Show notes
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 guestLisa 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 lifeChaptersResources 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 faresLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
