8 Random Travel Lessons You Pick Up From Travelling A Lot

Ignoring the seemingly ‘douchey’ title (…”travelling a lot“), let’s jump right in shall we! 🙂

1.) It’s never too early for plane wine! In regular, real-life, you’d never wake up at 7am and head straight to the kitchen to open up a bottle of Pinot Grigio (or perhaps you would – no judgement 🙂 ). When you’re off on holidays, this is absolutely fine. 🙂 In fact the only thing that should every stop you from having an early morning drink on your flight to your holiday is if you don’t actually want a drink. 🙂

[Photo: in Dublin]

2.) You very quickly learn to pack the essentials! No more need to pack 2-tonne hard-drive or heavy denim dungarees you never really had the courage to wear at home but figured you could probably get away with in a destination where no one knows your name. The more you travel, the more you start to figure out which things you never use and very quickly de-prioritised them from your packing so you can travel light and breezy.

[Photo: in Faroe Islands]

3.) Every travel destination is different and unique. Do some research about places you don’t wanna miss out on but definitely avoid getting too bogged down in research. Its fine to spend a day or two browsing through blog posts or magazine articles about where you’re visiting but don’t get to the point where you’ve written almost a mini-guide book itinerary about all the places you wanna visit and all the sights you wanna see before you’ve even visited. This kind of obsession should be reserved for just a few places in your travel-list (if at all), otherwise you never really give yourself the chance to fully experience a place by being spontaneous! Don’t try to mould the destination into what you want it to be, instead be more open to winging it and let yourself get immersed a lot more in the place you’re visiting.

[Photo: in The Alhambra, Spain]

4.) Sometimes, its just worth taking a taxi to the airport. Living smack-bang in the middle of Central London lends itself to being able to use public transport to get anywhere but sometimes (especially so at 4am), getting an Uber or your local taxi firm to the airport is worth its weight in gold.

[Photo: in Menorca]

5.) Airport lounge access is a lot more reasonably priced than you’d think. Loyalty programs like British Airways Exec Club and Avios offer affordable lounge access which, when you factor in your breakfast/lunch/dinner and snacks you’d have at the airport, not to mention the Mimosa or beer you’d throw in for good measure, starts to become really good value for money! Airport lounges offer you all the drinks, foods and comfort with no restrictions! (In most U.K. airports, you can get this for as little as £20!)

[Photo: in Ronda, Spain]

6.) You learn to be flexible when it comes to destinations you want to travel to (or at least you should try to). Travelling often means you soon start to fall in love with destinations you never even considered before and very quickly start to acknowledge your limited knowledge of the world (lets face it, no one – even Sir David Attenborough, know 100% of everything there is to know about the world, if anyone did, the need for science and exploration would be redundant). This limited knowledge comes with a positive upside of being pleasantly surprised by new travel discoveries.

[Photo: in Collonges La Rouge, France]

7.) Don’t bother trying to dress up when you travel (even if the dressing up is for the destination you’re headed to). Your discomfort makes it just not worth it. Travel for the journey. Wear your comfiest elasticated trousers for your journey if you need to. You can always change into ‘appropriate clothes’ when you get to your destination.

[Photo: in Menorca]

8.) Make a conscious effort to drink lots of water when you’re travelling. Sounds so simple and silly but this is one of the first things to go out of the window when you travel (let’s face it, there are so many lovely distractions and lots of duty-free fragrances to try on – if you don’t smell of at least 25 different fragrances, you’re not doing it right) yet, as it turns out, lack of water is a pretty major reason why you’ll end up constipated and struggle to poop when you get to your destination (which is never fun!).