Our Highly Subjective But Very Smart Guide to Traveling

We’ve got 21 tips, tricks, and pieces of great advice for making your vacation that much better.

April 30, 2018

When we go on vacation, we bring back more than souvenirs. We return with a bit of wisdom. We learn that there’s nothing wrong with planning a trip around croissants. Or that, as you’ll see here, some of our favorite sightseeing happens in the grocery store. What else has our staff learned through the years? Keep reading.

Photo by Alex Lau
1/21
Don’t Leave the Fridge Totally Bare Before You Take Off
Passport, check. 3.4-oz bottles, check. Hunk of Parm in the fridge—wait, what? While I’m packing for vacation, I’m already planning dinner for the night I get home. That way, even if everything in my fridge has wilted while I was away, even if I land after my take-out spots have closed, I can still make cacio e pepe. Leave a hunk of Parm and/or Pecorino, spaghetti, black pepper, and butter. Then have a great vacation, knowing you can eat cheesy pasta minutes after you get home. Beats Sbarro in Arrivals, no? —Tommy Werner, assistant video producer
Illustration by George Wylesol
2/21
When It Comes to Planning, Delegate!
If you’re traveling with a group, split up the work, and play to everyone’s strengths. Put your hyper- organized travel mate in charge of compiling flight info and Airbnb addresses. Ask your fashion friend to find the best local boutiques. If you’re food- obsessed, reservations are on you.

Photo Courtesy Everett Collection
3/21
Schedule Some Alone Time
As an introvert masquerading as an extrovert, I love to plan vacations with other people, then promptly find ways to escape. This doesn’t always go over well with my companions, but over the years I’ve learned how to do it gracefully and with intention.
Even if you claim to never tire of your best friend’s shopping habit or your boyfriend’s sloth-like pace, stealing time for yourself is the only way to sustain all the togetherness that travel entails. You’ll fight less and be more willing to compromise. You’ll be more patient with the picky eater and the friend who can’t navigate and the husband who insists on seeing every room on every floor of the very crowded museum.
You'll realize that not everyone needs to trek an hour with you to find the place the cabbie said has the best pizza in Rome.
How do you do it? I like to lie just a little. Say you have to find the perfect souvenir, or see the Flemish Masters exhibition, or check in with your very demanding job. Don’t apologize. Pick a time to meet back up and make yourself scarce.
What are you supposed to do by yourself? Literally anything. The wonderful thing about travel is that the stuff that would be boring if you did it at home— wandering aimlessly, eating lunch, sitting on a park bench and staring into space—becomes novel when you’re somewhere else. Break off from the pack or the partner for an hour and your experience will be richer, your encounters more unexpected, and your memories more vivid. And unless you spend your solo time at the Wi-Fi hot spot, you’ll feel more present when you see their faces again. —Amanda Shapiro, editor, Healthyish
Photo by Alex Lau
4/21
Rethink Your Souvenirs
My toothbrush infatuation started in college on a trip to Paris. I’d stopped at a pharmacy along Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés for Tylenol when I noticed a case of boldly colored Bioseptyl brushes worthy of a place in the Centre Pompidou. I bought three. In Finland, I found a taxicab-yellow Hay Tann brush that rests, unused, like a statue, in a cup in my bathroom. A simple wood-handled binchotan charcoal toothbrush from Japan still reminds me of a walk through a cedar- built Shinto shrine in Kyoto. For me, toothbrushes bristle with place and uniqueness and remind me more of past trips than a magnet ever could. —Andrew Knowlton, editor-at-large

Illustration by George Wylesol
5/21
Walk Between Destinations
You’re not going to stumble upon hidden gems if you’re always heading from one place to another in an Uber. Walking gives you a better sense of almost any city—and, just as important, helps you work up an appetite for the charming tapas bar you just found.
Photo courtesy of Ralph Crane/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
6/21
It’s Okay to Do Nothing
It’s not possible to hit every place on your list. So don’t even try. That desire to visit 30 different spots is also what makes you end vacation more tired than when you began. Which is why I always carve out do-nothing time. Maybe that means sleeping late, having a leisurely breakfast, and actually reading the books I schlepped. Or I’ll have an early dinner at the one restaurant I really want to try, then head back to the hotel, rock the complimentary robe, and watch whatever awesomely bad movie happens to be on TV. Nothing says vacation like She’s All That. —Carey Polis, digital director

Illustration by George Wylesol
7/21
Travel Without Data
No amount of sunrise yoga or trips to the spa will give you the same sense of relaxation and mental quiet that disconnecting does. Commit to trying a couple days off the grid—or at least as long as it takes you to stop reflexively reaching for your phone.
Illustration by George Wylesol
8/21
Break a Sweat
Eat, drink, sleep, repeat. It’s fun, until it gets exhausting. Which is why we love a good travel workout.
Aaptiv
I’m obsessed with the Aaptiv app—audio workouts with trainers and music. I use it at my local gym, but it’s my savior when I travel and don’t know what equipment, if any, I’ll have access to. My favorite workouts are spinning with Kelly (can be accomplished on stationary bikes from the ’80s in the hotel basement), but I’ve done yoga with Amanda on Swiffered Airbnb floors and a nine- minute ab burn with Sultan in my brother’s guest room too. —Alex Beggs, senior web editor
Go for a Run
Running gets me outside, head on a swivel, taking in the architecture and energy of a place. I like to plan my runs in advance, but there’s only so much you can glean ahead of time, so I make a point to stop in a local run shop to get advice about recommended routes (as well as places to get a post-run coffee or snack). —Claire Saffitz, senior food editor
The Seven-Minute Workout
Hotel gyms are depressing AF. So I hide in my room with the Seven-Minute Workout, which targets all the major muscle groups using no more than a chair and a wall. There’s an app, but it’s blah, so instead I bookmarked the Scientific 7-Minute Workout video on YouTube, which has much cooler music and animation. —Christine Muhlke, editor-at-large

Photo by Peden + Munk
9/21
Make Yourself a Regular
It was the first on a pages-long list of recommendations we took with us to Oaxaca City: “three ladies underneath a canvas tarp at the corner of Jesús Carranza and Calle de Manuel García Vigil.” One woman took orders; another grabbed handfuls of freshly made masa dough, pressed them into thick disks, and slapped them onto the surface of a charcoal-heated clay comal; and the third tended to the tortillas as they got speckled with char, flipping and topping them with spoonfuls of lard, beans, fresh cheese, and toppings ranging from ruddy-colored chorizo crumbles to pork-stuffed poblano chiles, wild mushrooms to strips of fresh green cactus.
After our first bites—the blistered corn dough fresher and earthier and more complex than anything we had ever tasted back in the States—we looked at each other and immediately understood that there were a lot of places on that pages-long list that we weren’t going to get to.
We make such a big deal about breadth when traveling, the sheer number of restaurants we’re able to geotag from, that we sometimes forget about depth. But grabbing a different pastry from the same bakery every morning, or sipping espresso on a bench outside of one coffee shop every afternoon, or becoming a regular at a friendly local bar, even if it’s just for a week, can be more meaningful than—and just as satisfying as—hitting all the “must-trys” on so-and-so’s Best Of list.
We visited the Three Ladies every single day of that trip, very much at the expense of the countless other taquerias and mezcal bars and mole joints that were on our list. But the thing is, when I look back on that vacation, I never find myself waxing regretful about all the places that we could have tried. I just remember the smiles on our new friends’ faces when the Americans came back for a fifth time—and every perfect bite of all those tacos, memelas, and empanadas. —Amiel Stanek, editor, Basically
Photo by Alex Grossman
10/21
Skip What You Know and Drink Local
Sorry, Dorothy, but you’re not in your supermarket’s wine aisle anymore. You’re halfway around the world, and you didn’t travel this far to drink the same wines you keep in your fridge back home. Instead of flipping through the wine list for something familiar when traveling internationally, throw caution to the wind and ask for a local wine. This is easy when you’re in Burgundy and know your way around some Pinot, but you should also do it when it’s not easy, like when you’re in the Czech countryside and you don’t know any of the producers, you don’t know any of the grapes, and you definitely don’t know how to pronounce any of it.
These local wines are often small-production gems that people in the States haven’t even heard of (outside of the conversations you’re going to have about how you discovered the best wines of your life in some random village). And beyond exposing you to exciting unknown bottles, native wines also give you insight into the land, the culture, and the cuisine with every sip. “Terroir” may feel like an abstract thing from your couch, but it’s tangible when you can taste the landscape you drove through that day. And the golden pairing rule of “where it grows, it goes” is golden for a reason: The regional wines go with the regional food, and no matter what excuse you gave your partner for this vacation, we both know you’re there for the food. Be there for the wine too. Because there’s nothing better than exploring a place through taste. —Marissa Ross, contributing wine editor

Photo Courtesy Everett Collection
11/21
Not All Group Tours Are Lame
I used to think I was too good a traveler for tour groups. But after weaving around Hoi An, Vietnam, on Vespas with Vespa Adventures, I realized that people who do this for a living know better than I do and can offer access to places I would never stumble across on my own. Through its Countryside and Islands Explorers tour, I met local mat weavers, shipbuilders, and rice-cracker makers, then ate lunch at an unnamed beach restaurant that served sweet, briny clams with scallions and chiles. And because it was a small group tour—this is key! I like to keep it to fewer than eight—we didn’t cause a scene everywhere we went. And we definitely didn’t have to wear matching oversize T-shirts. —Carey Polis, digital director
Illustration by George Wylesol
12/21
Update Your Itinerary As You Go
As soon as you get home (or mid-vacation if you’re feeling really ambitious), write down all the highlights— restaurants, shops, hikes— that weren’t on your original itinerary. You can’t send your friends to the cool Korean bakery you discovered in Santa Fe if you forget about it.

13/21
Believe In Google Maps
It’s hard to remember the days when I traveled with a manila folder packed with printouts and a clumsily folded map. Now I use Google Maps to plot my daily itinerary for maximum efficiency. It helps me plan the best routes—I can see which places are near each other— and clicking on each pin provides opening hours and other key info. You can use different colors for each type of place (hotel, coffee, etc.) or create layers for each day. Most important, I save it offline so that I don’t have to use precious data roaming. And later, when friends ask me where to go for, say, pastries in Austin, I just send them a link. —Christine Muhlke, editor-at-large
Taos New Mexico @catsthatattack; Du Pain et des Idées, Paris @emilyeisen; Caló des Moro, Majorca, Spain @elle_jaime; Santa Teresa, Costa Rica @lallimusic; New Kowloon, Hong Kong @yungbludlau; Satan's Coffee Corner, Barcelona @nicole_franzen; Colima, Mexico @piariverola; Octopus drying in Oia, Greece @emmafishman; Antelope Canyon, Arizona @merylrothstein
14/21
Instagram Is the Ultimate Vacation Planner
The first thing I do after buying a plane ticket is hop on Instagram—not to fantasize but to find recommendations. I’m on the hunt for those ’grammers who post the kinds of photos that inspire spontaneous airfare purchases (people other than me might call them influencers). They may be compensated to publicly promote specific places, but I’ve found them to be surprisingly real behind the shield of direct message. (How to find them? Search the destination under Tags and scroll until you find something breathtaking.) I found out about the incredible Hörgshlíðarlaug hot springs in Iceland from @thenycelander, an NYC transplant in Reykjavik. I added kayaking in an Alaskan glacial lake to my bucket list thanks to photographer @alexstrohl. A DM on how much you like their work and how you’d love to hear about their favorite spots in (insert destination here) could lead to the highlight of your trip. —Erika Owen, associate director, audience development