Go away

Hate to see you go, love to watch you leave

A few moons ago, I was a digital editor at Fodor’s. One of my favorite projects was the annual “Go List,” which was our selection of 50 or so places we thought everyone should check out the following year. All of us would pile into a conference room and lobby for a handful of destinations that we’d researched and loved. Some were shoe-ins because of big world events (the Olympics, let’s say). Some were up-and-comers that required more convincing. And it was so much fun. The subject line of this email is a callback to those meetings because one year I pitched that we call it Go Away. (…they didn’t go for it.)

I bring this up because I am a newly minted travel advisor! Toward the end of last year, I joined a group called Fora Travel and am nearly done with my certification as I write this. As my family and friends’ go-to recs person (again, a role I’ve cultivated and absolutely love), it suddenly clicked that I should go ahead and make it official. In the last three weeks alone, I’ve been asked where to eat in Barcelona, Oaxaca, Ojai, and NYC (to which I said: Cal Pep and 14 de la Rosa; La Cocina de Humo and Alfonsina; Duchess and Rory’s Place; and Bar Piselino, respectively). It’s my favorite thing. So why not do it for real?

Do you know what I really want to do? I want to send you to Babylonstoren and when you get back we can gush over how perfect it is. I want to send you and the kids to Puglia, where you’ll take cooking classes and ride bikes to the beach. I want to send you on a private mezcal tasting adventure in beautiful Oaxaca.

Babylonstoren, one of my favorite places on Earth.

Puglia with il bambino

Taste mezcal, learn how it’s made, rinse, repeat

I love planning trips, so to be perfectly honest using a travel advisor was rarely, if ever, my own go-to. Until I went on my first safari in 2014... I decided to work with the incredible women of Here’s My Card and they took that trip from great to absolutely unforgettable by way of making everything seamless and personalized. Rather than simply visiting Table Mountain via cable car (with the masses, gross), they put me in touch with Mother City Hikers for a private, four-hour hike to the top. Everywhere we went, there was a driver waiting, a person anticipating our arrival with a drink in hand, someone to shuttle us through rural airports in Botswana and Zimbabwe.

I’ve used a few advisors since then for various destinations and every time I’ve been grateful for their insider intel, their seamless planning, the way they’ve created a flow of experiences that a planner such as myself can really nerd out on. And now, I’m learning to wield the same endless resources and creative planning acumen.