5 Confessions of a Travel Blogging Dropout (And why I unpacked for good… or did I?)
True Confession: I’m a travel blogging dropout.
When I started working on cruise ships, spending every Tuesday in St. Petersburg and every Friday in Stockholm, I wanted to make the most of my time in each Baltic city, and discover the local gems, far beyond the Hard Rock Cafes and free wifi at Starbucks. So besides obsessively googling things (my Google Maps is a treasure trove of stars, let me tell ya), I turned to a powerful new (for me) tool:
Travel Blogs.
Specifically, the Travelettes.
The Travelettes introduced me to some of my favorite funky cafes in the Södermalm (my favorite, island neighborhood in Stockholm) and guided me past the crowded, colorful houses of Copenhagen and on to local gems like Paper Island. Call me old school, but for me, travel blogs were the Rick Steves or Frommer’s guides of my generation, when it came to wandering off the beaten path. So naturally, when I started my own blog, I wanted to learn from, and work alongside, the very writers who inspired me to find and read blogs in the first place. And you know what’s cool? Within a few months of starting Loololo, I was given a trial period as a writer for the Travelettes.
And thus began my venture as a travel blogger, both on and off my contracts working as a singer on a cruise ship. Travel blogging became the coolest outlet for me to navigate the uncharted territory of my life, beginning with being an accidental part of a supposed “travel couple” and spanning to surf lessons in Bali. I won’t lie, I definitely planned on diving into the nomadic, content-creating lifestyle for a bit longer, but I got lucky and found a full-time job in Portugal in record-time (I left my cruise contract on June 6th that year and began my new job on June 10th, to be exact). But for the better part of one year, I traveled the world and shared it with both the readers of my own blog, Loololo, and the Travelettes. And what a wild ride it was!
But life as a travel blogger wasn’t all drinks on the beach and morning coffee in fluffy robes (but it was sometimes ;) ). Want to know what it was really like? Well, keep reading…
It was a lot of planning. And this is something I’m actually really grateful for. I learned to plan trips better than ever before (being with a German also helped). Most press trips I took involved free accommodation, but the travel to and from was up to me to figure out. Piecing together a trip to Indonesia, factoring in ferry schedules, island hopping, and a few days for actual relaxation was pretty epic, but 1000% worth it. Oh, and at the end of it all, I wound up having to jump into a boat in the Mentawai Islands at the last minute, speeding across the ocean in a thunderstorm, in an effort to make the last ferry back to the mainland before a holiday weekend. Two days ahead of schedule. Sometimes the plans go out the window. But you make the ferry trip, wind up back on an island called Padang, and hail a scooter to a random hotel to see if they have availability for the night. Without ever using the internet! Or those carefully thought-out plans…
My Rule of Thumb? Stay Local. Stay Small. I won’t lie, when I was first offered a free stay at a local hotel in Portugal, I didn’t ask a single question. I jumped at the chance to wake up next to the beach in an unexplored town. Luckily, the stay was a total success and I only have glowing things to say about the Ozadi Tavira Hotel. (The selection of fresh-pressed juices at breakfast is unreal.) But when you’re offered a free stay somewhere, in exchange for writing about and photographing it, in my opinion, you bear a certain responsibility. You stayed for free. But you’re convincing other people to pay. And normally, not a small sum. So I had a come-to-Jesus moment one day, when I realized I only wanted to write about the kind of places where I’d want my own money to go. Small, boutique, or family-run hotels. Marriott is fine. They don’t need my blog posts. But the stellar, character-laden, boutique and family-run hotels are places I’d gladly pay to return to (and sometimes have).
Some of my favorites?
Henri Hotel in Hamburg, Germany (top left)
Quinta da Côrte in the Douro Valley, Portugal (middle)
Awera Resort in the Mentawai Islands, Indonesia (bottom right)
3. Something I challenged myself to find? Volunteer opportunities. Well, this one took me way too long to figure out. When I was 16, I looked into ways to volunteer abroad- building houses in the jungle, etc. But they were always too expensive or too far away. Well, when I found myself gifted with an incredible travel blogging stay in Indonesia, I figured it was finally my time to figure out how to give back. So I wrote a few emails, did some research, and was put in touch with the folks at A Perfect Foundation in the Mentawai Islands. And what do you know? They were working with local school kids on ocean plastic education during my stay in the Mentawai Islands, on an island just across the way. So the incredible people at Awera Resort (seriously- my favorite stay. ever.) fired up one of the boats and took me across the water, where I then hopped in the sidecar of a motorcycle and was whisked away to a local school where I “helped” (aka enthusiastically stood in the corner partaking in the same games as the kids) educate the kids on the trash problem, and why it’s really not ok to just toss garbage over your shoulder (a VERY common thing in Indonesia). I never even thought about how difficult it must be to create a comprehensive trash system for a country of 17,000 islands… What this experience taught me is that you don’t need to be a travel blogger to volunteer and find ways to authentically engage with the community. They’ll take anyone. And I promise I’ll be doing more of this in the future.
4. Um, it can get expensive. My camera is basically my child. It requires maintenance (the last check-up for my lens was upwards of 150 euros), editing software, and a tripod (which is now living its best life somewhere at a forgotten airport in Thailand). I’m not a professional photographer, but I did upgrade my gear when I started to travel more often for press trips and stays, and invested in a Canon 6D mark ii, which has never let me down (and even has its own wifi network!). Considering that, I probably should have stuck with the travel blogging for longer… But between the cost of gear, transportation, and time, I found travel blogging to be not nearly as “free” as one might think. Of course, if I would have really stuck it out and gone on to make travel content creating my full-time job, the expenses would eventually have evened out and then swung in my favor. Unfortunately, I liked the world of marketing a bit more ;)
5. “Is this actually a holiday?” I wondered to myself, as I was taken on a personal tour of the pristinely-appointed rooms at a Chateau, and was invited to take even more pictures, to compliment the 5000 I had already snapped. On one 24-hour blogging stay, in particular, I think I left feeling more exhausted than when I arrived, with a jam-packed itinerary and copious note-taking on my phone. Don’t mistake this for being ungrateful. The experiences I’ve had, like stomping grapes for award-winning wine and absorbing the commentaries from world-renowned sommeliers, or starting my day with a private yoga teacher, are things that some people will only ever dream of. But I put an incredible amount of pressure on myself to do these people and places justice. In the same way that they went out of their way to accommodate me (like the chef at Quinta da Côrte overhearing that I didn’t eat meat, and preparing an improvised codfish dish that is 100% the best I’ve ever had), I wanted to make sure I took everything in and could effectively communicate what each place embodies and stands for. (Normally in at least two dedicated blog posts.) And uh, doing that on the weekends, before returning to a brand-new full-time job, became a bit too much for me.
So after a while, I put a pause on my travel blogging trips and, starting with my journey to Thailand last year, I traveled for me, myself, and I. Sure, it might be more expensive. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss being able to jump at the chance for new travel packages designed for the Travelettes, or the dinners shared with incredibly passionate hotel owners and workers, feeling immediately energized by their vision and hospitality. But life took me (and my career) in a different direction, and my fancy camera and I are finding plenty of things to do on our own. Stay tuned to see where we wind up at the end of June...
A massive thank you to every person, place, and family-run hotel that made my wild ride as a travel blogger so rewarding. You’ll be getting random Instagram shoutouts from me forever, I’m sorry.
You’re stuck with me.