bookings and things like that where they will give you a QR code, I guess you just print them or you just buy them on the spot.

Lisa: No. For the flight there, I print out the ticket to go through security. But other than that, like train tickets or anything like that, I just buy once I’m on the site and can use a physical ticket. I try to pick up a paper map the first thing when I land, so I have a way of navigating ’cause I don’t use the GPS map either. So

Mar: That’s just so much that you don’t think about, right? I started travelling as I was telling you before we started recording. I also started traveling on my own in two thousand one. This is well before the internet and we used public phones to call home. I had this plan with my mother like a collect call every evening from the UK to Spain after nine thirty, that it was included in a monthly plan and that’s how we called back home. Later on, internet cafes became a thing. So I would go in and check my emails then paper maps to go around, like you’re saying, and lonely planet books, like the physical book. For recommendations and that’s just I guess human recommendations for everything else, right? What are other tools that you’re using now to replace the phone?

Lisa: I got to make up my own rules for this so there’s really no reason why I couldn’t use a print guidebook like Lonely Planet but I really wanted to try and make this as much an opportunity for discovery for serendipity as possible so I don’t use that I literally show up in a place and figure it out. And paper maps are really important. And other than that, it’s just walking around and intuition and asking people, talking to people, getting their recommendations once in place. One of the rules I made for myself is that I could because oftentimes, you know, when people hear that I’m going to a place. Friends or/or acquaintances, people will get in touch and say, you should go to this particular restaurant. Right. They’ll try and give me right. 

Mar: They’ll try to give you recommendations.

Lisa: And I’m always like, no, no, no, don’t, no. My rule on that is that I only take recommendations from people who actually live there. And so most of the recommendations I get, I get once I’m already in the destination.

Mar: Just ask people in the street?

Lisa: Yes, exactly. On my second trip, I think it was the second trip I took, it was to Bologna. And of course in Bologna, it has this huge food reputation. And I knew it was considered, you know, the gastronomic hub of not just Italy, but one of the gastronomic hubs of Europe and of course all kinds of famous dishes including what we call spaghetti bolognese comes from there. That place I definitely felt some anxiety around choosing good places to eat. Like it would be a real pity to have a bad meal in Bologna. So I did. I just went up to people on the street and asked them where was the best place to get what they call ragu, which we call bolognese. And to their credit, they took the question very seriously. No one laughed at me.

Pretty much every person started off by saying, of course, that the best Bolognese was the one that their mother made. But once we got past that, they all took the question quite seriously.

Mar: And was there consensus? Were they sending you to the same places? Everybody has their favorite.

Lisa: No, that was the thing, of course not. I don’t think everyone had their favorite, I often like it if we go back to that topic of traveling with a list and you know and you yourself use the word best, the best restaurants, but there is no such thing as a best restaurant. When it comes to taste, it’s always subjective. And to me, it was actually pretty fun to just try and I went to as many as I could. I ate a lot of bolognese during those few days in Bologna just to see. The truth is, I didn’t have a bad one. They were all great. Was one better than the other? I don’t know. I mean, it depended on so many other things, like. How nice the waiter was or was there someone there to talk to?

Or did I get a great dessert with it as well? there was the one that I liked the most, but I couldn’t say that was the best. It was just my favorite.

Mar: Yeah, there’s so many ways of making it, right? It’s like where are you gonna have the best paella? Well, I don’t know, how do you like your paella? Do you like it soupy? 

Lisa: Exactly.

Mar: Do you like it dry? Do you like it with fish, with meat? How do you like it? It’s not really possible to reduce it to just one, right? But besides asking people in the street, are there specific types of person or profile that you go to? I don’t know, a hotel concierge or you go to the tourism office or do you ask the specific persons or just random people in the street?

Lisa: I do generally ask both the people that you mentioned, tourist office people and hotel concierges, but I always take what they say with a pretty sizable grain of salt because you know they’re getting asked that question all the time. And in general, this has been disproven to me on a few occasions, but in general, they’re giving an answer that they think you want to hear. And that is often going to a place where you will be with other tourists that they think is what you know a tourist wants out of a place. If you’re in Spain, they could very well be telling you to go to a place for paella and sangria. And maybe that’s not exactly what you really want. And maybe that’s not going to be your best restaurant.

So I do ask, but I don’t just like to go up and say, hey, what restaurant should I eat at? I try to ask about something completely unrelated so that we get some kind of rapport or dialogue going and they get a sense of me as a person. And then maybe bring it around to the question of recommendations. And sometimes that’s helped quite a lot actually. And sometimes I’ve ended up surrounded by other tourists. So it’s not safe by any means.

Mar: Right, because they might be recommending you a place that has menus in English or that it’s affordable or I don’t know, has live music or whatever they think a tourist may want that may provide a more authentic in between to her quotation marks experience rather than the place where they go with their friends. I sometimes ask people, where do you go? I ask the guide, where do you go with your friends? Or I ask the concierge, where do you go with your friends when you want an authentic meal? And they’ll sometimes be very reluctant to tell you because they think that this is just a very casual, like low key place, you know.

Lisa: Right, that you’re not gonna like it, because it’s low-key, it’s not fancy. The food is very local, very idiosyncratic, it’s not by it’s I don’t know, bocaron. Who knows? You know, it’s just there’s that kind of there’s that question. One thing that does work really well is when you find a place of any kind that resonates with you, whether it’s a cafe or a shop or a restaurant, to ask the people that work there or own it, because you can already tell that you share something that you know you have similar taste in coffee or that they know you like the wines on their wine list. So those kinds of recommendations can be super valuable.

Mar: Yes, I agree. I do that a lot. If I am in a nice, fancy, interesting, cool restaurant that is something different, I’ll go and ask the waiter. And if I’m dining solo, I’ll sit at the bar to talk to the waiter and to get more recommendations about the places that they go to with their friends. And that’s usually the best recommendation for something just like the one you’re in, right?

Lisa: Totally agree.

Mar: And tell me about the first trip that you took about this, once you decided you were gonna do this. Where did you go and how did it go?

Lisa: When I decided to do it, I decided to in a way that felt, you know, a little more approachable to me. So I didn’t go anywhere too far. I’m based in Copenhagen, and so I took the train to Hamburg in Germany, which is a city I’d never been to before. But I could get there on a train, which somehow made it, in my head it seemed safer somehow because if I hated it or had a terrible experience, I knew I could just get on a train and come home.

And I got there. There was a tourist office at the train station, so I was able to get a map straight away. And I just started walking and even with the map. I was having a hard time orienting myself at first, so I wasn’t sure where I was on the map, but eventually I figured it out. It took me a long time to find any hotel at all, let alone one to stay in. I just seemed to be walking through a part of town that didn’t have a lot of them. But I almost immediately came to this really inviting looking cafe where there are a lot of people, both indoors and outdoors. I just stopped and had some lunch and struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to me who was also there alone. I remember that. It almost immediately just felt okay.

It felt so okay that I had to remind myself that I didn’t actually have a place to stay and that I really needed to get on that. Just walked in a slightly different direction and came across a hotel. I really wanted to try and stay in independent hotels, in part because they’re a dying breed and I wanted to support them, but also because it seemed more in keeping with the theme of the kind of traveling that I was trying to do, which is more idiosyncratic, less of the predictable you could be anywhere in the world, accommodations. And I did. I found this hotel that had been in the hands of one family for, I don’t know, I think close to a century. It was very simple. And I remember, walking up to the desk and the receptionist, I think she must have been new there.

Like she had just started, and I walked up and I said, you know, I didn’t have a reservation, but I was wondering if they had room for the night. And she got very nervous looking and she scrambled over to what looked to be the manager and I could hear her whispering to him that you have to walk in. And she looked very panicked by it. He was like, okay. And he was great. And he said, Yes, we have a room. Would you like to see it first? And I said, Yes. And it was, you know, it was very simple, but it was perfect. And it ended up being a very nice place to stay as well, because I did get to hear a little bit about the family history and learn about what they had been doing in Hamburg for a while. So that was my first trip.

Mar: And then from then onwards you just walked around, to kind of discover the place?

Lisa: I just walked around. Yeah. I went through different neighborhoods. I had this fantasy, I came across this incredible, just really amazing looking bar. It was like a dive bar, but it was slightly nicer, and it had all of these like old. Clocks on the wall, and it just looked like it had so much ambiance. And the bartender was an older woman and then there were like one or two people seated at the bar when I was there. And I thought, this is great. Cause I had this fantasy in my head that I was gonna walk in and start talking to these people at the bar.

And we would have an amazing conversation and they would buy me a drink and I would buy them drinks and you know and it would be the start of this like great connection because of course that was something else that I was hoping to get out of traveling this way is really connecting more with people in the places that I was visiting. And so I walked in and the bartender asked what I wanted to drink and I ordered a beer and all of that was in English and so I’m like great this is gonna be perfect because I don’t speak German and I asked a question I think I just asked so how old is this bar or something like that and that was the beer was the extent of her of her English vocabulary and so we didn’t get any further with that.

And I realized that she and I were not going to become great friends. And so I started trying to make eye contact with the people sitting. It was a couple sitting next to me, hoping to start a conversation with them. And they like literally when they see me, they just like get up and then they move over to like a slot machine. And so now I’m just sitting there alone very awkwardly with my beer, just trying to drink it as quickly as possible. So my fantasies about deep connection to the people of Hamburg did not come true. But I did get to see some really interesting parts of the city. I ended up having a good conversation at the very end when I found this great Turkish restaurant right before I left the city. And I think it relieved some of the anxiety I had around this because of course I was a little nervous as well. But I realized that yeah, like why not? There’s nothing scary about this. And it did feel exciting too.

Mar: We all used to do this before, right? I started traveling in 2001. So for the best part of ten years there was like practically no internet. In twenty twelve, I took a sabbatical for almost two months in the South Pacific. And I still remember I had a BlackBerry, but I had no roaming and no phone in any of the countries except for maybe Fiji. I would go inside a travel agency to buy a paper ticket and you know once a week to an internet cafe to check my emails. I was on sabbatical, so there were very few work emails and personal things and occasionally I’d post to Facebook maybe once a week a couple of photos and say to people, Hi, I’m alive. And that’s basically it. For the rest, I guess I just talked to people and I had the lonely planet.

But I feel like you have to be very ready to put yourself out there, right? Because you need to go and talk to people you have no other alternative, right? So you must be quite extroverted to like, you know, just the idea of going to a bar and like talking to people and like for that for many people this would be extremely daunting.

Lisa: Well, I’m actually not an extrovert. And I myself also find it quite daunting, but I did realize pretty early in the process, you know, the first few of these trips that I took, just the novelty of not having my phone was enough for there to be something for me to write about. But I realized that if I wanted to keep doing it over the long haul. I was gonna have to come up with meaningful stories to tell about each place that weren’t just about, I couldn’t use my GPS map. And so I realized I was going to have to talk to people because that’s the only way to get stories. What I discovered is that I feel that what happened is that I’ve developed some habits that don’t actually come naturally to me, but that enable those kinds of connections or stories to happen. And one is coming up with the question like who makes the best Bolognese in this city, that to just approach people with. But another thing, like it took me a while to figure this out. But because I am not an extrovert, if I’m here in Copenhagen at home and I go out to dinner by myself, I will routinely choose the table furthest away, off in the corner, quiet, nobody around. And I’ve realized that no, if instead of doing that, I take the one right in the center of the banquette with people on either side of me.

Inevitably, we’ll end up talking to each other. And so it’s the same. Yeah, go into a bar, but are you sitting at the end of the bar by yourself and looking like you want to be left alone, or are you sitting right next to the two old guys and looking at them eating like a puppy dog waiting to be invited? into a conversation. And so those are definitely habits that I’ve had to learn.

Mar: in the past we didn’t have our phones to look at, right? So when you would sit down to dinner, I remember when I was on my sabbatical, I had a journal, so occasionally I would take out the journal and write. And otherwise I would just look around, I guess, look around, enjoy the food, enjoy the view, talk to people, and I was almost always invited to dinner with other people. This was twenty twelve, so it was a long time ago. Not that many solo female travelers, not that many women traveling on their own for sure. And so every dinner that I would go to, somebody would invite me. It would be a family, it would be a couple, it would be a group of friends, it would be the restaurant owner, I would sit at the bar, it was all sorts of people inviting me.

And I’m not talking about guys trying to hit on me, much the opposite. It was old couples that just wanted to hear a story. It was quite rare back then to see women traveling solo. So, the families wanted me to come and join and tell their children, look how brave you’re traveling on your own. And of course this was before the time of the internet, so it was a completely different time, but people would always invite you. Now we always have the phone. So we sit down and we’re completely engrossed in our conversation and in talking with people on the phone or reading or scrolling or posting or listening to music or watching a movie or anything or maybe you have a book.

But you sit down to dinner and there’s always something entertaining you and keeping your attention away from others. And that just means that you’re not approachable and that obviously these opportunities to talk to others are not there because you don’t have eye contact. So just by not having something, it’s like you’re opening your arms and saying, Hey, come and talk to me, right?

Lisa: Exactly, exactly. And I have discovered that actually books can work in a way that the phone can’t. Because that has happened to me on a few, I think now on three different occasions. I’ve been at a restaurant or a bar and I’ve had a book with me. And people have either asked what I’m reading or said, oh my gosh, I just finished that. I love that book. And there’s a way that even as an object. A book can open a conversation that a phone does not. Because as you said, absolutely phone signals that you are closed off, that you’re occupied, and people aren’t going to interrupt you. And I wouldn’t interrupt, And so it is very interesting, all of the kinds of social conceptions that we put on people when they have that phone in front of their face.

Mar: Yeah, it’s like you’re saying a lot of things without saying anything. You’re saying I’m busy, you’re saying I don’t want to be disturbed. It’s almost like a message of like, hey, I’m in my world and that world is closed and I don’t want others to come in at that time. Versus a book which, like you say, gives you an opportunity to start a conversation already. You can ask what the book is about, or maybe you’ve read it, or maybe you’ve heard about it, or maybe you want to buy it. So I guess it’s definitely different. But let’s talk about some practicalities. Because some things I’m like I was trying to figure out like how does she do that? Like how do you find out easy words in the language, like a few words. It’s always useful and good to know some words in the language. Or how do you find the exchange rate? Like I when I land in a place, the first thing that I need to do is find out what’s the exchange rate so that I know how much money to withdraw, right? Of course if you’re in Europe, it’s in Euros, but say you go somewhere else where you need to exchange currency. How do you find this?

Lisa: Yeah. That is a great question to start with or to try and create some small connection with somebody. I mean, I routinely ask people, even after I’ve already learned the word, sometimes I will ask people, you know, at the end of a simple transaction where you’ve bought I don’t know, your bus ticket on the bus into the city or a cup of coffee. You just ask, how do I say thank you? And people are generally delighted by this question. They almost always deliver the answer with this smile. And I think they’re glad that you care enough to ask, and then they laugh a little at your pronunciation and you’re off. And that itself is a kind of meaningful exchange and it can lead to something else. Currency, as you say, for The Unplugged Traveler, I keep it to Europe. So in most cases, it is Euros that I’m dealing with, but every now and then I’m in a place, of course, that has its own currency.

Every now and then I’ve forgotten that. And this happened to me pretty recently in Moldova. I showed up. Totally forgot, not on the euro, went to take out money. Oftentimes you can get around it because when you are using a foreign card, it will show you the exchange rate on the screen. But in Moldova, it did not. And I had no idea. You know, I didn’t know if this is one of those countries where a million of their currency adds up to two euros or something like that. So I took my card out and I just started walking around trying to find anything that would orient me. And then I came across this strangest thing. They had a robot coffee barista there. It was like this machine and you put it in my it was very weird. And I can’t remember what the amount was, but it had the amount on it for how much a coffee cost. And I didn’t have any point of comparison in Moldova. I didn’t really know what coffee went, but I could at least use that as a general guide. I had that number in mind and went back to the ATM and took out enough for a few days worth of coffee and figured I would take it from there.

Mar: Yeah, this is the difficult one. Of course in airports there are always exchange houses, so then you have the exchange rate right just there. But if that’s not available, the first thing that I need to Google is the exchange rate to know how much money I withdraw. And it’s true that ATMs will usually have set amounts, right? So that kind of gives you an idea of orders of magnitude, right? Typically the highest in a place will be like a hundred or two hundred euros, right? The equivalent of that. So it’s not it’s not like super off, but yes, I was I was in Moldova last week, so

Lisa: Okay. Did you see the coffee robot in the airport?

Mar: I see what you’re saying with the I didn’t see the robot, but there are coffee shops everywhere. They definitely like coffee. But also like how do you pick a hotel? Because from the facade, like what do you know about it? You’ll know maybe the category, there’s like some star system and you see the reception. But how do you have an idea of how much that will cost or if it’s good for you? Do you go because I’m guessing you have your luggage, right? The first thing you may do is go to a hotel, pick a hotel, drop your luggage. So it’s not like you can just wander around forever, right? So what are some telltales?

Lisa: When it’s possible, I do try and check my luggage somewhere. So often what’ll happen, you know, if I fly in and then take a train or a metro. It works better with trains and or with buses when you take a train or bus into the center. I generally will just get off at whatever the central station is. And they often have lockers or some kind of concierge there that you can leave them because I’m trying to avoid Just what you described, which is looking super desperate when you show up at some hotel lugging your bag with you. So I do try and check it until I find a place to stay. That doesn’t always work. What does work is that thing I learned at that first hotel in Hamburg where he asked if I wanted to see the room.

It feels like a weird question, when you walk into a hotel without a reservation. But it turns out that they’re actually kind of used to it. And nobody has ever questioned it or said no to me. Yeah, they’re actually quite fine with it. And so I do that. I ask to see the room. In almost every case I will do that unless and this has happened a couple of times when I’ve been bouncing from dozens of hotels and there’s no there’s like for whatever reason no availability in any of them, at which point I’m just glad to have anything at all.

Mar: Do you have a budget or are you just looking for something that’s mid range?

Lisa: Yeah, exactly. I aim for somewhere around a hundred, a hundred and twenty-five euros. So not a youth hostel and not expensive or super luxurious either. But just comfortable and hopefully with a little personality to it.

Mar: Do you then go and check that the price you paid was the price that was listed online? I would absolutely want to do this.

Lisa: I haven’t actually done that. But yes, yeah. 

Mar: Now I planted the seed and you’re gonna go double check.

Lisa: But what I have encountered, and this goes back to how reliant we all are on our phones, and this to me is so annoying. There are hotels out there where they will not let you book when you walk in, that you have to book online. And this has happened to me on two or three occasions where I’ll walk in, I’ll say, Do you have a room available? And they’ll say yes. And I say, Great. And they’ll say, You just have to go online to book it. And I was like, I don’t have a phone. I can’t do that. And they will literally watch me walk out the door and not get the room booked. Because it’s their policy or something like that.

Mar: Maybe the person at the reception cannot create a reservation for some reason.

Lisa: I apparently. Apparently. I know. And this has happened on three different occasions and I just find it so infuriating.

Mar: Interesting. Wow, yes, you can absolutely go to a hotel and ask to see the rooms. I’ve done this for our tours. Like I’ll be scouting a destination, I’ll be in a city, I’ll have appointments booked with certain hotels and then I’ll be walking around, I’ll be in a better location, I like it better. For whatever reason, I had deprioritized it, and then I’ll just walk in. Of course I’m in the industry, so I can say, Can I speak with your sales and marketing person? And that just makes it easier. But many times I have just said, I was walking by, I own a tour company. I saw a hotel that I had not considered before, which will have a room for me to see. And normally it’s not a problem. If there’s a sales and marketing person, they’ll give you a bit more of a tour, which is what I’m interested in. But if I just wanted to book a room, hotels, like you say, are quite used to people doing that. It’s not as weird as it sounds to us.

Lisa: Yeah, they are. No. No, exactly.

Mar: Of course everybody books everything online, so rarely do people show up, I guess, these days, but they show up enough that hotels are not surprised by this.

And so we started this conversation talking about the serendipity that’s lost when we pre book everything, when we go to the places where everybody goes, when we’re basically ship and following best of and the top results and the influencers and the top TikToks and Reels videos, et cetera. But what have been some of those serendipity moments that you found that you think you wouldn’t have had if you had planned everything? What are some of those magical moments?

Lisa: Well, one was actually around hotels. The first time I ever had a hard time finding a place was in Glasgow. And I arrived right into the center of the city doing that thing. I think I took a bus from the airport. And in the center it only seemed like there were big chain hotels. So I thought I’m just gonna wander. It was early enough in the day. I thought I’m just gonna wander out. And I ended up in this really great neighborhood with just a lot of life and cool restaurants and pretty parks and houses. And I was like, great. And there were a slew of small independent hotels or bed and breakfasts. And I thought, great. One by one I learned that they were all full. And people kept saying, Yeah, I think that there’s, I don’t know, I think there’s a concert in town.

I think I heard there’s a convention, something like that. And finally I ended up at this one hotel where the receptionist, whose name was Amy, was just an angel. She was determined to help me. And she’s, and she said, well, let me let me call around for you. And she picked up the phone and started calling places. And of course she ended up on hold for just a really, really long time. And I’m just standing there patiently, but starting to feel really terrible that she’s having to spend so much time on me and I’m not even staying in her hotel. And so I would be like, it’s okay, don’t worry, let me find something. Don’t worry about it. And she was just like, No, I will not have you wandering all over the city. She was determined to find me a place.

And eventually she did. And it was actually in one of those chain hotels. But by this point, I was desperate enough. And Amy had done so much work that I wasn’t going to say no to her. So I went to the hotel and as I’m checking in, the guy there is like, yeah, you’re really lucky to get this room because there’s this big convention in town. That’s why all the rooms are gone. And I like to thank him. I’m waiting for the elevator. It opens in front of me, and this couple gets out and they’re dressed like this kind of futuristic Stormtroopers with like mohawks in this uniform and these like space guns.

And it turns out that the convention that’s in town is something called WorldCon, which I offended them completely by saying, is that like ComicCon, you know, comic book kind of things? And they’re like, no, this is about literature. And it was, it was a convention for science fiction literature. And it’s apparently the biggest convention in the world for science fiction literature. And they were like, Well, you have to come, it’s incredible. I ended up going there. And it was, it was incredible. There were like thousands and thousands of people in the craziest costumes and panels on things like fighting Fungi in space and things like this. I mean it was insane.

And that whole thing, like none of it would have happened if I had booked a hotel online before I left Copenhagen and arrived in Glasgow. And it was all just because of that chain of events that was unleashed by me not having a hotel booking.

Mar: In fact, if you had researched you may have probably not booked because prices would have been very high and you would have thought,

Lisa: Also true.

Mar: This is not a good time to come, right?

Lisa: Exactly, actually. A really good point.

Mar: And how do you pick destinations? Because I know that you don’t go to places that you already know because you don’t want to have preconceived notions. So how do you pick destinations and are you gonna run out of places at some point?

Lisa: Amazingly, no, there’s actually quite a lot of places in the world. Yes, okay, so that was one of the rules I set from the beginning, that it had to be a place that I had never been before. Other than that, I wish I could say that you know there was like a great romantic story behind each but really it comes down to what the tickets cost to get there. I’ve been trying to cover a variety of different destinations in Europe. I try, have a good mix of different kinds of countries. So if I’m going to someplace in central or eastern Europe that’s post Soviet, then I’ll try to balance it with someplace in Western Europe or a happy beach town somewhere. Or if I’m in a beach town that I’ll try and follow it with someplace in the Nordics.

So try and get a wide diversity of places. But other than that, to be completely honest, I go on Skyscanner and there’s a function on their search page that allows you to just put in dates and choose everywhere and it will come up with deals and prices for any of those destinations and then I just see what seems like the best deal.

Mar: And you’re going for the weekend, right? It’s a relatively short trip.

Lisa: Generally it’s not necessarily a weekend, but I try and spend at least three and often four nights in a place.

Mar: So all of these, we’re always told that planning gets you the best rates. There’s always early booking prices, non refundable early rates and planning in advance and all of these things, right? So being at the last minute probably means the opposite. And how much do you think that flexibility that you’re gaining comes at the cost? Because I don’t know, maybe you get lost, you need to take a taxi, or you’re paying the last rate, or yeah. How do you think that works?

Lisa: It’s true that I’m not necessarily getting the very best rate at any point. However, because I’m not going to the most popular places, and because I’m not fixated on it, I must get to Bordeaux in October. Sometime in the month of October I’d like to go somewhere and let’s see what it costs. I don’t think the most I’ve ever spent on Airfare for any of these trips has been about 300, 350 euros tops, but usually it’s closer to 200. So like there are ways around that. For hotel rooms, sometimes yes, I’m sure I’m paying a premium because I’m walking in, but sometimes I think I’m paying less because they have empty rooms and they’re just happy to find somebody to occupy one of them, but that said, yes, it’s not free to do this. And to be honest, it’s become more difficult. For me, because as you mentioned, there was that two-year period when I had a job working for a nonprofit. And that was a salaried job with a steady income. And when I had that job, I was taking these as weekend trips. And I had the kind of stable income that was like, this is a good way for me to still be able to do the kind of traveling I was doing when I was a journalist. But since I’ve gone back to journalism it has become much trickier for me financially. And so I do think that yeah, it is a privilege to be able to do this and to have readers because of the newsletter, I never thought that I was gonna get rich off of this newsletter.

But my hope with it would be to be able to break even, to basically have the writing pay for the cost of the travel itself. And it does do that. Not just fairly, just barely. But it does do that. And that’s incredibly gratifying that people want to support this kind of both traveling and writing.

Mar: We keep talking about the fact that before you started doing this or we all basically follow lists of the best thing that is the best app. Have you ever come back home and realised that you missed something? I feel like for a lot of our listeners their stress would be like, my god, but then I’m not gonna know what is the top place and for most people they will go to a place only once. So have you come back home and realised that I missed these three really important things to see in that place because I didn’t know about them. I never came across them. Do you have FOMO, I guess, is the question.

Lisa: I do that’s one of the things that I actually like about this as a kind of I don’t know almost like a practice for me because it forces you to confront your FOMO every single time. I do feel that, you know, and it’s either I will discover, I missed a place. That I would have thought was really interesting or how could I not have eaten at that particular restaurant that everyone says is the best? this didn’t even happen before I came home. This was while I was still in the place I was in Groningen in the Netherlands and they don’t have a traditional tourist office there. And I didn’t actually find the place that kind of functions as it, which means they basically just have a bunch of brochures lying around a venue that is actually kind of like an entertainment venue.

And I didn’t find that place until right before I was leaving. One of the brochures they came across was for this dodgeball match that was taking place in the very central square of this beautiful old Dutch city. And had taken place the day before. I hadn’t known about it and had totally missed it. But like the idea of the entire Central Square being taken up by dodgeball, It just seemed amazing to me. It was just a dagger in my heart that I had missed it, because I thought, well, that would have been a good thing to write about. So yes, it’s still there. The FOMO is still there. But I will say that I think it’s offset by what you gain when you travel without that kind of prior knowledge and I think the main thing you gain is that it turns everything into a discovery because you have no idea and I realized this the first time when I went to a city in Czechia that is called Karlovy Vary and it was once and it still is, not at quite the same level, but it was once this renowned spa town where in the late 19th and early 20th century everybody who was anyone in European culture, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Gustav Klimt, Schiller, everyone went there, they would spend holidays there taking the cure drinking from these hot springs and going for walks in the mountains. And I was there and I came across this building that looked, it was this very grand-looking building that to me looked like a theater. But it had no markings on it, so I just went up to the door and the door was open. So I walked in and there was a woman inside, and she just kind of ushered me down the hall. And I walked into one of the first rooms and I realized okay it’s not a theater, it’s a museum. 

Then I walked into one of the rooms and there was a hologram. So it was like a 3D image of Franz Kafka in the bathtub naked. And I realized this is a museum to what used to be the Imperial Spa. And this was the main spa where all of these famous figures had come. And so the way that the museum was recapturing this was through these hologram figures of some of their celebrity guests in the past. And if I had read about that, if I had known that it existed ahead of time.

I don’t even know if I would have gone because he wants to go to a museum for a spa. That doesn’t sound interesting to me at all. But to just have it all unfold as this development of like, wait, is this a theater? No, it’s not a theater. It’s a museum. Wait, is that Kafka? Like all of that, it just like every step of the way felt like this incredible discovery. And that is something that I find over and over when I take these trips because you don’t know what there is. Everything is new and it comes as a revelation, which is a really fun feeling. And I think it sort of does. It kind of offsets, I can remind myself of that whenever I start feeling like that tightness that FOMO engenders.

Mar: Yeah, because when you’re walking in the street and you’re going somewhere, you don’t pay attention to the things that are around you. You have an objective, you’re walking, you’re following Google Maps, you’re looking at your phone. You don’t look at what’s around you. So you would not be sidetracked by anything that stands out, especially something that does not stand out. So you wouldn’t even look at it, right? You have an objective, you’re going somewhere. But a little bit through this conversation, right, we’re talking about doing something that’s not like what everybody else does. But at the same time, you’re writing about something that not everybody else does. So do you ask yourself about this paradox? And are you worried sometimes that you’re gonna write about the place and of course you have a following, therefore people are gonna find out about it, and then everybody’s gonna go. Are you worried that you will become one of the best places to go? Like go and check Lisa’s newsletter and then that’s it. All the places that you have will become everybody else’s best places to see or do.

Lisa: Yes. And mean, in some ways this paradox is one that I think has accompanied me in my professional life from the very beginning. The very, very first bit of travel writing I ever did was when I was still in graduate school and I used to write for the American counterpart to Lonely Planet, which was called Let’s Go. And they would send out a group of writers who all had to be students. They would send them out every summer. One year I did Italy or parts of Italy for them, and I was sent to Cinque Terre, which back then was not the huge tourist conglomeration that it is now. But there was a developed tourist industry. Cinque Terre is five towns along the coast.

And I quickly learned that, one of those towns, I think the one that had become most popular with American tourists was Ventemilia, and it had been put on the map of American tourism by Rick Steves, who had included it in one guide. Then I got off in another town and was greeted by somebody who, when I said that I was there from Let’s Go, literally hugged me. And like we had never met before, she told me that that Let’s Go had completely changed the fortunes not only of her place, because she ran like a small kind of pension youth hostel kind of place. But of that particular town. And in that moment, I realized, you know, that I was very young at that point, but you realize the kind of responsibility that you have as a travel writer.

And it’s an awareness that has followed me throughout my career. So I am definitely aware of the paradox and in some ways troubled by it. With The Unplugged Traveler, I originally didn’t want to have recommendations at all. But again it helps me to have people pay for it. That’s the only way I can afford to do it. And so I started offering those only to paid subscribers. So that automatically limits the pool. So these recommendations They’re not being blasted off on social media. They’re not going out to that many people. And of course that raises a whole other set of questions about gatekeeping and to yeah better also problematic.

Mar: Nothing in tourism is black and white or easy to answer.

Lisa: Nothing is black and white. I think, for me, I still believe that travel can do good for the world. I think it makes us more open-minded, it makes us more tolerant, it makes us open to experience, it makes us understand each other better. And I do think that it has real meaning and value because of that. What I hope happens with The Unplugged Traveler is not so much that people read it and think, I want to go and recreate her trip, but that it encourages them to find their own way on a trip, to make their own travels, to have their own discoveries, to open themselves up to that possibility of serendipity that traveling without those lists and algorithms is so good at. Like what else do we have?

Like it’s such a great medium for having the individual experience for connecting with people if you let it and if you look for those things. And so that’s what I hope people will take from it, rather than just a list of addresses or sites they have to see.

Mar: I think this is a beautiful way to end. And I have three rapid fire questions for you. Where are you heading next?

Lisa: Good question. For The Unplugged Traveler, well, I don’t know exactly where, but I’m going to go to Portugal. I’m thinking Coimbra as the next destination. The next place I’ll be writing about is Groningen, the one with the dodgeball that I just got back from. But I haven’t been to Portugal for the newsletter. And so I think that it’s about time. So that will be the next destination.

Mar: So they need to sign up if they want to hear about it. Fantastic.

Lisa: Yes.

Mar: Then what is a travel item that you cannot leave home without? Since it’s not the phone, everybody will always answer the phone. But without the phone

Lisa: Actually notebook. You mentioned before using that sometimes as like when you’re in a cafe. And I was just on a trip where I realized that my notebook was completely full, like completely full, all of the margins and anything. And that made me very nervous. And I spent a good hour running around town trying to buy a new one. So a notebook for me.

Mar: And what has been the app that has been the hardest to give up?

Lisa: Definitely giving up Google Maps when you’re traveling

Mar: Yeah, this would be my most difficult tool.

Lisa: It definitely is a challenge and it’s so much so that I still do travel writing for magazines and newspapers. And I recently was in Belfast on an assignment and I got there and I was probably like an hour into walking around when I realized this isn’t The Unplugged Traveler. I can actually use my phone. And I have to admit it was a bit of a relief to pull up Google Maps as a result.

Mar: However, I’m sure that many people are being inspired by our conversation today. I know that for me it’s has brought me back and I’m like, I meanwhile while we are speaking I’m thinking maybe for a next trip I should do that even if it’s just for an afternoon or for a morning or for a day of just going out and just being in the moment without my phone and without the notifications and without the distractions and without Google Maps and all of these things. And I’m sure that some of the other listeners will be thinking the same way. Maybe not for an entire trip, but maybe for a couple of days or within Europe it’s not so difficult.

And you know, I think that we are probably inspiring them today and we will put the link to your newsletter so that they can go check it out, sign up and read more of your offline adventures. It’s one episode a month, right? One newsletter a month. 

Lisa: Yes, exactly.

Mar: Perfect. And we’ll also put your other work and book and there’s lots of articles and books that and notes that you have written, right? So we’ll put that in the show notes as well. And I hope that we have inspired people to talk more to others, put their phones down, and talk to the person next to them. To the waiter, to the hotel concierge, whoever that is, right?

Lisa: I hope so too. I hope so too.

Mar: Thank you so much, Lisa, and I hope you will enjoy your next trip in Portugal.

Lisa: Thank you. Thank you, Mar.

–

And it’s time for this week’s embarrassing travel story. We’ll call this one the Unexpected Roommate. This one is from Anonymous, and here’s her story. 

I was traveling solo and staying at this really lovely Airbnb in the countryside. It was a little guest cottage on a larger property, and the owners lived in a separate house nearby. One evening I came back after hiking all day, took a shower, had my dinner, and finally got into bed with my book. After a little while, I felt something move near my feet under the covers. I freaked out immediately. I jumped out of bed and threw the covers off, expecting to see a snake or a rat or something horrible. To my surprise, what was under the covers was just a regular orange cat.

It was barely even bothered by the commotion and just kind of looked at me a little annoyed, as if to say, do you mind? I’m sleeping here. I really love cats, so I truly was mostly excited about this turn of events. I just assumed the cat must be the Airbnb owner, so I just let him stay. I ended up sleeping in my bed all night and asked to be let out in the morning. 

A few days later I mentioned the cat in my Airbnb review and got a message from the host. She was surprised by the cat and said that it wasn’t theirs and that she had no idea where the cat came from. I wouldn’t have been too embarrassed. I didn’t exactly do anything wrong, but the host seemed a bit concerned and asked me too many questions. She asked for photos. I guess she was allergic to cats and keeps the Airbnb pet free. I’m guessing she thought I made this whole thing up and it was actually my cat. In the end, everything turned out just fine. And I just wish to this day that I knew where that cat came from. 

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Miss Anonymous. If you have an embarrassing travel story of your own, we’d love to hear it. You can submit yours on our website at www.solofemaletravelers.club.