I wear a dress on travel days, always.
(In a dress my body feels at complete ease, my belly can breathe, and I feel stylishly chic as I bustle along terminals, scurry off to trains, and hop onto buses with the rippling bravado of a seasoned traveler.)
On travel days, I carry a small spray bottle of rose water and pocket-size dental floss with me, always.
(Throughout the day of city exploring and backroad adventuring, I can slip off to the loo and freshen up my aura with a spritz of high-vibrational rose water, and that dental floss has come to my grinning aid to free my pearly whites of the residue of Cornish pastries and happily munched blueberries.)
I intentionally feast on a full and nutritious breakfast before I depart, always.
(Soaring through the sky with an empty tummy makes me queasy … so a breakfast of stir-fried veggies, sausage links and sourdough toast is the fuel I need to keep me satisfied and fulfilled to soar through clouds and not up-chuck upon landing.)
I also take ginger shots to keep my immunity strong, squirrel away pjs and a change of clothes in my carry-on, and acknowledge my seatmates with a smile and “hello”, and if I get a vibe that more conversation is welcome, I lean into curiosity and let that guide me as we talk; and I thank the drivers, the pilots, the crew, the hotel employees … for their work in making travel possible, and just a tad bit more easy.
These are a few travel tips I am committing to memory. These are travel tips for me. A few notes I wish … no, I need! … to pack with me. I have read travel blogs, and have taken suggestions that resonated with me, but at the end of the day, I think the travel tips I really need are the ones I have learned from my own experience, the ones that I have gathered, earned and learned, the ones that are forged from in-the-moment instinct.
My travel tips are from self-care, from self-mothering, from taking the hand of my own inner child and saying, “We get to choose how this adventure goes.”
So in my travel bag, nestled in with the rose water, the dental floss and petite journal, there’s a plethora of permission slips.
No. I don’t tour the castle. I don’t tumble into the auto-pilot trap to endlessly consume culture, of taking non-stop photos for the gram, and so I choose to walk the grounds. I spend my time among the great trees and let their presence, their whispering leaves, tell me about the energy of this historic place, tell me of this place’s true rooted history.
No. I don’t stay for the entire performance of Macbeth.
I have traveled all the way to Stratford-Upon-Avon to study Shakespeare, and yet, the performance of the season, that Scottish Play aka Macbeth, alarms me. It’s already an excessively violent play (in the original plot, murderous mercenaries ordered by Macbeth kill a child on stage, and of course, I know it’s all pretend, but my sensitive self knows that people in power – then and now -- commit these atrocities, and so I have a hard time separating the pretend from reality).
I’m also weary of the witches. And I have good right to be. It’s been noted that the witches’ lines mirror the “remedies” of 16th century midwives (who were considered to be witches) prescribed for post-partum women (but instead of an eye of a newt, it was boiling a new-born puppy to create a particular type of stew).
I am cautious of spells. And Scotland has a brutal history when it comes to the murdering of women, the ordained orchestration of annihilating the women healers and the women spiritualists, who were the pillars and leaders of the community, and therefore, a threat to the powers that were coming to be (i.e. the male doctors from the newly established medical institutions).
All of this to say … that when it came to my attention, from the mixed reviews of the play, that this particular version of Macbeth emphasized horror, I made a vow to myself to leave at intermission. And I did consider simply not going, but again, I had come all the way there and was studying at the theatre, and figured, I could handle the opening of the show. But the opening included dead birds (props) dropping in loud thunks upon the stage, and while my eyes did roll, I was quite taken with the Scottish actor, Reuben Joseph, starring as Macbeth, and the fact that he just finished his time as Alexander Hamilton in Lin Manuel-Miranda’s title play added to my Shakespearean swoon.
No. I skip the afternoon lecture and deeply nap … to shed the stress that got stirred up when my initial Airbnb did not work out. The door didn’t properly shut and lock, and I stayed for fifteen minutes to attempt to figure it out and then as my nervous system began to shoot off alarms, I simply changed route. Booked a hotel. Requested a refund.
The permissions slips of NO are packed close to the rose water and the dental floss. My travels will not look like a Pinterest board. And to be in my own unique life-force flow, I do need an outline of a plan, a bit of an agenda to ground, and then the spaciousness of spontaneity.
I fall into this tourist trap – I read all the travel blogs, take in all the travel advice, becoming an obedient student once more, and get caught into thinking about how I should travel instead of how I uniquely want to experience the journey. For example, and this still bites at my nerves, I read in all the blogs about Dublin to buy a city pass, and how this is cost effective and will save me money and time. And I thought, well that sounds responsible! And so I did … but here’s the thing, when I was traveling in Dublin, I found that I didn’t need the city pass. Most of the museums I wanted to explore were free and I prefer walking (always) to taking buses. I over-planned.
And then, on the flip, I kept the days following my Shakespeare program O P E N. I thought I’d know by the end of my program what I would like to do next … perhaps I’d hop to Spain, or cozy up in the Lake District, and instead, I found myself travel weary and feeling a bit panicked that I didn’t know my next step. I had under-planned.
So for me … it’s a mix of the two. And curiously this is how I like to improvise on stage, too.
I prefer to have an outline, a bit of a plan, an agenda, and then the flexibility and the freedom to play within the designated itinerary. I like to have one foot grounded securely and the other lifted into the air, instinctively feeling into the rhythm and pulse of that moment, that day. I also am a woman, and I live within cycles, and have a cyclical nature – I change, day to day, my hormones orchestrate that ebb and flow with the tides of the moon. In Edinburgh, right with my bleed, I slowed my pace and took it easy. In London, right in tune with my spring-energy phase, I felt more daring and did day trips and learned the Tube.
I write this for me, to remember these travel tips for myself, and I have no interest in telling you how to travel or what to do … I do hope that in sharing what has worked for me, that you’ll feel that inkling of inspiration or that inner voice or that gut pull to notice what resonates, what doesn’t resonate, what does and does not work for you.
Because aren’t we all explorers … adventurers in our day-to-day life? And doesn’t travel simply amplify how we do make decisions, and shows us, if we are willing to see, if these decision-making processes, if these choices are really coming within ourselves, are truly serving ourselves, or are they borrowed or pushed/pressured upon ourselves from the overt and subtle dictates of society?
I adorn a long black dress for the departing flight out of London’s Heathrow airport, and feel so stylishly at ease as I ripple along the terminal and my belly is relaxed in full breathing.
I spritz rose water in the toilet stall after getting all sun-drenched at Stonehenge.
I floss my teeth after I wolf-down a scrumptious scone before entering back into my Shakespeare studies.
By saying “No” to certain choices, I free myself to explore my “Yes” … amongst the trees at Windsor Castle, and as I stroll beneath their mighty limbs I journey through the inner terrain, listen to the inner voice, the inner compass, the inner travel agent who exuberantly encourages me to go my own way. And that’s the one and true travel tip I intend to pack away and gladly share.