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The Seven Joys of Travel, From a Joyful Traveler

By Dave Seminara

• May 7, 2016

Thomas Swick has been a farmhand in Alsace, an English teacher in Poland and a journalist at newspapers like The Sun-Sentinel, in South Florida, where he was travel editor for 19 years. In a genre now saturated with destination marketers masquerading as travel writers, Mr. Swick stands out as a perceptive, old-school travel writer whose prose brings celebrated and obscure destinations to life. In his new book “ The Joys of Travel: And Stories That Illuminate Them” Mr. Swick draws on a lifetime of travel wisdom and experiences in sharing his seven pleasures of travel: anticipation, emotional connection, movement, novelty, discovery, break from routine and heightened appreciation of home. Following are edited excerpts from a conversation with him.

Q. You wrote in the chapter on anticipation, “Long ago I realized that if I was feeling low, as if life no longer held any interest, it was because I had no trips planned.” Do you still need to have a trip on the horizon to be content?

A. I really want to have a trip to look forward to. I live in Florida, and I don’t have to suffer through long winters, but in the summer we yearn to get away from the heat and humidity. I love the idea of getting away from the routine, the sameness of everyday life.

You write that trains are a voyeuristic pleasure — “as close as we get to the fantasy of dying and then looking down on the action,” but on buses, “You can talk to people, but they’re not always the people you want to talk to.’’

There are some countries, like Mexico, that have very luxurious buses. But it’s still not romantic. The train goes its own way, it has its own tracks, it shows you the backs of things in a way that buses don’t. It’s hard to romanticize bus travel. On planes and ships, they take you away from the world, and you’re surrounded by nothingness, sea or sky, but on a train you’re escaping the world, but you’re going through the middle of towns where people have to stop and wait for your passage. Sitting in the dining car, looking up from your breakfast, watching places go by, it’s a wonderful experience.

You’ve been both a traveler and an expatriate. You wrote, “Living abroad is the travel equivalent of monogamy,” but while travelers are rewarded with novelty, do they “miss out on the intimacy and insights” an expatriate gets from a lengthy stay?

I haven’t lived abroad since I left Poland in 1982. But when I travel now, I try to replicate that experience of being an expat, not just seeing the sights but trying to get beneath the surface of a place, figuring out what it’s like to live there. I’ve found that the places that are comfortable to live in aren’t always the most interesting to visit.

One of your joys of travel is making emotional connections with the people we meet on the road. Is there one country in particular where you’ve found it easy to make these kinds of connections?

Brazil stands out. I found the Brazilians to be incredibly open. Brazil is the only place I’ve been to where you call people about getting together, and they say, “Sure, how about tonight?” It’s usually the less visited, less glamorous places where it’s easiest to meet people. Or it could be in an out-of-the-way place in a popular country like France or Italy.

In an era of instant communication, is it harder to experience the heightened appreciation of one’s home, another of your joys?

The distance from home is shorter. I feel sorry for young travelers today who probably won’t experience that feeling of going somewhere and feeling completely cut off from everyone they know and being in a new place where they are on their own and have to fend for themselves. That allows you to understand home better than if you are constantly in touch with it.

The Joy of Travel – 20 Reasons Why Travelling is Good for Your Career, Personal Growth and Soul

By Author Rossi Thomson

Posted on Last updated: 5th September 2022

Categories Lists , Travel , Travel Experiences

Travelling seems to be the buzzword on everybody’s lips these days.

With cheap flights and options that vary from short city breaks and luxury staycations to round-the-world trips, it has never been easier (or more affordable) to pack a bag and go. For a day, a weekend, a week, a month or even more.

Seeing amazing architecture, admiring centuries-old pieces of art, tasting new foods and accumulating memorable experiences to last you a lifetime becomes a quasi-addiction that you are only too happy to feed.

I call it The Joy of Travel .

In other words, that indescribable feeling you get when you make the first step on a new journey to discover yet another portion of the world. It doesn’t matter if the journey is of a thousand miles or much, much less. What matters is that it makes you feel alive.

Yet, soon the people around you (like parents, employers and close friends) may start questioning your choice to travel.

• Why do you spend so much money on travelling ? Don’t you have a mortgage to pay?
• Why do you need to go there when you have all that you may want at home? Did you know that they don’t sell marmite in shops abroad?!
• Why do you need to go on another city break this year? Haven’t you already been to three?
• Why are you dragging your kids to yet another museum with art by people we have never heard of? Don’t you know that kids simply want to play?
• Why did you take a sabbatical instead of concentrating on your career?
• Why there is a gap in your CV? It seems like you value having fun over working hard.
• What if we hire you and then you leave our company in order to travel more?

These are all difficult questions that everyone who loves travelling has been pressurised with. At least once. Often, countless times.

Yes, on the surface, regular travelling may seem disruptive to an established daily routine which includes family obligations and a good job. It is also draining in terms of money and paid vacation time.

Yet, travelling gives you so much more in return. From the deeply satisfying feeling of being connected to other people and the world to an improved skill set and higher stress threshold.

So, in order to help you deal with those nagging and niggling questions about your travel habits which you may be getting from friends, relatives, colleagues and your (current or potential) boss, here are twenty reasons why travelling is actually good for you.

Read on, enjoy, and use as appropriate!

The Joy of Travel –

20 reasons why travelling is good for your career, personal growth, and soul, 1. travel helps you hone your decision-making skills.

With so many options in terms of travel, you quickly learn to make complex decisions about where to go and when, what accommodation to book and what sights to see. You know that you can’t cram it all into a couple of days, so you precision-pick what you are interested in and what is not your cup of tea. You learn to have at all times several variables in mind. For example:

• money – how much you can afford to spend on accommodation, food and sightseeing;
• distance – how far from your point of interest you can stay; and
• time – how many hours you have at your disposal at each place on your schedule.

The more you travel, the more you hone your decision-making process.

Sooner, you find it easier to make decisions with regards to everything else in your life. At work, this streamlined approach and the ability to juggle several variables and different outcomes is what sets you apart from the rest.

2. Travel Helps You Develop Your Research Skills

Research is a big part of both study and work processes nowadays. The ability to research new ways to do things and having the skills to find out what your competitors are up to can be the decisive factor between failure and success. Both in business and your personal life.

Well, have you noticed how much research you need to do everytime you plan a trip?!

From finding the best tickets in terms of time slots and prices to discovering those hidden gems that all the other tourists miss, a well-conducted research is at the basis of your successful trip.

You can easily transfer your research skills from your travels to your job: monitoring industry leaders’ websites for promotions, discovering blogs and articles by local experts, unearthing little-known bits of information both online and in print.

Research helps save money and find valuable data. Being good at research will take you to the forefront of your field.

3. Travel Helps You Learn to Better Communicate Your Expectations

You can’t be reticent when you travel, especially if you travel as a couple or as a part of a group.

Failing to tell your partner that you really, really want to visit a particular sight may lead to your not seeing it all. People rarely are able to read minds and get tired of always having to ask you what you want to do. Plus, you usually have limited time at each destination. And, once you have left it, you may never have the chance to go back.

So, you quickly learn to communicate exactly what you want to see and do during a particular trip.

Making your expectations clear is a valuable skill in any work environment. It puts everybody on the same page as to what needs to be done and achieved. It also helps prevent conflicts or misunderstandings as no-one likes to have to second-guess what people around them think.

4. Travel Helps You Develop Your Negotiation and Compromise Skills

All this is very good but what happens when you and your travelling partner expect different things from a trip (assuming that you communicated them clearly to one another – see point 3 above).

This is when you soon develop your negotiation skills. You agree to do one thing as long as they agree to something proposed by you. You suggest that you are happy to go to the sea, but it would be nice if next year they come to the mountains with you.

Or, if everything else fails, you both agree to spend a bit of time apart. So, you go to the museum you have always wanted to see and your partner relaxes by the pool all morning book in hand.

It’s all a question of achieving mutually acceptable compromises. Which make travelling so much more enjoyable.

Being a good negotiator can open many professional doors for you. From being able to negotiate the best salary and perks for yourself to being in control during a difficult meeting with a supplier, it all comes down to seeing what the other party is offering, knowing what your limitations are and then marrying both as best as possible without you or the other side losing face.

5. Travel Helps You Fine-Tune Your Organisational and Scheduling Skills

Once you have settled on a destination, it’s time to begin the planning stage. Soon, you become a master of compiling complex schedules. After all, you want to experience the joy of travel to the max. So, even after a strict elimination process, you still pick to do many, many things within one day. In all honesty, back home it would take you weeks to complete the same number of activities.

Still, anything is possible, you reassure yourself. You can definitely:

• arrive early morning;
• drop your stuff at ‘Left Luggage’ at the train station;
• queue (while the queue is still tiny) to climb to the top of Bruneleschi’s dome of the Gothic Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore;
• spend a moment in the adjacent Baptistry;
• walk up to Accademia, pick your pre-booked ticket and simply fall in love with Michelangelo’s David;
• then walk down to Palazzo Vecchio and Piazza dei Signori;
• admire the statues in the Loggia della Signoria;
• pick your pre-booked tickets and spend a spellbinding hour and a half in the Uffizi Gallery;
• walk down to Ponte Vecchio to see the views and the goldsmiths’ shops;
• then pop down to Michelangelo’s birth house followed by a quick visit to the Cathedral of Santa Croce in order to see the tombs of some of Italy’s most notable sons;
• have a sit-down meal at a local restaurant tucking into some Tuscan delights;
• pick your luggage and get on the train to Pisa that same evening; and
• book into your hotel for a good night sleep.

Based on a day I planned for myself and spent in Florence, Italy some years ago. It all worked like a charm and was interspersed with lots of gelato-eating, photo-taking, and window-shopping, too.

Even if your travel style slows down with time, this ability to organise your day and schedule activities in an organic manner (taking in consideration local opening times, the influx of tourists and the walkable distances in town) is a valuable skill.

Being organised, efficient and able to set up and follow a schedule is something to be proud of and it certainly helps a lot both in your family and professional lives.

6. Travel Helps You Be More Flexible and Think on the Spot

Things happen when you least expect them. This seems especially valid when you are on the road.

Last summer our flight from Treviso, Italy to Stanstead, England was canceled just past midnight.

What to do? We spent the night at a hotel (paid by the air company) and in the morning we travelled close to four hours to Bergamo where we were placed on another plane. Then, in accordance with the legal framework, we claimed compensation and, after several phone calls and emails, were paid a small amount for our troubles.

It was inconvenient, unpleasant, and very, very hot. We were travelling with a small child and some rather heavy luggage. But there was nothing we could do to make the plane come pick us up from Treviso airport. Instead, we adjusted ourselves to the situation and managed to reach England after all.

The ability to be flexible is highly valued. Knowing that in spite of your best efforts and adherence to plan, things can still go wrong, will free up space in your mind to think on your feet. This way you are able to react according to the actual circumstances rather than in line with what you want to be happening right now.

7. Travel Helps You Understand the Power of Money and Budgets

Two euros (or pounds) for a coffee doesn’t sound that much. A new top and a new bag are the order of the day when you need a little bit of cheering up. Unfortunately, these spontaneous expenses quickly add up and then you wonder why you are always short of cash towards the end of the month.

When you really want to travel and have amazing experiences, you soon realise that the only thing that stops you from doing it is not having enough money. After all, transport, insurance, accommodation, and food are not free.

Hence, you soon start not only to save any spare euro that you have but also to judge the necessity of each purchase through the prism of your travel plans. A new pair of earrings for 10 euros?! This equals your food budget for a day in a far-flung place.  A night out on the town costing you at least 50 euros?! This may buy you a slightly more comfortable hotel room rather than having to stay at a hostel again.

In other words, you quickly learn to prioritise your purchases and to meticulously budget for your time abroad.

On the other hand, once you are at your destination, you are only too aware that not sticking to your daily budget can be the difference between having a great time and finding yourself in financial trouble far away from home. With no immediate support network to help you along, spending above budget 20 euros frivolously every day may be the difference between eating the last few days of your trip or not.

Being good with money and being able to stick to budgets are highly valuable skills both in personal and professional plans. At a time of overconsumption and of companies cutting corners only too willingly, being able to show that you are a dab hand at prioritising expenses and saving money may be your strongest feat.

8. Travel Helps You Sharpen Your Eye for Bargains

In this financial line of thought, travel can also help you develop an uncanny ability to spot a bargain from a hundred feet.

Buying a combined ticket for three sights will save you one third of their individual prices? Done! Waiting for the sales in order to get a new cabin-size suitcase and save 50% off its original price? Excellent!

At the same time, you soon start to differentiate between a real bargain and a false one.

Buying something in a package may not always translate into financial savings. Especially, if due to lack of time, you only end up doing one of the pre-paid things.

Real bargains are great not only for the money you save but also for giving you that fabulous feeling that you have gotten extra value against a portion of the full price.

Knowing the shortcuts and the techniques for achieving bargainous prices will help the budgets of both your family and your company. This will earn you praise and more available money to spend on other (hopefully travel-related) stuff.

9. Travel Helps You Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

People tend to stick to what they know. Be it other people, fashion styles, and even places.

This is why being the newcomer in a tight-knit group can be such a daunting prospect. And why some people tend to spend their every holiday over thirty years at the same resort.

When you embrace the joy of travel for what it really is, i.e. exploring the world and its many different faces, rather sooner than later you need to get out of your comfort zone.

• You may need to get up really early in order to catch a plane. Even though you may not be an early riser at all.
• You may need to approach people and ask in a foreign language (and mainly with your hands) how to get from point A to point B. Even though you are anxious just thinking about talking to strangers.
• You may need to get your point across when you are unhappy about a service. Even though you are non-confrontational to a fault.

Travelling gets you places and most of them are beyond the confines of what you know. Being able to navigate the unknown is a valuable skill and state of mind.

It makes you more self-assured, more confident, more open to the world.

Well-based confidence can give you a competitive edge and get you far ahead on your career path.

10. Travel Helps You Find Creative Ways to Overcome Obstacles

Obstacles may present themselves at any time when you travel.

It could be:

• luggage not arriving at the same time as you;
• weather that is not as nice as the forecast promised;
• large crowds visiting the same sights as you even though the travel guidebook that you read promised that they were off-the-beaten-track.

It could be anything, really. For example, many people come to Italy expecting it to be always sunny and nice outside. But here (especially in Northern Italy) it rains and even snows. So, what to do when you imagined sun-soaked walks, gelato in hand, but instead you are faced with a downpour.

Well, instead of locking yourself in your hotel room and complain on social media about the injustice of it all, you put your creative hat on. You capitalise on things that the country is famous for and which are weather-impervious. Like Italy has lots of thermal baths and spas, large expos, cooking classes, great indoor places for children to play, and so much more that can be done inside (see the full list here , in fact).

This ability to come up with creative solutions to obstacles which may threaten to derail your plans will come in handy in your professional endevours, too. Capitalising on your travel experiences, you may be the person to come up with an out-of-the-box suggestion as to how to overcome a problem your company is facing.

11. Travel Helps You Learn How to Mediate Between People

When you travel with other people (family, colleagues or friends), sooner or later there will be a situation which will make everyone jump against everybody else.

One of your group wants to go to the beach and another wants to shop?! Cue an argument that can spoil the whole day.

Stepping in with a calm head and mediating between people can dissipate the stress. Allowing everyone to express how they feel and setting up firm but fair rules for a respectful exchange is a difficult task but someone has to do it. If you accept the challenge and don’t let emotions rule, everyone will be thankful and much happier at the end of it all.

Mediation is a valuable skill. Knowing when to let people talk and helping them express themselves in a constructive manner will earn you kudos at work and at home.

12. Travel Helps You Expand Your Horizons

Have you ever thought that your country has the best art, the most interesting history and the best looking and most hospitable people?

Well, travel can change your set ideas about the world.

You may come to realise that people have different ways to do the same thing. That certain foods taste better abroad. That every country has unique nature, beautiful art, and lovely people. Just like yours.

This enriches your soul and makes you more appreciative of things which before you might have easily dismissed.

Travel helps you expand your expectations of the world. Hence, you are better prepared to work in a multicultural environment and have a stronger foundation to deal with a team with diverse cultural norms.

13. Travel Helps You Experience a Sense of Purpose and Achievement

In a world overloaded with information which makes us question how happy we are with what we have, travel can bring us closer to that elusive feeling of feeling content.

There is nothing better than the sense of achievement after a long day of exciting sightseeing when, in a short amount of time, you have seen so much.

Be it a visit to an art gallery to enjoy the company of the Old Masters. Be it a hike through a gorgeous place. Be it a food tour savouring your way through the flavours of a nation.

Travel can really make you feel purposeful and full of energy. After all, travelling for most people equals achieving their dreams of seeing certain fabled places and experiencing them for themselves. There is nothing better than having your dreams become reality.

Having this sense of purpose and achievement makes you a happier, calmer person, too. And it propagates into all of the different spheres of your life.

14. Travel Helps You Develop Your Interests

Chances are you travel to places that interest you in order to see things that interest you, too.

Often, lost in the stress of daily life, the first thing we forget to take care of is our hobbies and our personal interests. We may not notice it at first, but making time for them becomes more and more difficult when faced with a demanding family and job.

Travel may be the only chance we get to reconnect with what is important to us.

I used to have a very stressful, high-power job that kept me chained to the computer up to 12 hours a day. Monday to Friday with the weekends often taken over, too. Going on short breaks to Italy to experience its art, food and sun helped me stay sane. Just knowing that Venice was only two hours away from London and that I could easily get there and see all that artistic beauty was enough to give me a bit of respite.

Other people travel in order to practice their photography, to eat new foods, to develop their artistic skills.

When we are too caught in our daily lives, travel opens a little bracket allowing us to re-centre on ourselves, to think about what we want to do with our lives. It also gives us the impetus to start making the changes we need in order to focus more on our own interests (both creative and purely personal).

15. Travel Helps You Awaken Your Creativity

Faced with the exuberance of the world, your heart and your soul soon begin to need to be surrounded by colour and excitement every waking moment.

It could be something as simple as buying colourful fabrics and authentic souvenirs abroad in order to give your home a touch of happiness and creativity.

Or, it could be that after a while you may begin to feel a desire to replicate on home turf the wonderful things that you’ve seen on your travels abroad.

For example, many people are inspired to start a business after falling in love with a particular destination. From importing its food to organising trips to it – the sky is the limit when you feel the creative sparkle in your soul.

I started my blog Rossi Writes led by my excitement of having just moved to live in Italy . Three years later I am still at it and writing has been a great outlet for me during moments of feeling bleak and down.

16. Travel Helps You Get Physically Active

In a world where spending all your time in front of a computer is an acceptable way to lead your life, travel gets us moving.

Getting from point A to point B requires that we leave the house and get on a plane (or train, car, boat). Then, once at our destination, we use our feet to get to know it.

By walking around we see the most exciting, most beautiful things. It could be a walk through a museum; it could be a hike through a stunning landscape. The important thing is that we use not just our mind, but also our body in order to experience the world.

17. Travel Helps You Test Your Resilience to Stress

Being able to work under pressure is a basic job requirement these days. We are supposed to be able to juggle several things at once both at work and home. Obviously, without breaking a sweat.

Travel is the perfect school to test and increase our resilience to stress.

Starting with expecting the unexpected and learning to deal with it, and ending with mastering the communication process with people from different cultures and with different attitudes, travel throws at us many curveballs at any one time.

It may feel scary at the start, but you soon adapt yourself to it all. From learning that eating on your own at a restaurant is not an insurmountable task to not expecting that everything and everyone has to stop to tend to your needs. Travel is character-shaping and -strengthening.

18. Travel Helps You Become More Aware of Health and Safety

At home you may be living in a safety bubble guaranteed first by your parents and then by your partner and/or community. Travel can shift your perspective about the world.

Soon you learn to read people and situations better and to make decisions based not on emotions and fleeting wants but on how safe the experience will be. You learn to keep your guard up. You realise that you are in charge of your decisions and your belongings.

You stop seeing yourself as a fragile flower that needs constant supervision and help. Instead, you act as a grown-up person who can stand up for herself and judge a situation based on observed and perceived dangers.

From simple things like deciding where to eat based on hygiene to much more complicated situations when you need to decide in a split second how to extricate yourself from some potentially unpleasant circumstances, you learn to trust your sixth sense. To appreciate how safe the environment is and to take only measured risks.

19. Travel Helps You Appreciate What You Have

At the end of a trip (be it of several weeks or a day-long) there is nothing better than getting back to your own bed. At least for me.

Having witnessed what the world has to offer – from its most beautiful, most inspiring offerings to its (sometimes) darker side – you begin to look at home with different eyes.

You may have been unsatisfied with your lot in life, but having seen how other people live (and still smile no matter what), you learn to value so much more what you, yourself, have achieved.

What you have may not be loads, but suddenly just it being there, waiting for you to return, becomes a driving force.

Travelling is great! Having something or someone to return to is what gives you roots.

20. Travel Helps You Feel More Connected

Travelling – actively exploring new places and learning about them – makes you feel more connected with the world as a whole. You observe and learn how other people, other cultures live. And through the contact with them, you connect better both with your inner self and those around you.

Through the different experiences you have abroad you learn more about yourself – what makes you tick, what makes you happy and what makes you sad. Through this knowledge, you feel more committed to yourself as a person, more willing to stand up and fight for your dreams.

Through the positive experiences you accumulate when you travel, you feel more engaged with humanity. More open to other people, their stories and their point of view.

And this connection, this feeling of being alive, of belonging is what gives us the strength to continue forward.

Thank you for reading! Please, leave me a comment, pin the image below or use the buttons right at the end to share it on social media.

For more stories like this you can follow me on  Facebook  and  subscribe  to my weekly strictly no-spam newsletter.

angeladowdy

Friday 22nd of January 2021

Hi Rossi, I am so impressed with this article! Would you possibly allow me to use some quotes from this ...I'm writing an article about The Joy of Discovery through Travel ! I would certainly give you the credit. Also you can have a look at my website https://embracesouthernstates.com/ (focus on Southern USA). Exciting to find a soul who shares my JOY !!

Dear Angela,

Thank you for your comment and for your kind words about my blog post. You are very welcome to place a link to my article in your writing. Unfortunately, I don't allow direct quotes in line with the advice of the copyright attorney who helped me after a large number of my blog posts and photos were stolen. Thank you for your understanding.

Best wishes,

Sunday 24th of February 2019

Wow....amazing article, Rossi! Absolutely loved it! Spot on, insightful, so well written - I’d always thought travel was good for the soul and fostered personal growth (not to mention aiding in understanding people of other cultures which in turn promotes PEACE), but until reading your article I didn’t realize in just how many ways it can make you a better, stronger, smarter, more self reliant person! Travel rocks! And it’s sooo much more fun than sitting in a classroom... Also, I agree with all your “20 Reasons” and found myself thinking several times, “...that is SO true! I never thought of it that way...” when thinking about my own experiences with travel. Travel is a marvelous teacher. I’m so glad I found your blog.

Monday 25th of February 2019

Thank you for your very kind words, Lisa! I am glad that my blog post resonated with you. I wrote it very spontaneously and had a lot of fun putting it together. It's nice to know that somebody else finds it interesting. Best wishes,

Sonia M Checchia

Friday 27th of April 2018

I can't tell you how much I love this article. Thank you.

Saturday 5th of May 2018

Thank you very much for your very kind words. I really enjoyed writing this blog post. :) Best wishes, Rossi

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95 most inspirational travel quotes ever penned

Our favourite inspirational travel quotes have encouraged us to travel with abandon over the years. Perhaps they will do the same for you…

For us, there is no such thing as luxury travel; travel is, by default, a luxury. It is a privilege provided by the country of our birth, a privilege that many are not as fortunate to enjoy.

Sometimes, we have to pinch ourselves at just how ridiculous our lives have become: an ex-teacher and jobbing writer travelling the world for a living. It is absurd, it is astonishing, it is luxury.

When I first went travelling at 21 years old, my father gave me this quote scrawled on a piece of card.

It infused me with wanderlust. It encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone, make the most of my time, see the world and enjoy the freedom that comes with being on the road. It remains one of the most inspirational travel quotes I’ve read (even if Twain did not actually say it).

Today, 20 years and almost 100 countries later, it’s still in my wallet. Despite its tattered and dishevelled appearance, it’s every bit as important to me now as it was then.

With that in mind, we’ve collated our most beloved inspirational travel quotes to encourage readers to “explore, dream and discover” for themselves.

inspirational travel quotes

1. “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

2. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

3. “Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.” – Paulo Coelho

4. “With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.” – Sandra Lake

5. “When overseas you learn more about your own country, than you do the place you’re visiting.” – Clint Borgen

6. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

7. “Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon.” – Paul Brandt

8. “The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” – Henry David Thoreau

9. “The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling

10. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

11. “When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” – Susan Heller Anderson

12. “No place is ever as bad as they tell you it’s going to be.” – Chuck Thompson

13. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharlal Nehru

14. “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

15. “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” – Charles Dudley Warner

16. “A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships were built for.” – John A. Shedd

17. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux

18. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

19. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

20. “Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli

21. “Once a year, go somewhere you’ve never been before.” – The Dalai Lama

22. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang

23. “What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon

24. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

25. “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux

26. “A traveller without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi

27. “Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” – Aldous Huxley

28. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

29. “All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson

30. “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” – Anatole France

31. “I can’t control the wind but I can adjust the sail.” – Ricky Skaggs

32. “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfilment.” – Hilaire Belloc

33. “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

34. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

35. “The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson

36. “You don’t have to be rich to travel well.” – Eugene Fodor

37. “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

38. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber

39. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost

40. “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

41. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

42. “Once the travel bug bites, there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.” ― Michael Palin

43. “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

44. “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

45. “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman

46. “There are far, far better things ahead than we leave behind.” – C.S. Lewis

47. “Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” – Freya Stark

48. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley

49. “All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” – Paul Fussell

50. “I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain

51. “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G.K. Chesterton

52. “Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.” – Elizabeth Drew

53. “People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck

54. “Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” – Ray Bradbury

55. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustave Flaubert

56. “The journey not the arrival matters.” – T. S. Eliot

57. “Time flies. It’s up to you to be the navigator.” – Robert Orben

58. “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

59. “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” – Oscar Wilde

60. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

61. “If an ass goes travelling, he’ll not come home a horse.” – Thomas Fuller

62. “Travelling tends to magnify all human emotions.” – Peter Hoeg

63. “To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, To gain all while you give, To roam the roads of lands remote: To travel is to live.” – Hans Christian Andersen

64. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark

65. “I am not the same having seen the moon shine from the other side of the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher

66. “I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on earth. Then I ask myself the same question.” – Harun Yahya

67. “I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.” – George Bernard Shaw

68. “A wise traveler never despises his own country.” – Carlo Goldoni

69. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – Andre Gide

70 “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta

71. “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls.” – Anais Nin

72. “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

73. “The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

74. “A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.” – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

75. “He who would travel happily must travel light.” – Antoine de St. Exupery

76. “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

77. “The more I travelled the more I realised that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.” – Shirley MacLaine

78. “Live your life by a compass, not a clock.” – Stephen Covey

78. “Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.” – Lawrence Block

80. “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” – Chief Seattle – or Si’ahl

81. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller

82. “It is not down in any map; true places never are.” – Herman Melville

83. “We live in a world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharlal Nehru

84. “The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself” – Wallace Stevens

85. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” – Neale Donald Walsch

86. “Paris is always a good idea.” – Julia Ormond (although it is often wrongly attributed to Audrey Hepburn)

87. “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the trip.” – Babs Hoffman

88. “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” – Anthony Bourdain

89. “Jobs fill your pocket but adventures fill your soul.” – Jaime Lyn Beatty

90. “It is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.” – Sir Ernest Shackleton

91. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” –  Jack Kerouac

92. “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain

93. “Live with no excuses and travel with no regrets.” – Oscar Wilde

94. “Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.” – Roy M Goodman

95. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain (or possibly H Jackson Brown Jr )

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Stunning nature near Shangri-La, China, makes these travelers dance for joy.

Travel Happy: How to Be a More Joyful Traveler

Follow these expert tips to cultivate joy during your next trip—and long after returning home.

By Sean O'Connor

In my personal and professional experience as a life coach, joy is found wherever you get completely enveloped in an experience, when you’ve really lost yourself: your worries, your ego, your past, and your future. Travel is the perfect time for this reboot. It’s also an opportunity to step outside your comfort zone, explore new approaches to life, and form new habits.

Below are some insights into how you push your limits to really lose yourself in the travel experience, and cultivate more joy in the process. Then take the ethos behind these joy-inducing activities back to your daily life at home.

Lose Yourself in the Music

In Fiji last summer, I donned a sulu —a sarong-type garment both men and women wear—and danced the nights away in the village where I was staying on the southern tip of Taveuni , known as the Garden Island of Fiji. Never underestimate the power of dance. I was sweaty and a little uncomfortable, but I made friends shaking it with what seemed like absolutely everyone in the community. I danced with old women and men, too. I moved my hips enough that I had to constantly retie my sulu until a local helped me to tie it properly. Certainly I looked funny at times. My ego told me to stop. What’s really special is when you can push through any discomfort or self-consciousness to truly lose yourself in the moment.

Coaching Takeaway: Whether you are traveling or in your own environs, see where you can re-create this experience and take advantage of the smile-inducing, heart-rate rising, feel-good activity of dancing with abandon.

Connect Deeply With Others

Create real, true, deep connections. Introduce yourself to an elderly person. Make a new best friend. Get so connected with someone you will feel like their home is your home and vice versa. Learn as much as you can about who they are, and be willing to share yourself, too. When language barriers get in your way, there’s always a possibility of communicating with a translator or simply communicating deeply through other means—it doesn’t have to be spoken language. Don’t miss these kinds of opportunities; they can lead to doors opening that offer you something entirely unique, like when I attended a traditional wedding in the heart of South Africa’s Zululand at the invitation of a friend of a friend of the security guard at my residence.

Coaching Takeaway: Creating meaningful connections with people while traveling will help you deepen and expand your capacity to empathize with people in your world. This, in turn, will help you create more authentic, connected relationships in your family, your romantic life, and even in your workplace.

Happy kayakers high-five after an exhilarating swim in French Polynesia.

Help a Brother Out

On the coast of Mozambique , while my travel mates went out diving with whale sharks, my forgetfulness bit me in the butt. I had not packed my diver certification card, so I was left land-bound. With nothing else to do, I drove into town and, on the way, picked up some locals walking in from their villages. I decided to spend the day helping one run his errands. My rental car was a boon for him. We shopped for vegetables at the local market, made a visit to the clinic, negotiated on his wages with his boss at his job, and visited his young son. Using my day to explore the local scene and help this man sort out his problems helped me remove myself from my own. Whether it is a formal volunteer opportunity or something more spontaneous, help out others whenever possible to access a deeper level of joy within yourself. It gives us access to our highest selves.

Coaching Takeaway: You already provide service to your family or in the workplace while at home. See where you can go further and push your comfort zone of helping others. Look for opportunities while traveling to get this habit started.

Step Blindly Off a Cliff

Don’t do this literally. Figuratively, I am speaking about stepping out into the unknown. This must be practiced. Our natural inclination as humans is toward survival and comfort. We avoid the unknown. Find an experience on your trip that truly feels like stepping out into the unknown. This might be showing up somewhere with no itinerary or staying in a local’s home, if lucky enough to get invited. Or step off the side of a plane (parachute attached). It is going to look different for everyone. What is comfortable for one person is wildly uncomfortable to another. Personally, having no plans tends to make me a bit anxious. I have to practice being with the unknown and the unplanned. Doing so helps me expand my repertoire of how to deal with situations out of my control, quash the anxiety, and create more space for joy.

Coaching Takeaway: The landscape beyond our comfort zones is where we discover new things about ourselves, where we expand and grow. Challenge yourself while on your travels, then take the practice home. Be safe, be culturally sensitive, but be bold.

Engage the Senses

You may already be a person who lives by the adage of stopping to smell the roses. But life is a busy vixen. She is full of tricks and turns to throw us off our game. Our ability to be truly present erodes over time. Travel is a great opportunity to hit the reset button, and once we’ve reset we have the luxury of engaging our senses to practice being present. This can look a lot of different ways, but a simple exercise is to practice a different sense each day. Keep a sense journal and, on day one, inventory the smells that infiltrate your olfactory receptors. Then work through the others.

Coaching Takeaway: Re-upping your skills of being present is actually a meditative exercise to clear your mind, and in a clear mind joy has room to bubble up and spread within and outside of us.

• Nat Geo Expeditions

Unpack the Story of Food

Food is a cultural staple. Every place you will visit has a food story and things that make the geography unique from a culinary standpoint. While cooking a large meal for a group at a ski lodge in the Southern Alps of New Zealand , I made new friends and learned heaps on the sheep-farming industry, all while cooking lamb steaks on the grill. Use food as your foray into learning about the ingredients, traditions, and techniques that make a place special. Curiosity and learning stimulate the brain and underpin creativity, which in turn can lead to joy.

Coaching Takeaway: Cooking is a way to practice presence and truly be in the moment, making yourself available for learning, laughter, and creativity. Taking time to learn and enjoy the process from beginning to end will be sure to raise our joy factor a few degrees.

Start With Yourself

Here you are. Right here, right now. Your joy matters. The world needs a lot more of it, and your capacity to cultivate it within you directly translates to creating a space for happiness around you. While on the plane or train traveling to your destination, make a list of joy-blockers. Note that we are not talking simply about the things that make you smile or laugh. Joy is that deep contentment and lasting happiness that you can call upon within yourself even in the most troubling of circumstances. Take a look at what factors, beliefs, and circumstances rob you of your joy. While you are out experiencing your destination, work through your list of joy-blockers and see what action there is or what support you might need to bypass them.

Coaching Takeaway: Joy is really something you can actively cultivate, so use your next chunk of travel time to create this garden for yourself and share the bounty with others.

Life and leadership coach Sean O’Connor hosts a podcast called Joy Riders. He is based in Los Angeles. Find him on his website , Facebook , and Instagram .

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Travelling Without a Passport

Every Travel Quote Ever

Say goodbye to scouring the internet in search of inspirational travel quotes to keep you focussed on saving for that next big trip. Instead take a read through our list of every travel quote ever. We dare you to try and not be inspired.

Are we missing one of your favs? Share your own travel quote in the comments and we might just include it!

Inspirational Travel Quotes

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” – Unknown

“I am not a great book, I am not a great artist, but I love art and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller.” – Michael Palin

“I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher

“He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” – Moorish proverb

“People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck

“The best journeys in life are those that answer questions you never thought to ask.” ― Rich Ridgeway

“To travel is to evolve.” – Pierre Bernardo

Take the first step, the rest will follow. Book the ticket, apply for the job, send the email, jump into the water. The rest gets easier from there. – Abi from http://www.insidethetravellab.com/

“A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander.” ― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“You don’t have to be rich to travel well.” – Eugene Fodor

“He who is outside his door has the hardest part of his journey behind him.” – Dutch Proverb

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain

“He who would travel happily must travel light.” – Antoine de St. Exupery

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” – Anatole France

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.” – Herman Melville

It’s never too late to have a life you love. Don’t ever feel like you’ve missed the boat, don’t have what it takes or can’t achieve your dreams. Instead of removing your dreams, remove the doubts and fears keeping you from them. It’s never, ever too late. – Phoebe from https://littlegreybox.net

“Without travel I would have wound up a little ignorant white Southern female, which was not my idea of a good life.” – Lauren Hutton

“I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.” – James Baldwin

“I was not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.” – Seneca

“Travelling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta

“Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.” — Lawrence Block

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” – Confucius

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Scott Cameron

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” – Oscar Wilde

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling

“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” – Alan Keightley

“Tourists visit. Travellers explore.” – Unknown

If you don’t do it now, when will you do it? -Monica from http://thetravelhack.com/

“Travelling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.'” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

“I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on Earth. Then I ask myself the same question.” – Harun Yahya

“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” – Ernest Hemingway

“Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.” – Unknown

“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

“NOT I – NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.” – Walt Whitman

“You don’t choose the day you enter the world and you don’t chose the day you leave. It’s what you do in between that makes all the difference.” – Anita Septimus

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends… The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” ― Clifton Fadiman

“I haven’t been everywhere but it’s on my list.” – Susan Sontag

“Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.” – Roy M. Goodman

Adventure Travel Quotes

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

“My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.” ― Steve McCurry

“The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.” – Shirley MacLaine

The biggest addiction a person can have is discovering the unknown. Once it takes hold, there is no getting out and the only way to get your fix is by pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and exploring new horizons, cultural, and places. – Stephen from A Backpacker’s Tale 

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”― Andre Gide

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” ― Unknown

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” ― John A. Shedd

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ― Mark Twain

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.” ― Martin Buber

“May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.” ― Trenton Lee Stewart

“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Make voyages! Attempt them… there’s nothing else.” – Tennessee Williams

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” ― Freya Stark

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” ― G.K. Chesterton

The more borders you cross, the more your mind opens — Paul from Global Help Swap

“One travels to run away from routine, that dreadful routine that kills all imagination and all our capacity for enthusiasm.” – Ella Maillart

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

“When overseas you learn more about your own country, than you do the place you’re visiting.” – Clint Borgen

“Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey.” – Babs Hoffman

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

“Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.” – Irving Wallace

“A traveller without observation is a bird without wings.” — Moslih Eddin Saadi

“I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.” – Caskie Stinnett

“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharial Nehru

“Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” – Unknown (thanks to Melissa Bond for the contribution!)

“Investment in travel is an investment in yourself.” – Matthew Karsten

“It is better to travel well then to arrive.” – Buddha

“Adventure is worthwhile.” – Aristotle

“We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.” – Mignon McLaughlin

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” – Anais Nin

“Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled.” – Mohammed

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton

“Adventure without risk is Disneyland.” – Doug Coupland

“If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.” – Cesare Pavese

“How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” – Rosalia de Castro

“I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment” – Hilaire Belloc

“If all difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey most of us would never start out at all.” – Dan Rather

“The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson

“Airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo.” – Al Gore

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux

“It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.” – William Hazlitt

“You develop a sympathy for all human beings when you travel a lot.” – Shakuntala Devi

Which is the best tourism quote?

Pick your next destination on TourRadar.com !

Which is the best marketplace for travel tours?

It is TourRadar.com , that with more than 40,000 tours and 2,500 operators is the best place where to find your next destination.

Which is the best tour pic caption?

Why should i touring.

“With getting time away from work and your ‘normal’ life becoming more and more difficult, your time off is more valuable and precious than it’s ever been. Absolutely nobody has time for mediocre experiences and modern-day touring has adapted to fit these requirements. Nowadays group tours can be anything and everything: what you do, depends solely on you.”

Travis Pittman, TourRadar co-founder and CEO

Which is the best nature travel quote?

Find all our nature tours on TourRadar.com!

Jackie is a travel-addicted Canadian who currently resides in Vienna, Austria. When she’s not writing travel guides or reading her new favourite book, she’s planning her next weekend getaway somewhere in Europe.

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Rediscovering the Joy of Travel

Reviving the Wanderlust

Life truly is a roller coaster of experiences, isn’t it? We’re all riding it, yet often we’re too caught up in the frenetic pace to let the real magic of the moment sink in. We’re masters of coping, planning, and taking action, yet sometimes, we forget the simple art of just being. It’s a world where even children have lost the luxury of not doing anything, of being present. And honestly, that’s not okay.

Since 2020, my life has been nothing short of a whirlwind. On both emotional and professional fronts, it’s been a wild ride. I launched two startups: one failed during a pivot, leading to a team breakup. The other? It consumed immense amounts of energy and time. Despite being recognized as a promising startup in the Lazio Region, something inside me just broke after a venture capitalist warned us about the “long and tortuous” road to funding. That was my tipping point. My go-getter spirit wavered, I lost myself and doubt crept in, shaking my confidence in decision-making.

You know, I’ve had this travel blog since 2017, but I constantly found myself pursuing other dreams, sidelining this passion project. Why? Maybe it was fear—fear of facing it all alone, even though navigating the startup world does feel lonely too. But now, it’s starting to look crystal clear: this project is my path. It’s in my blood. I’ve been raised in seven different cities across the globe, travelling has always been a part of me. Born into a family of Italian diplomats, I was raised as a global citizen, experiencing life in diverse cities from New York City to Tehran, from Rome to Houston, from Istanbul back to Rome, and from London to Budapest. Each of these places I’ve had the privilege to call home, instilling in me a profound appreciation for cultural diversity and the beauty of our global community.

Yet, for years, I was so obsessed with finding my career, pouring all my energy into these startups, with ’making it’, ‘standing out’, and ‘proving myself’, that I sacrificed more than just time and energy. I put myself in a financial bind. Focusing full-time on startups meant I couldn’t commit to regular employment. I resorted to freelancing for its flexibility, but it meant living with limited funds. Every penny was funneled into nurturing my business dreams, leaving little for travel. My adventures were confined to occasional weekend getaways within Italy, which, though beautiful, never quite offered the deep recharge or the complete mental break I yearned for.

On the positive side, in return, I gained a wealth of skills and learned the hard way that regular travel is something I can’t give up. This summer, in 2023, I took my first intercontinental flight since 2005. I’ll do the math for you — that’s 18 years since my last transatlantic flight since moving from Houston, Texas, to Istanbul, Turkey. The emotions that flooded me are indescribable – a blend of happiness, excitement, and a thrilling sense of the unknown. Sitting in my window seat aboard the Emirates A380, tears of joy welled up. It was a moment of pure, unadulterated presence, a realization of how fortunate I was, and the beginning of a new chapter in rediscovering the joy of travel.

I was living in the moment, fully present and overwhelmed with gratitude for the adventure that lay ahead.   The plane took off, and I was at peace, my mind free from thoughts of work, money, or problems. It was replaced by curiosity, happiness, and excitement. Now, as I sit in my studio, revisiting my guide on Malaysia , I’m filled with that same rush of emotions. The thrill of seeing a completely new place for the first time is, in my opinion, one of the best sensations in the world. When I think of Malaysia, I think of pure joy and the breathtaking beauty of nature. I think of the tea plantations at Cameron Highlands , of the sounds of the rainforest at Mulu National Park, of swimming with the turtles and dancing barefoot on the beach at Perhentian Islands , of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, of the hawker centers in Singapore.

As I try to slowly regain my productivity, I realize this is helping. I want to guide travelers not just to destinations but to let them immerse in these feelings, to experience that exhilarating sense of discovery that makes life truly worth living. I miss that feeling and can’t wait to explore more this summer. Have you ever experienced this feeling?

I'm the daughter of an Italian family of diplomats, the second of three children, and a global citizen. I've lived in 7 cities around the world, I have a gigantic crush on Italy and my name has been mispronounced more times than I can remember.

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Dear Fede, I just came across your inspirational article on the rediscovery of your joy of travel. It is beautifully written and genuine and although we haven’t spoken in a long while, I could hear you talking. Thank you so much for sharing. I have enjoyed browsing your blog and wish for your spirit of travel to carry you to new and far away destinations. Keep the spark of adventure burning. I just got back from a one-week trip to Nicaragua where I spent a week with my ‘Houston lady friends’ who are all from different corners of the world. One of us has a large family in Managua which hosted us. It was a magical experience. We stayed on their private island and were amazed to discover the beauty of this country and it’s almost untouched tropical paradies. Nicaragua is a beautiful place waiting to be discovered… 😉

So nice to hear from you Christine! Happy you enjoyed my post and the blog 🙂 Your trip sounds amazing! Especially the private island part with the untouched tropical beaches! Hope to be able to visit soon and hope that we’ll be able to see each other again some day! Hugs to the whole family!

Hi Fede, your blog is wonderful, informative, creative and fun to read. I agree, it would indeed be lovely to see one another again some day. Rainer and I are thinking about you and your family often. Good times! Nicaragua is definitely a gem waiting to be discovered. E-mail me!

Hugs! Christine

Your journey is truly inspiring! ✈️ Rediscovering the joy of travel after navigating the roller coaster of startup life is a beautiful testament to resilience. 🌟

Thank you 🙂

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Travel for Health and Healing

It might be said that all travel businesses are actually selling the joy of travel .

Because joy is a powerful motive and might be the single, primary emotion travelers experience before and during their journey.  It represents many of benefits they demand of their trips .

It’s just a word, but for those experiencing the intense pleasure of travel, that word does resonate. In this post, travel business owners are introduced to the idea that the word “joy” is a just a basket term that represents the full emotional experience and its key components. If you’ve been mystified by why you felt so good after traveling, this post will make it a lot clearer why.

This feeling of joy is a focal point of their core travel drive — a term I’ve coined to illuminate the urge to travel. Joy is just an emotion that represents all the other good things they’re feeling.

Why are people traveling ? Stats show personal transformation is the top reason, yet the joy of travel extends to many more emotional benefits such as freedom, relaxation, and personal meaningfulness. Travel fills a void in people’s lives, where they’ve starved themselves of enjoyment and created guilty feelings of personal neglect. The trip then provides release, but also brings self-esteem too.

And which are the best destinations that generate the most joy? What is a great travel experience ? And what is the joyful travel content that excites and moves them to buy from you?

So, I’m thinking you should ask yourself what the joy of travel is for you? By answering that you’re bound to relate better to your customer’s joy of travel and where your special destinations are. Is it Yosemite Park, Lauterbrunnen, Waikiki, Phi Phi, Porto, Amalfi Coast, Kruger National Park, California coast, or maybe Santorini?

What is this Joy of Travel?

It’s a term often used by travelers.  The word joy seems to encompass a variety of emotions, all very pleasant. It’s just people trying to simplify how they describe the experience of traveling. But joy is also a focal point of something very complex but satisfying.

And here is something interesting to ponder:

Definition of Joy: a feeling of great pleasure or happiness that comes from success, good fortune, or a sense of well-being  

Note the additional words success and well-being . So travel might be fused with many other important values.  In essence though — it is the state of their feelings that we’re really talking about.

What Experience do Your Travelers Want?

Are they yearning to experience health, enthusiasm, relaxation, cultural immersion, connection to history, escape from misery and a mundane life, companionship, romance, social activity, sharing as a family, wandering with friends, or just a chance to grow and experience more of life?

Your customer’s love of travel should be a focal point of your travel content strategy.

For some, a love of travel shows their love of opportunity, surprise, fun, and great expectations. It’s a progressive confident view of life they have that makes them fascinating people and a joy to be around.  And they come to you for the opportunity, energy and spirit for their wonderful orientation to life.

Travel is a major industry and one that people are passionate about. Except for women’s clothing and food, travel is the major theme on Pinterest . That’s all about celebrating the joy of living.

Why are Some so Pessimistic?

I think it was Seth Godin who said about travel; “ that you should build a life you don’t have to escape from . ” That’s a disappointing way to look at travel — almost slander!

Travel is an adventure and it’s particularly valuable when you’re traveling with someone who really understands the mission of exploring possibilities . Wanting the best of life isn’t narcissistic. We all should expect having the best life can give us and the special destinations and people who will bring out the best in us.

Travel really is about expanding one’s life, mind, emotions, and one’s self. If you don’t want to grow, to not experience all that life has to offer, nor inspire others and share with them, then you probably don’t want to go anywhere. You can sit in a chair and watch your toenails grow.

Travel can be a wish of hope for family and friends — that our actions will cause them to pursue a better life. And that you’re bringing something back that makes their life worth living. And what is a life worth living?

Travel is also an act of courage and leadership and actions that inspire others to go after the 100% of value they deserve in life.

The Pursuit of Happiness, Self-Esteem and Fulfillment

And let’s get rid of that word vacation . The semantics are all wrong. We don’t vacate anything. We transition temporarily to make our lives better – and transform to the best version of ourselves .

We’re experiencing freedom and enjoying natural rhythms, instead of the mechanical daily grind. We’re boldly pursuing something better and it’s truly transformative.

The feeling of freedom is important. I’m sure you’ve experienced the happiness that comes from being freed from rat race responsibilities, expectations, grinding daily routines, and powerlessness to do the things we want to do. Top solo travel blogger Nomadic Matt puts it well in his post, that it’s not about travel, it’s about freedom .

It’s about quietening the screaming demons who warn us we’re not being good to ourselves and we need to break away and take care of our deepest wants and needs. Wouldn’t you say relaxation, novelty, rest, and fun are worthy pursuits?

Thanks to the Internet, travelers are more aware of the incredible places they can visit . Of course, money and time can be issues. However, of late, travelers are making more time to travel, and they report they’re willing to pay for the trip and tours they want. So, it’s a question of value and how you present it to them — that’s all marketing .

Inexpensive, rich travel experiences are what most people want.

Understand the Pain of a Travelless Life

Anyone I know who doesn’t like to travel is devitalized and they ignore the incredible possibilities for themselves. It could be personal or career growth, and it could enrich the lives of their family. The travel bug is contagious and fills the void these people have.

Travel is the Quest to Keep Your Life Fresh

The only way to communicate the joy of traveling to non-travelers is to tell them they’re hurting themselves and the ones they care about if they don’t travel. If you don’t travel, you’re not getting full value out of life and you’re failing to inspire others in an important way.

Once you or a friend/family member travels, it creates a beginning context for them. That’s key to getting the point across to skeptical, fearful people.

Suddenly the destination has relevant meaning and specific things that you did or could do that catches their fancy.  Present your memories, pictures, videos, and momentos carefully and they’ll find that point of relevance.

Travel = Freedom

Also at the heart of the joy of travel is freedom of mind, body and spirit.

When the mind relaxes, the body does too.

The break from excessive routine and structure can revitalize most travelers. Many travel for that reason.

In Europe with their 5 to 6 weeks vacations, they appreciate the value of rejuvenation. Europe has few natural resources yet they can compete with us while working one month less per year. Why is that?

Travel Brings Us Closer to Who We Want to Be

When I visit San Diego , I feel like I’ve experienced and absorbed the easy going, athletic but creative surfing lifestyle that was so popular 60 years ago. The Beach Boys music was so innocent and fun. There was never a time when fun was such a priority. And it should be a priority.

Only California could create a livable dream. So a surfboard isn’t necessarily a surfing board. It’s a symbol of a fun era where boys liked girls who didn’t mind being girls, and money wasn’t the center of the universe.

Worthy of the Best? Yes!!

That’s two contrasting and world class destinations that provided some of the most enlivening experiences of my life. I’m sure Mexico and Switzerland offer similar thrills, and I’ll get to those places with someone special.

But if you can find someone who really appreciates what travel means and how to enjoy even the smallest travel experiences, then you have someone that’s better than the destination.  That might be your real joy of travel.

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The Joy of Traveling Solo

Group trips are grand, but sometimes there's nothing better than being in a new place alone.

Traveling is not the same for everyone. We are never the same person twice in one day, so how could we have the same tastes as others? I like Rome, my wife likes London, friends from Los Angeles with whom we like traveling prefer Paris. They like to book tickets to museums, like to reserve tables at restaurants, while I’ve always avoided programmed itineraries of any sort. What we share, though, is wanting something that only travel can offer and that occurs once we’re elsewhere and have an alternate hold on things, a different pair of lenses. What it is exactly is something we seldom disclose to others, because we’re not quite sure we can fathom it ourselves. Maybe this is why we travel, though we give it many names.

For me it came into focus one day in Orvieto, north of Rome. My wife is sleeping in late. She likes to do that when we travel. I don’t. I like to get up before anyone else does and amble down the narrow cobble­stone lanes of whatever small town we’re visiting. I like to improvise my walk and hear people greet each other in the morning. I like their makeshift pleasantries, from baker to pharmacist to news­paper vendor. And I don’t mind getting lost.

I’ve already read up a bit on the Orvieto wines, know a few things about the cathedral, il duomo , and about Teatro Mancinelli, the scaled-down but lavish opera house. I’ve learned about the tunnels dug under the impregnable rock over which Orvieto was originally built. I don’t like tunnels and will most likely sit quietly by myself while they all visit the city’s underground.

This morning I proposed to meet one of my friends early in a café located to the left of the duomo, which, as I learned from her, was admired by none other than John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton.

She is late arriving, so while I wait I order a cornetto and a caffè latte. All but one other table is occupied, and a man, sitting in the shadow of the meager hedge bordering the café, is quietly reading his paper, something I suspect he’s been doing every morning for years. Occasionally I can hear it rustle when he turns a page, or when the flimsiest draft flutters through it. Otherwise not a ripple in this placid, sunlit square.

This is the soundless hour, and it exists in all small towns in Italy. Everyone respects it. No cell phones, no dogs, no babies, and no tourists. All these will show up—but not just yet. It’s Saturday, and the people of Orvieto are not in any haste this morning. The carpenter who seems to be a direct descendant of medieval guild members stands outside his shop with a lit cigarette, which he clearly doesn’t want to put out and which gives him the thoughtful, meditative air of an Italian Einstein still working on the theory of relativity. He hesitates and is not indifferent to the stillness—no saws yet, no hammers, no thudding away, no drills or hand cranks, or the raspy clatter of his rolling shutters.

I love the stunning silence of the morning air here. An elderly man hobbles by, nods respectfully in my direction. I nod back, not a word. Someone is sweeping litter from the curbside. I can barely hear his broom, but I miss it when he walks away to another spot on the piazza. Silence.

As I wait I hear the distant clink of a spoon on a saucer, and sure enough the waiter appears with my cornetto and my caffè latte and the de rigueur glass of water. I can’t wait to devour the cornetto, and right away, before he has a chance to disappear behind the beaded curtain, I ask him to bring me another. If my friend arrives, I’ll say I ordered it for her; if she doesn’t I’ll eat it. Maybe this is why I begin to hope that she won’t arrive just yet. I don’t mind the wait and welcome another five or 10 minutes without anyone.

Being alone is an excuse for doing nothing, and doing nothing, like yielding to Orvieto’s morning, is exactly what I seek once I’m no longer tethered to my chaotic day-to-day life in New York. People think travel is about seeing new things. Not for me. I’m here for something that has almost nothing to do with sights, monuments, museums, restaurants, nature, or even people and their customs. What I’m looking for is more in me than outside of me, just as sitting in this café allows me not to stop time but to distend it, to dispel all my thoughts and indulge in the eros of something unusual. I want to forget time. I don’t like time. When was time ever my friend? I don’t even want Orvieto to give me something new. What I want, maybe, is to be given something back, some intangible something I believe I once cradled but lost track of and can scarcely remember. I’ll eventually take pictures of the duomo and of old Orvieto. But it’s the picture of the little café with its meager hedge, which separates it from the café across the way, that I’ll treasure. This, I’ll remember, is where I waited for a friend and suddenly caught a glimpse of the big paradox that defines my life: that I have always dreaded loneliness, but I love being left alone. Which is why I like waiting for my friend and don’t mind if she’s late. I want to show her the picture of what Orvieto means to me: a table, a caffè latte, a second cornetto waiting to be bitten into, and my half-emptied bicchiere d’acqua.

I know I’ll be thrilled to see her again, and I know we’ll laugh as we always do. I know we’ll spend a long time studying the cathedral this morning, because she likes to spend time in churches and I love to hear her tell me things I’m glad to learn from her. At some point she’ll ask me what’s new, and walking with my hands in my pockets I’ll remember the carpenter dawdling outside his store, and I’ll finally tell her that sitting for breakfast and waiting for her reminded me that I’d traveled thousands of miles to bask under the invisible spell of that one rare thing in our lives: plenitude. I felt richer that morning than I’d felt in a long time. Why, she’ll ask. Because I want for nothing here. Why leave, then? Why indeed? Neither of us wants to answer this question. But we know the answer: Part of us wants to stay here and never go back. The other part, thank heaven, refuses to think this through.

This story appears in the Summer 2023 issue of Town & Country.

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The Joy of Travel specializes in European travel, River Cruises and fully escorted tours. We offer private, personally escorted groups several times a year. We are also romance travel experts focused on all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean and Mexico, as well as beachfront properties in Hawaii. Est. 2005. We never recommend anywhere we haven't tried first. …

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Seems like the companies response is only concerned with the 1 star rating, and how dare you say my demands, I didn't realize wanting a clean room and a bed me and my husband can sleep in is an outrageous demand. Our Honeymoon was in June and I have waited to try and work thru my disappointment before writing any review. The point of my review is to inform others that your company follow thru was awful, please just try and treat everyone how you would like to be treated.

See all photos from Amy S. for The Joy of Travel

Jan 20, 2023

I am very disappointed that you were unhappy with your trip. Having said that, I have personally stayed in your Paris hotel, and over the course of 18 years have put hundreds of customers into that same property without a single complaint. Both Kassey and I worked diligently to resolve your issues. I would encourage any readers of this comment to look at my own Facebook page and read the 50+ excellent reviews before giving yours much weight. Better yet, check out my Travel Leaders Reviews and draw your own conclusions. https://www.travelleaders.com/agent/2526

wanted to use a local company, very Unhappy please be cautious if you use them, want more details why read my Facebook review

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LIFE IS A JOURNEY, TRAVEL IT WELL

Looking for a sophisticated escape full of fine details and upscale design touches at a destination centered around relaxation? Then Joy of the Journey vacation packages centered towards adult only environments are the perfect fit for you. Whether you’re in search of a romantic getaway for two or a group vacation with your travel-loving friends, we will provide you with the stress-free itinerary and refined, worldly atmosphere you crave.

“To travel is to take a journey into yourself.” – Danny Kaye

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Who We Are!

Joy of the Journey Travel is here to plan an experience you’ll never forget. Founded in January 2021, we are a premier Travel Agency in Leland, NC. We take care of the details so you can get straight to the fun and relaxation.

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The Joy Of Travel, Inc

The joy of travel, inc., as the name implies, is all about enjoying travel, mrs. gur agrawal, the president of the joy of travel, inc., chose this name for her travel agency because she truly believes in the joy of travel. she has been in the travel industry for long 27 years and still she says she "loves to deal with people, loves to send them places and loves what she does"., mrs. gur agrawal established the joy of travel, inc. 7 years ago in athens, georgia, usa. due to her wonderful service oriented philosophy her clients travel with confidence and ease of seasoned world travelers, whether this be the first time client or a long term client., mrs. gur agrawal emphasizes that her business is people oriented and the travel business comes to her naturally due to her own extensive travel. gur believes that although the internet has become a convenient tool for many, it does not compete with the satisfaction of personal service. , mrs. gur agrawal feels that " good customer service does not have to be sacrificed since the joy of travel has competitive prices for air fare, cruises, package deals etc"..

Passing Thru Travel

Senior Travel Bliss: 10 Tips for Comfort and Joy on the Go!

Posted: February 26, 2024 | Last updated: February 26, 2024

Retirement is the perfect time to explore the world, with the freedom to travel at your own pace and on your own terms. Whether fulfilling lifelong travel dreams or simply enjoying leisurely getaways, senior travelers have a world of opportunities awaiting them. This guide offers valuable tips to help senior travelers navigate their journeys easily, comfortably, and joyfully.

1. Prioritize Comfortable Accommodations

Choosing the right accommodation is crucial for a comfortable and enjoyable trip. As a senior traveler, look for hotels or rentals that offer senior-friendly amenities. These might include elevators, accessible bathrooms, ground-floor rooms, and comfortable bedding. Additionally, consider places that provide on-site dining options, which can be convenient if you prefer not to venture out for every meal.

Many accommodations also offer shuttle services to nearby attractions, reducing the need for extensive walking or public transport. When booking, don’t hesitate to inquire about your specific needs – many places are more than willing to accommodate special requests to ensure your comfort.

Insider’s Tip: Always check hotel reviews from fellow senior travelers for firsthand insights into the suitability of the accommodations.

2. Consider Travel Insurance

Travel insurance is a must, especially for senior travelers. It offers peace of mind and security, covering unexpected events like medical emergencies, trip cancellations, or lost luggage. When choosing a travel insurance policy, ensure it covers any pre-existing conditions and includes adequate health coverage, especially if traveling abroad. Some policies also offer additional services like emergency evacuation, which can be crucial in remote destinations or if you require specific medical care.

Insider’s Tip: Compare different insurance plans and read the fine print to understand exactly what is covered.

3. Pack Smart and Light

Efficient packing can significantly enhance your travel experience. Aim to pack light to ease the physical strain of managing luggage. Focus on essentials and choose versatile and suitable clothing for various occasions. Opt for a lightweight suitcase with spinner wheels for easy maneuverability.

Packing organizers, such as cubes or compression bags, can help keep your belongings organized and accessible. Remember, most places you’ll visit will have essentials available for purchase, so there’s no need to overpack.

Insider’s Tip: Choose a suitcase in a bright color or unique pattern for easy identification at baggage claim.

4. Stay Healthy and Hydrated

Maintaining good health is key to enjoying your travels. Drink plenty of water, especially during flights and in hot climates, to stay hydrated. Pack healthy snacks for long travel days and keep up with any regular medications. Bringing a small first aid kit for minor ailments is also a good idea. Plan your itinerary with rest days to relax and recuperate, ensuring you don’t overexert yourself.

Insider’s Tip : Carry a refillable water bottle with a built-in filter for safe drinking water anywhere.

5. Use Senior Discounts

Many travel-related services offer senior discounts, which can lead to significant savings. Airlines, hotels, museums, and attractions often have reduced rates for seniors. Always inquire about available discounts when making bookings. Some discounts might not be widely advertised, so it never hurts to ask. Additionally, consider joining senior travel clubs or organizations that offer exclusive deals and packages for their members.

Insider’s Tip: Some discounts may not be advertised, so it never hurts to ask.

6. Embrace Slow Travel

Slow travel allows you to immerse yourself more deeply in each destination. Spend more time in fewer places to truly experience the local culture, cuisine, and people. This approach reduces the stress of frequent moving and unpacking. It allows you to rest and enjoy each location at a leisurely pace. Slow travel often leads to more meaningful and memorable experiences as you have the time to form deeper connections with the places you visit.

Insider’s Tip: Consider longer stays in apartments or vacation rentals for a more homely experience.

7. Stay Connected

Staying in touch with family and friends back home is important. Smartphones and tablets are great tools for staying connected. They allow easy communication through calls, texts, video chats, and social media. Ensure you have an appropriate international data plan or access to Wi-Fi to avoid high roaming charges. These devices can also store digital copies of important documents like passports, insurance policies, and itineraries.

Insider’s Tip: Learn to use social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram to share your travel experiences with loved ones.

8. Choose the Right Transportation

Selecting the right mode of transportation can greatly impact your travel experience. For longer distances, consider direct flights to minimize travel time and layovers. While they might be more expensive, the convenience and reduced fatigue are often worth the cost.

On the ground, opt for private transfers, taxis, or rental cars with GPS to avoid public transportation challenges. If you do use public transport, research senior-friendly options like buses with low entry steps or trains with dedicated senior seating.

Insider’s Tip: Consider paying extra for seats with additional legroom or early boarding privileges when booking flights.

9. Engage in Senior-Friendly Activities

Many destinations offer activities and tours tailored to senior travelers. These might include cultural tours with more sit-down opportunities, leisurely walking tours, scenic boat cruises, or nature drives. Such activities allow you to enjoy new experiences at a comfortable pace. Participating in these activities enriches your travel experience and provides opportunities to meet and socialize with like-minded travelers.

Insider’s Tip: Look for group tours designed specifically for seniors, which are often more leisurely and provide opportunities to socialize with fellow travelers.

10. Plan for Accessibility

If you have mobility concerns, plan your trip with accessibility in mind. Research destinations, accommodations, and activities that are friendly to travelers with limited mobility. Many cities and tourist attractions now offer excellent accessibility options, such as wheelchair ramps, accessible public transport, and rental services for mobility aids. Don’t hesitate to contact tour operators and attractions in advance to inquire about their accessibility features.

Insider’s Tip: Contact attractions and tour operators to inquire about accessibility options and any assistance they can provide.

The Bottom Line

Traveling in retirement should be a fulfilling and enjoyable experience. By planning carefully, taking advantage of senior discounts, and choosing comfortable and accessible options, you can explore the world at your own pace and in your own style.

Remember, this is your time to enjoy the fruits of your labor, so embrace every moment of your travels with an open heart and a spirit of adventure. The world is waiting for you, and it’s never too late to embark on a new journey.

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The post Senior Travel Bliss: 10 Tips for Comfort and Joy on the Go! republished on Passing Thru with permission from The Green Voyage .

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock / kudla.

For transparency, this content was partly developed with AI assistance and carefully curated by an experienced editor to be informative and ensure accuracy.

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Lufthansa Insights Art – the joy of travel meets fun of collecting

Lufthansa Insights offers collections with artistic value in the Uptrip app. The digital collectible pictures can be exchanged for rewards and converted into NFTs

Lufthansa customers have access to a whole new universe of travel content and insider tips on fascinating destinations. Under the banner of Lufthansa Insights, they will find premium content along the entire travel chain – digital and print, comprehensive and varied, entertaining and informative. 

Lufthansa Insights not only shows new perspectives on the world and travel, but also offers more. Under the heading "Lufthansa Insights Art," customers receive digital trading cards with artistic value via the Lufthansa Group's Uptrip app. All they have to do is upload their boarding pass to the Uptrip app. 

Collect – and redeem – digital artworks

In the app, they can exchange their digital works of art for rewards such as award miles or status points – and convert them into NFTs. The abbreviation NFT stands for "Non-Fungible Token", a digital token that is stored in a blockchain. NFTs can be traded on certain online marketplaces. The Uptrip app is available in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. In addition to the editions of Insights Art, the app contains around 20 collections with roughly 400 cards on destinations, aircraft types and specials that travelers can collect on their flights and use for rewards. 

To mark the launch of Lufthansa Insights Art, works by the artist collective eBoy have been available to choose from in the Uptrip app since the beginning of May. The graphic artists Steffen Sauerteig, Svend Smital, and Kai Vermehr joined forces to form eBoy in 1997 and developed a special style of depicting people, objects, and entire cities – in the form of pixels. eBoy are famous for their pixoramas of international metropolises. In the art scene, the collective is considered the undisputed master of pixel art. 

The eBoy special edition for Uptrip comprises 30 trading cards depicting figures in the collective’s unmistakable pixel art style. Each one represents a particular lifestyle or character. In addition, there are pixoramas, digital hidden object pictures, of the new Allegris destinations: currently Vancouver, Toronto, and Munich, with Chicago and Montreal to follow in July. The trading cards can be selected on all Allegris flights. 

Lufthansa Insights Art: Trading cards for the European Championship

The Lufthansa Insights Art series continues with trading cards for the European Championship, which begins on June 14. Each card represents one of the 24 participating countries. The pictures show a Lufthansa aircraft decorated with narrow stripes in the respective national colors. The European Championship special edition starts on June 14, and collectors’ cards can be selected on all flights to and from destinations in the participating countries throughout the European Championship. 

Find out more here: https://www.uptrip.app/  

Ready to discover the world?

Book your flight and find new inspiration – wherever the journey may take you.

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Trips can bring joy to trans travelers. Here are tips to make the most of your getaways.

Travel can be frustrating and complicated for anyone, but for transgender people there’s an entirely separate list of considerations to add. It can take some extra research and planning to make sure trans travelers are going somewhere they won’t be targeted during vacation.

According to research from Booking.com , 74% of trans-identifying travelers say they feel like some destinations are off-limits to them because those places are potentially unsafe.

“Do your homework and make sure it’s going to be safe for you,” C.P. Hoffman, senior policy counsel at the National Center for Transgender Equality told USA TODAY. “There are a lot of places in the world where people are incredibly transphobic.” 

But that doesn’t mean there’s no trans joy in travel. It does mean, however, that finding that joy can take a little extra preparation.

What are the biggest barriers for trans travelers?

Airports can be especially fraught for trans travelers, with both security checkpoints and passport control presenting potential points of conflict.

“The way that (the Transportation Security Administration has) the software built, it makes assumptions as to items of clothing, body parts, etc., based on whether the TSA agent pushes a blue button for if they think you’re a boy or a pink button for if they think you’re a girl,” Hoffman said. “If they push that pink button, it’s not going to flag that you’re wearing a bra, and if they push that blue button it’s not going to flag that there’s a little bit more stuff in the front of your pants.” 

But if TSA agents push the wrong button for a trans traveler, the result can be a more intensive security screening, including a pat down in some cases.

“It’s deeply, deeply frustrating,” Hoffman said. “It’s something that a huge number of trans people know that if they go to the airport, they’re just going to have to deal with this.” 

Hoffman acknowledged that such issues are becoming less common over time.

Going through customs and even renewing their passport can be an exercise in frustration for trans travelers too. Even as the U.S. allows nongendered identification markers on official documents now, Hoffman said using them isn’t always the best choice for everyone.

“Do you want an ID that identifies you to whoever will be seeing it as trans?” Hoffman said. “Passports are the things that nonbinary folk end up going with a binary gender marker on because a lot of us are worried about just what might happen in a foreign country.” 

Beyond that, concerns about safety rank high for trans travelers. 

Barber said 87% of transmasculine (male presenting) and 89% of transfeminine (female presenting) travelers feel they have to consider the safety landscape of the destinations they want to visit. 

“They do face a disproportionate rate of violence, of hate crimes than the rest of us do,” Kristofer Barber, Booking.com’s director of global communications, told USA TODAY.

How can trans travelers optimize their travel experiences?

Even with some extra obstacles to navigate, trans travelers can go and experience joy in many places.

Hoffman and Barber both said that the key to great travel, especially for trans folks, is to connect with the destination’s local queer community and try to have authentic experiences. 

“Search the local groups in the area and see if there’s cool, queer clubs that are around and what the great stuff is locally that people go to,” Hoffman said. “There are things that don’t end up in the Rick Steeves guidebook or whatever.” 

For example, Hoffman said they’re planning a trip to Uruguay to visit an “extremely queer beach” they read about in a novel . 

“The beach is a real place," they said. “These lesbians from Montevideo found this little space for themselves away from the city where they could go and be themselves.”

Hoffman added that Uruguay is routinely ranked as one of the most queer-friendly travel destinations in the world. It was among the first countries to legalize same-sex marriage nationally. They also said they've been taking tango classes with their partner at the Uruguayan Embassy and found the environment there very welcoming.

Hoffman also offered some practical tips.

To avoid those more invasive pat downs, they said, trans travelers can enroll in the PreCheck program, although they acknowledged that it’s frustrating to need to pay extra.

“You go into a different line where they don’t use those same machines,” Hoffman said. “Basically, all the trans people I know who travel frequently, especially for work, they’re like, ‘this is a tax on trans people, I just have to do this in order to not be harassed all the time.’”

They also said it’s important to remember to pack necessities like medicine in carry-on bags.

“If you’re on hormone replacement therapy, put that in your carry-on so if your bag is lost or delayed, you won’t find yourself without access to your medicine,” Hoffman said.

In general, Hoffman said, understanding the culture of where you're visiting is important to having the best experience.

“I definitely want to make sure that I’m safe for wherever I’m going," they said. "At different points, that’s meant different things. Earlier in my transition, that would mean appearing a way I didn’t necessarily appear every day while going through airport security so I wouldn’t have to deal with the (hassle) ... or making sure I do research so I can know how receptive the local community is to queer people flirting or being smoochy in public.”

Barber added that many brands like airlines and hotels are trying to boost their inclusive profile, and said it could make for a better travel experience to seek out those brands when possible.

Cruising Altitude: The fastest way to board planes is an option you'd hate

What are the best destinations for trans travelers?

While firm data doesn’t exist on the most trans-friendly destinations specifically, Booking.com’s data shows that New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles are among the most welcoming domestic destinations for LGBTQ+ travelers more generally, and Kyoto, Japan, Nice, France; and Chiang Mai, Thailand, are among the best for queer travelers abroad.

Hoffman also said they’ve recently heard of more queer travelers visiting Latin America and Canada.

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in New York. You can reach him at [email protected]

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Luxe Resort Group One&Only Just Opened an All-Villa Oasis in Greece—Here’s a Look Inside

The new one&only kéa island features 63 cliffside villas, a private home collection, and beach club., abby montanez, abby montanez's most recent stories.

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One&Only made a splash when its first outpost debuted in Athens last year. Now, the brand’s second property in Greece has opened its doors, and the resort could stand in for The White Lotus . 

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What It’s Like to Stay at Timbers Kaua‘i at Hōkūala, a Luxe Hawaiian Resort Where Everything Is for Sale

Nestled among secluded beaches and deep blue seas, the brand teamed up with acclaimed architect John Heah who created the Cycladic-inspired interiors. Think lofty atriums, lots of white-washed walls, pergolas, and rounded archways. The villas range from one or two bedrooms and feature hand-cut local stone and Greek marble.  

The property is anchored by its extensive amenity offerings. Chief among them are its very own beach club, an infinity pool with a pool bar, and a speakeasy. There’s also Atria, a family-style restaurant serving up Greek eats made from locally sourced produce. On the other hand, Kosmos is slinging freshly pressed juices by day and transforms into a cocktail terrace at night.  

“With a population of just 2,300 residents, this island is incredibly special to its people, and it was our privilege to work with the community to authentically reflect and protect Kéa’s unique spirit,” added Zuber. “This off-the-radar destination reveals a different side to the Cyclades, promising a grounding stay that leaves guests feeling relaxed and revitalized.”  

Click here to see more photos of One&Only Kéa Island. 

Abigail Montanez is a staff writer at Robb Report. She has worked in both print and digital publishing for over half a decade, covering everything from real estate, entertainment, dining, travel to…

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