Travel mini-series: planning a trip, with FT Globetrotter

This is an audio transcript of the FT Weekend podcast special edition — ‘Travel mini-series: planning a trip, with FT Globetrotter’

Lilah Raptopoulos
Hi, FT Weekend listeners. I am here to welcome you to a special mini-series of bonus episodes. For the next four weeks, as we descend into winter, we will be publishing a short conversation every Wednesday about all things travel. For each one, I will be talking with different experts. From Jessica Nabongo, who has been to every country in the world, to Nomadic Matt, who is the expert on how to travel better for less. To our travel editor, Tom Robbins, who is very good at cutting through the BS and telling us the truth of what’s actually happening in tourism right now. Today, I am joined by Rebecca Rose and Niki Blasina, they’re the editors of FT Globetrotter. Globetrotter is a particularly fun corner of FT Weekend. I love it. They publish travel guides that are written by journalists, which means you get insider recommendations from my colleagues on the best places to do all sorts of things in cities around the world: eat, swim, do karaoke, have coffee and more. OK, this is FT Weekend, the podcast special edition. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. Here we go.

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Rebecca and Niki, welcome to the show.

Niki Blasina
Thanks for having us.

Rebecca Rose
Great to be here.

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, let’s just jump in. So I know the two of you divide travellers into two kinds of categories. There’s the planners and then there’s the non-planners. And to start, I would love to ask Niki, what type of traveller are you?

Niki Blasina
I am a planner. I am such a planner, actually. I’ve been known to make spreadsheets for my holidays in general. When I go away, I like to have, I like to have some activities booked and some restaurants booked and know that I’ve got, like one or two things each day.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Rebecca, what about you?

Rebecca Rose
Well, I’m a total planner. I start getting excited about trips that, you know, six months in advance or as soon as I know I’m going and research where I’m gonna eat, I even look at menus. I plan exactly what I’m going to eat, by which point it’s a completely different season when you . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Laughter)

Rebecca Rose
. . . get to the restaurant and the menu’s no longer in existence. The other thing that I do, which is really kind of unhealthy, is study the long-term weather reports forever. (laughter) I think it is, depends whether you get a lot of joy out of this phase. Some people, I mean, Niki and I, for example, probably get as much joy in planning and talking about the trip than we do actually being there. But some people just don’t have time or they can’t be bothered or they don’t — their brain doesn’t work like that. I’m full of admiration for people who just arrive and wing it and probably end up having a great time. But I, I don’t know. I think that if you’re going away for a short time, there isn’t room for a bad coffee or bad meal. You know, you’re only gonna have sort of three or four meals while you’re there. Why leave it to chance when it could be disappointing?

Lilah Raptopoulos
I have landed in a city and not had a hotel reservation for . . . (Laughter)

Rebecca Rose
Lilah?!?

Lilah Raptopoulos
And that’s kind of a fun thing. I know. That’s like a horrible thing.

Niki Blasina
Exactly. To make me break out into, like, a cold sweat.

Rebecca Rose
Come to us next time.

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Laughter) The horror. The shock and horror on your faces. I know. But at the same time, like, when you do that, even though it can be fun and you can end up somewhere weird and interesting, you realise that there’s an amazing restaurant there that you just like would have had a chance to go to that you can’t because you didn’t think about it.

Rebecca Rose
That’s the dream. I mean, how often does that happen there? Let’s face it.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Are there mistakes that you see over and over again that people make when they’re planning a trip? Niki?

Niki Blasina
Yeah, definitely. I think my number one thing that I think people try and do is just fit in too much.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.

Niki Blasina
I think especially if you’re travelling to a city. I mean, I’ve been in London now for eight years and I still not seen the whole city. So you’re not gonna be able to go somewhere for a weekend or for a week and see everything. It’s just impossible.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Niki Blasina
So I think, yeah, the key is just to find, don’t try and fit in too much. That’s the number one mistake, right?

Lilah Raptopoulos
I mean, the things that tourists go to in New York — often, I haven’t been to and it doesn’t represent New York to me. And it makes me feel like they leave and they’re like, “Wow, that city is too busy and exhausting”. It doesn’t feel like they really went to the New York that I know.

Niki Blasina
When friends come to visit me, like I always say that as well. I’m like, the London I love isn’t, you know, at the halls of Westminster. It’s the pubs that I go to every weekend with my friends. London is such a neighbourhood-y place and so is New York, and I think you really get a good feel for a city when you actually spend time doing things that people who live there might do?

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Niki Blasina
And I think you take a lot more away from it when you do that.

Rebecca Rose
I always say the best time to visit a city is your second trip there, because the first trip, inevitably you do want to tick off a couple of the kind of big tourist attractions. You know, it’s hard to go to Paris, not actually go and look at the Eiffel Tower.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Totally.

Rebecca Rose
But then the second time you can just relax and the third time, fourth time even better. And you know, the more often you’ve been to a city, the more you could just pick a neighbourhood and hang out there.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So here’s a question for you. I am taking some time off next month for a trip in November, about 10 days. It’s on the calendar. I don’t know where I’m going yet. It’s probably gonna be kind of a last-minute plan.

Rebecca Rose
Wait, are we talking 2022 here, Lilah?

Lilah Raptopoulos
November, mid-November, 2022.

Rebecca Rose
Oh, my God.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Once I pick a place, what are your tips for how I should start making the most of this trip? But, what do I do first?

Niki Blasina
OK, so weather. Weather, I think, is actually where you have to start. I mean, you don’t have to go somewhere warm, like if you are seeking warmth. I mean, that’s one thing you have to decide.

Rebecca Rose
I think Niki and I would both say: try to speak to somebody who lives there or somebody who goes there really, really often. There are no better tips than from a local, essentially. They’re gonna be the people who you, have the most up-to-date information. Guidebooks are often out of date. Pretty much as soon as they hit the shelves, you’re gonna get the inside information, not the 101 stuff that you will find online.

Niki Blasina
My advice would just be to find one place to eat every day that looks great.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Mmm.

Niki Blasina
You know, you have three meals a day, so you’re not overscheduling yourself if you have one booked in. You . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Niki Blasina
Certainly leave yourself open to new discoveries and then try and have like one activity. So whether that’s, you know, an exhibition in the morning, a leisurely lunch, then you spend the rest of the day just enjoying that place.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. I wanna ask you too: are you finding that what people want when they’re travelling to a new city is changing?

Rebecca Rose
We’re definitely seeing a real trend in people wanting to know where their food is coming from, how local ingredients are. Another thing we’re noticing is people are interested in sustainability when it comes to hotels. They want to know how much their hotel recycles. Where does the waste go? What’s done with the food that’s left over? But at the same time, at the luxury end of travel, people still want to take home the toiletries . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Laughter)

Rebecca Rose
And they still want to see a giant steak on the menu. So there is a bit of a tension there, I would say.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Are there any other sort of trends, new trends that you’re seeing in travel?

Niki Blasina
We are seeing the rise of something called “bleisure” travel, which is probably the least sexy portmanteau you’ve ever heard (laughter) of. But it’s the mix of business and leisure travel, whether that’s adding a couple of days to a work trip or having a holiday and going somewhere for a few weeks, then adding, you know, a week or two on of working remotely, if that’s possible. So it’s this, this mix of both in order to kind of get the most out of that time away.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah. That must be rising from Covid too, in remote working. Like, I have a lot of friends who will go away for three weeks and just work from, like an Airbnb or a short-term rental, just to kind of fake live in a new city. But it is a version of travel.

Niki Blasina
Yeah, no, absolutely. And it’s such a nice way to actually, I think when you have a bit more time in a place as well and you are living there as a worker in a way, and how a normal person would live there.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So my last question is, if listeners are planning trips in the next couple of months, like if I could just throw a couple of months at you (laughter) could you recommend some places that people might wanna go? Like, for example, if someone was planning a trip in January, where might they wanna consider?

Rebecca Rose
Does anyone go anywhere in January?

Lilah Raptopoulos
Exactly. They should! (laughter)

Niki Blasina
Oh, but they should. It’s so, it’s the best time to travel because then it just sort of relieves you from your January misery.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right.

Rebecca Rose
December. I’ve been to Venice in December and you also get incredible blue skies. It’s really cold everywhere. All the Venetians are in their fur coats, sipping spritzers, and it’s just such a festive atmosphere. So I would really recommend that.

Niki Blasina
I think would be remiss not to say to look at currencies as well. So Japan, you know the yen is down right now. That is, that is something to think about. I mean, if you are trying to plan a holiday now, think about where your money might go the furthest.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Mmm-hmm. It’s a really good idea.

Rebecca Rose
And also think about where you can get to by train as well. Doesn’t have to be a big long flight away.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Rebecca and Niki, this was very educational. I’m now stressed about (laughter) how last minute I have made my trip, but otherwise I’m thrilled. Thank you so much.

Rebecca Rose
Thank you for having us.

Niki Blasina
Yeah, thank you.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to FT Weekend, the podcast from the Financial Times. I’ve dropped links to everything mentioned today in our show notes as well as a special discount to a subscription to the FT. And you can find our city guides at ft.com/globetrotter. Next Wednesday, we have Jessica Nabongo. She recently published a book with National Geographic called The Catch Me If You Can. There are photographs from her travels to every country in the world. We talk about why we travel, and I am pretty sure that you will leave that conversation with at least maybe five new countries on your bucket list. This show is produced by Zach St Louis. Executive produced by Topher Forhecz and Cheryl Brumley, and sound engineered by Breen Turner.

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