What if the secret to a great trip was leaving your phone in airplane mode — forever? Journalist Lisa Abend has been doing exactly that, arriving in cities she's never researched, GPS turned off, without a hotel reservation or itinerary of any kind. The result isn't chaos; it's the kind of travel that actually surprises you. In this episode, Lisa makes a compelling case for leaving the phone out of the travel process.

Meet this week's guest

Lisa Abend is a Copenhagen-based journalist and former Time magazine correspondent who covers food, culture, and travel across Europe. She is the creator of The Unplugged Traveler, a Substack newsletter in which she visits a new European city each month without internet access, a booked hotel, or a plan, and writes about what she finds.

In this episode

How social media and over-researched itineraries have stripped travel of serendipity, and what Lisa is doing about it
The step-by-step logistics of arriving in a foreign city with no hotel, no map, and no plan — and why it's less stressful than it sounds
A birthday coincidence on a Cotswolds hiking trail that felt like the universe intervening
Why "second cities" — not capitals — are the ideal places to try unplugged travel for the first time
How nearly two dozen phone-free trips have changed the way Lisa navigates daily life

Chapters

00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:00 Backpacking Before the Internet 00:04:30 What the Internet Took From Travel 00:09:30 The Unplugged Traveler Newsletter 00:13:00 How to Choose a Destination 00:15:30 Arriving With No Hotel Booked 00:20:00 A Cotswolds Birthday Surprise 00:27:00 Finding Food Without the Lists 00:32:00 Travel as Meditation 00:35:30 Tips for Going Unplugged

Resources

Subscribe to Lisa's ⁠The Unplugged Traveler newsletter on Substack⁠
Read Lisa's travel stories for Afar
Use ⁠Skyscanner — flight search tool Lisa uses to find cheap fares⁠

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