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Practical Wanderlust

Off-Beat Travel Blog

Wear a fanny pack. Leave your smartphones at home. Shop for souvenirs at the airport. Are these the worst travel tips ever, or are you just having another cringe-worthy conversation with your mom? Guess you'll have to read this post to find out.
Travel Tips

25 Truly Terrible Travel Tips: What NOT to Do When You Travel

Last Updated:   August 11, 2020

As a professional full-time travel blogger, I get a lot of inquiries from my readers looking for travel tips and advice. Most of them refer to me as a “travel goddess” or “the female Rick Steves” and they typically end with something like “why don’t you have a show on the Travel Channel yet?”
But I didn’t always have the words “travel expert” on my resume in large, bold, italic, underlined letters. You may not realize this, but during our year-long honeymoon, Jeremy and I actually made a LOT of silly mistakes. How naive we were! How accident-prone and clumsy! Obviously that’s all in our past and definitely not just indicitave of who we truly are at our very cores.

So now that we’ve grown into mature post-honeymooners, I wanted to write a tongue-in-cheek post featuring a few of our favorite terrible travel tips. Some of these are based on our own misguided decisions, and others are inspired from beloved friends, travel companions, and family members that we’ve had the misfortune of traveling with. Please don’t try any of these at home!

by Lia Garcia 
23 Comments
Lia and Jeremy and the rooftops of Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic.
Personal Posts, Travel Stories & Fails

32 Things Nobody Tells You About Long Term Travel as a Couple

Last Updated:   January 11, 2021

Traveling with your partner is one thing. Long term travel with your partner? That’s like, a whole other, totally different, completely not the same thing. My husband and I spent a whole year traveling the world together as a couple …and lived to tell the tale! We’re even still happily married, I swear. It can absolutely be done, and it’s an incredible and enriching experience for any relationship. But … there are a FEW things that nobody told us about before we jetted off on our around-the-world trip. And so, to prepare/warn you, we’re laying it alllllll out.

by Lia Garcia 
29 Comments
What not to do on a France road trip through Bordeaux, Avignon, Seillans, Provence, and the French Riviera!
Europe, Travel Stories & Fails

Winter Road Trip Through France: What Not to Do

Last Updated:   August 11, 2020

Our off-season road trip through France was always doomed. It’s not just that Jeremy and I seem to attract disaster like magnets made of whatever the opposite of disaster is. But we have particularly awful luck when it comes to cars. But here we were, renting one in France in January. What could go wrong? … Everything, of course. This is the story of our doomed French road trip. Or as I like to call it, the story of the time we ran a BMW into into a medieval castle.

by Lia Garcia 
31 Comments
27 completely unnecessary travel gifts that you definitely don't need. Travel gag gifts that you low-key totally want!
Gift Guides

28 Totally Ridiculous Travel Gifts (That You’ll Low-Key Want)

Last Updated:   December 11, 2020

While there are roughly a zillion Travel Gift Lists out there all repeating the same generic gifting advice, there’s currently no list of travel gifts that you definitely DO NOT NEED. We decided to fill this glaring absence with the most useless, un-helpful, ridiculously unnecessary list of vaguely travel-related items. We spent HOURS combing the deepest corners of the web looking for these items to bring you the worst of the best of travel-related things that you absolutely don’t need at all but would be thrilled if someone else bought for you.

by Lia Garcia 
23 Comments
Couple gazing at an island in the Caribbean ocean.
Personal Posts

30 Things Nobody Tells You About Quitting Your Job to Travel

Last Updated:   January 11, 2021

It’s been 1 year since we quit our jobs, hopped on a plane, and left for our year-long honeymoon. For years, all I wanted to do was leave my job in corporate America and go off an an amazing journey, traveling all around the world and having incredible adventures. I daydreamed all day long and planned all night – and by that I mostly mean I spent a lot of time on Pinterest pinning travel inspiration – and finally I set a date to realize my dream. By 2016, I told myself, I’m going to quit my job and go travel. And then it was time. The date had arrived. We quit our jobs. We went traveling. And it was NOTHING like what we expected…

by Lia Garcia 
84 Comments
25 things nobody tells you about traveling while fat!
Personal Posts

25 Things Nobody Tells You About Traveling While Fat

Last Updated:   August 31, 2020

Traveling as a fat woman comes with its own set of challenges. From chub rub to tiny towels, here’s 25 things nobody tells you about plus size travel!

by Lia Garcia 
111 Comments
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