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Travel Wellbeing

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sunshinegal

Guest
I love the learning and cultural opportunities of travel, but it can also be exhausting—new foods, plane flights, jet lag! Does anyone have any tried and true methods for getting greater enjoyment out of travel and minimizing the logistical hassles? For me, I find it helpful to check in with the folks I am traveling with about wake-up times, our priorities for activities, needing alone time. I also download helpful local apps to minimize some of the adjustment before I’ve lost WiFi (taxi apps, maps, etc.) Thanks in advance for the suggestions!
 

Zeitgeist

New member
I've done a lot of traveling over the years (both for enjoyment and studying abroad), especially to places where I could easily get stuck with jet lag. What I've found helps out a lot is to jump right in and hit the ground running. On my last trip, my friend and I both agreed to wake up early (say 8 am) and go to bed at 10-11 pm in order to adjust quickly to the new time zone. We made sure to always have some activity in the morning that forced us to get up and go. We made friends with a tour guide after an excursion outside of the city and through him we found out all of the best places to visit within the city itself without the need to book another tour. Prior to leaving, we also made sure to have a list of things we could do while we were there. For us, that meant a ton of museums, historical sites, and bars. We also made sure we were familiar with how the transportation system worked so we wouldn't need our WiFi (we only had one working phone between us and it had limited data that we wanted to save).

Was it exhausting? Sure, but I think this method of running really helped us to get the most out of the trip. I honestly didn't really notice that I was tired because of how busy we were. It wasn't until I got back home to the states and slept a solid 20 hours that I realized how exhausted I was :ROFLMAO: I don't regret it though. I get so much more out of my trips this way compared to my more relaxing trips.

The other thing we did was we made sure we decided as a group everything we wanted to do, organized it by priority AND location so that way we could stick to particular areas of the city. This kept our transportation costs low and ensured that everyone got a say in the day's activities.
 

SocialShelley

New member
I'm not usually tired until I get home, but I -love- to travel. I do a lot of pre-planning though. I try and get a general idea of places to go and things to do, so when I adventure around, things have some familiarity.
 

lpvander

New member
Pre-planning or even over-planning are both ESSENTIAL to travelling: book a car (ahead of time) to take you from the airport to where you need to go, pack as much hygiene products as you need for double the time, make a local grocery store the very first stop if you're staying a long time (get easy snacks!), get your subway/tram card ahead of time (some places offer unlimited ones: get those if you're planning on being very touristy), try to research blogs that offer "off the beaten path" places to go to, and lastly do NOT make a duffel bag your carry on item (also, leave space in your suitcase to fit souvenirs and presents)!
 

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