But not everyone else is traveling with a chronic condition. Not everyone needs to make adjustments. Accepting that can be difficult, and sometimes I’ve found myself feeling resentful at how carefree others can be. My life cannot be lived spontaneously or entirely with abandon. That’s a hard pill to swallow. But it’s also just something to accept. It’s okay to say no, to do your own thing, to spend an afternoon resting while everyone else heads out for another hike.

Preparation is the second lesson.

I take a medication that needs to be refrigerated. Traveling with it is a slightly arduous process that requires paperwork, cooler bags, and conversations with airlines in advance to ensure they can store it in their fridges during flights. I’m lucky, I only take the medication every two weeks, and so often I simply plan travel dates around my injection schedule. When that isn’t possible, packing becomes an exercise in anticipating every outcome.

More than once, I’ve booked a short trip with only hand luggage, convincing myself that for three days I’ll be fine. But in doing so, I sacrifice packing things that ease my symptoms because they’re bulky or inconvenient. I always regret it. Comfort, I’ve learned, is worth the extra suitcase.

If you have a condition that flares unpredictably, it can be tempting—particularly if it hasn’t happened for a while—to be lulled into a false sense of security. Traveling isn’t the time for that. Pack every medication you might need. Carry extra prescriptions in case of delays. Split essential medication between cabin and hold luggage. Adjust medication timing for new time zones. It’s tedious, administrative work, but it will often be the difference between a great trip and a terrible one.

And finally: don’t abandon every routine that helps you manage your health.

Part of the joy of travel is leaning into hedonism, abandoning everyday life. But for those of us with chronic conditions, letting go of everything we know about our bodies rarely ends well. If there are stretches you do every day at home that help, do them on holiday too. If you know you need a certain amount of sleep to manage pain, prioritize it. If certain foods trigger your condition, remain mindful of their impact.

Travel may not look exactly the way it once did for me. But it is still expansive, joyful, and full of possibility, just with a little more planning, a little more patience, and a deeper understanding of the body that carries me through it.

This article was originally published on Condé Nast Traveller UK.

In 2018, my mother and I were watching Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities while I curled her hair. I knew she had attended Southern University, an HBCU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But as the memories bubbled up, she mentioned how she’d spent the summer after her freshman year in Switzerland.

I paused with the curling iron in my hand. How in the world had my mother, a young Black woman and the eldest of four, raised by two parents who had never finished high school in a segregated town in southwestern Louisiana, spent a summer in Europe in the 1960s?

In the 1960’s, the writers’ mother spent a formative summer in Switzerland.

Getty

“We traveled around Switzerland for two months and the trip changed the course of my life,” my mom said, nostalgia in her voice. It was part of a program called The Experiment in International Living program, she explained, and through the support of an encouraging professor, donations organized via the university newspaper, and a car wash that she hosted with fellow students, my mother raised the $1,500 needed to participate and she was off to Switzerland at the age of 19.

She hadn’t been back since. Naturally, I looked at her in that moment and vowed to return together. We could retrace her steps; we could revisit the places that had silently loomed so large over the years that followed. Nearly seven years after that conversation, we made it happen.

It was September 2025. We had one week, and two Swiss Travel Passes, which would allow us to journey by train (and bus and boat) eastward, from Geneva to Zurich. We would revisit towns she had known—St. Gallen, Lucerne, Zurich—while adding in some she dreamed of, like Geneva and Interlaken. The goal wasn’t to recreate her trip exactly, but to pay tribute to key places, and to see which forgotten memories surfaced themselves along the way. What had once felt like simply a nice idea had also become something more urgent: My father had passed away since we first dreamed up the trip, after years spent suffering with dementia. I grieved not only his death but also the memories that he’d never shared. I was determined to preserve some of my mother’s stories while I could.

Just as the writer’s mother did in the 60’s, the two of them traveled Switzerland by rail.

Getty

Family vacation. The phrase either inspires excitement or incites fear among adults who are lucky enough to still have their parents and siblings around and still want to hang out with them. Sometimes it triggers both disparate feelings in equal measure. Getting to spend uninterrupted time with our loved ones is a privilege! But it can also be challenging, and I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from friends and colleagues about well-intentioned trips which have ended in rather frosty flights home.

I’m lucky: I’ve traveled extensively with both my sister Emily, who’s three years older than me, and my mom. Emily and I have spent a week in Paris following a break-up and in New York, trotting through Central Park, clutching bags from Magnolia Bakery and attempting to get the perfect photo holding a frosty Martini glass. My mom has been my chosen plus-one for some of my glitziest work trips: a sleepover at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, a weekend in Cannes, and 24 hours on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. But until this year, we hadn’t traveled as a trio, without my dad in tow, since we were teenagers.

Sarah’s mom Diana and sister Emily in Burano

Sarah James

As my sister and I ease into our 30s and my mom into her 70s, there’s that feeling that traveling freely—hopping on planes for a long weekend on the continent—won’t always be this easy. There will, one day, be partners to consider and family demands to factor in. So we chose Venice, somewhere my mom had long wanted to return to, and locked in the dates on one of the rare occasions when we were all in the same room.

Perhaps you’re supposed to outgrow traveling with your mom, but I know neither my sister or myself have ever felt that way. Our relationships flex and shift and change, and roles that were once set in stone shift too. Something I’ve always found especially joyful about traveling with other women is that things just get done—dishwashers in Airbnbs get loaded and unloaded, restaurant reservations get made, flights are checked into without anyone ever having to ask. But I admit I was surprised to find the same is true when traveling with the women in my family, too.

Diana in a bar in Venice

Sarah James

What is the significance of having a travel program on public broadcasting to you?

The significance is huge. Number one, it’s the only platform that has as many female travel hosts or female hosts in general. The main reason being there’s no executive who is saying, yes, we’ll sign you. [When you have a show on PBS] they sign you as an independent producer.

Number two, there’s no barrier to entry. If you have internet, you can access our show for free. We do get grants for making our shows fully accessible with closed captioning descriptions for the visually impaired. My sister is disabled, so I’ve always put accessibility in the forefront of making our shows.

Number three is legacy. I grew up watching Reading Rainbow and Mr. Rogers and Rick Steves. To now be on the platform that has been such an integral part of my upbringing is an honor.

The fourth thing is, as independent producers, we own all of our content. There’s no one to say, oh, we just shot 10 episodes, and all of a sudden they’re gonna pull it, and no one’s gonna see the light of day of that. As long as we can find the funding and make it move forward, people will see the show.

Mallozzi sits down with Māori musicians and dancers in Aotearoa.

Courtesy of Bare Feet With Mickela Mallozzi

What is the scouting process like for Bare Feet?

First, I look at a map and think of dances we haven’t featured yet, both in New York City and in international settings we haven’t been able to tap into and explore. Then we start to sort out stories. Usually episodes are five segments long—one, three, and five are dance/music related, and two and four are food, culture, nature, something interesting that’s completely unique to the destination.

Mallozzi learns about the tea harvesting process in Taiwan’s Alishan township.

Courtesy of Bare Feet With Mickela Mallozzi

It’s an overused phrase, but my time in India was life-changing. It gave me a new perspective on the world and the chance to process and come to terms with what has happened. Though it’s not always easy to, the trip taught me the importance of living in the moment and accepting life as it is, not how you hope it to be. With profound loss comes profound learning and being in India made me appreciate the value of letting life take you where it wants to take you, and leaning into that uncertainty rather than resisting change.

While I’ll always be sad about losing my girls, and I’ll miss them every day of my life, I feel changed for the better. The experience encouraged me to prioritize the things that are worth my time and energy and let go of the things that aren’t. As well as an unforgettable adventure around Rajasthan that surpassed my expectations, India also took me on an inward journey that has helped me to find peace. I returned wanting to run towards life, not away from it. And while the future remains uncertain, I feel hopeful again.

Sacred spaces for holistic healing

The following places offer a safe space to start the healing process, from sanctuaries to guide you towards inner peace, to spiritual sites that will help to restore your faith in the world.

Leela Palace Udaipur is seated amongst the banks of Lake Pichola.

Temple Blessing at the Leela Palace Udaipur, India

In Rajasthan’s ethereal “white city” you’ll find this tranquil palace hotel floating on the banks of Lake Pichola. The setting alone is healing in itself—you can spend hours watching the birds swoop and sun set over the lake—but it also offers traditional blessing ceremonies at the 16th century Shiva temple within its grounds.

Water Purification Ceremony at COMO Shambhala, Bali

Guests staying at this hilltop retreat in the middle of the Balinese jungle can experience a water purification ceremony at the sacred spring within the Tirta Empul temple. Begin by making an offering under an ancient banyan tree then take part in a series of cleansing rituals in the temple’s holy waters designed to rid the body of negative energy.

Meditate with Monks at Bhutan Spirit Sanctuary, Bhutan

Bhutan’s only five-star luxury wellness resort offers an array of healing experiences, from transformation rituals to herbal treatments rooted in traditional Bhutanese medicine. After a hike to the Eutok Goenpa monastery, you can meditate with Buddhist monks then talk to some of the senior monks during a tea ceremony, which can be arranged upon request.

Mayan cleansing rituals are at the heart of wellness at Yaan Healing Sanctuary Mexico.

Claus Brechenmacher & Reiner Baumann

Moon Temazcal Ceremony at Yäan Healing Sanctuary, Mexico

Symbolizing rebirth, this cleansing ritual in Tulum is led by a Mayan mystic during the monthly moon cycles. Designed to help participants heal, you’ll be guided into a dome-shaped hut and taken through the four doors of a pre-Hispanic sweat lodge ceremony, which involves being engulfed in herb-infused steam created by hot volcanic stones.

Dwarika’s Sanctuary Nepal is surrounded by 25 acres of rugged forest and the Himalayan Mountains.

Salt House Breathwork at Dwarika’s Sanctuary, Nepal

Set within 25 acres of natural forest amid the Himalayan peaks, this Nepalese sanctuary is the perfect place to find inner peace. Head to its Himalayan rock salt house for a pranayama breath work session designed to restore balance. Crafted from 20 tons of rock salt crystals, the saline air is beneficial for the respiratory system, helping you to breathe easy.

This article was originally published on Condé Nast Traveller UK.

When I was a teenager, my mother took preparing for vacations extremely seriously. As well as teaching me and my younger sister to exfoliate thoroughly in order to get the best tan (it was the early 2000s), and taking us to get our legs waxed (again, 2000s), we would also make a visit to the doctor to get a prescription of Northisterone, a period-delaying medication that would ensure we wouldn’t get our periods while abroad. I didn’t use tampons until my twenties for this very reason—I’d simply never had a reason to.

For my mom, periods were an annoyance that could be planned for when it came to traveling. It’s a shame I didn’t take more notice, as when I went to New Zealand in my late twenties, I completely forgot to pack my contraceptive pill. This led to me not only getting my period while there, but also having to abruptly come off it completely, which resulted in months of irregular periods and hormonal confusion. The thing that really irked me the most? I was traveling with four male friends, none of whom obviously had to think about such things.

From avoiding white summer dresses and constantly having to plan ahead and remember to pack enough products, to just being grumpy, depressed or in pain, there’s no denying that periods can be a massive bummer when you’re on vacation. And even if you’re someone who is typically pain-free and not as bothered by the side effects of having a period, there’s always the chance that simply the act of traveling can have a knock-on effect on your menstrual cycle. “Crossing time zones, getting less sleep, eating differently, or dealing with travel stress can all impact your reproductive hormones,” explains Cornelia Hainer, head of science at period-tracking app Clue.

“That’s because your circadian rhythm, the internal clock that regulates sleep, hormone release, body temperature, and digestion, is sensitive to light and routine. Jet lag exposes you to light at unusual times, which can ripple into cycle changes. This might mean the timing of ovulation changes and your period comes a little earlier or later, or that flow and symptoms feel different. These changes are usually temporary, and things typically settle back into your baseline within a cycle or two.”

While these changes can be disorienting and confusing, there are ways we can try to plan our trips to make sure we make the most of our trips. Here, hormonal experts weigh in on how to game your cycle to get the best out of your vacation while traveling on your period.

How to plan your vacation around your menstrual cycle

Period tracking apps like Clue are a convenient way to track and understand your cycle.

Courtesy Clue

Track your cycle

One of the easiest ways to take control of your menstrual health and plan for a vacation is to understand your cycle. If you’re aware of how you feel at different stages, it’s all the easier to plan around it. “Your cycle can shape your travel experience in noticeable ways,” shares Hainer. “Depending on the phase you’re in, you might feel more energetic, sensitive, social, or introspective. Your mood, energy, sleep, and physical comfort can all be influenced by shifting hormone levels across your cycle. Some people may find they feel their best right after their period or around ovulation, while others might find the days before their period more emotionally or physically challenging. If you’re tracking your cycle on an app like Clue, you can plan around these patterns to make travel more comfortable and enjoyable.”

Avoid the luteal phase if you suffer from PMS

It goes without saying that if you suffer from particularly heavy or painful periods, it might be best to avoid traveling during that time if you can—but your luteal phase can also be tricky. “During your period, cramps, bloating, and the logistics of managing period products around travel days or swimming and beach days are more challenging,” says Hazel Wallace, author of Not Just A Period. “But after ovulation, we enter the luteal phase, and this is when PMS symptoms like fatigue, irritability, and digestive changes (especially constipation) may impact your holidays in less positive ways too.” It might be best to coordinate travel with the follicular phase, when energy levels are up and mood is more stable.

LA: What’s your game plan when you go in?

KM: So I try to go early in the morning, the minute they open, and I try not to go on a weekend because it gets too packed, it’s too chaotic. There’s a quarter million people all in one place, usually on the weekends. It gets very, very crowded. And then I just have my favorite sections that I know I like to go to. Everyone has different favorite sections. Some people want to go to Machinery Hill and just look at all the machines. I don’t want to go to Machinery Hill. I don’t really care about that. But I do want to go and see all of the people doing displays of different home improvement products. I want to see the person showing me how absorbent their Shamwow is. “Ma’am, would you like to see how absorbent this is?”

“Yes, I would. I would like to see that.”

“I’m going to spill a cup of coffee right here on this rug, and I’m going to show you how fast this picks up this coffee.”

And I love saying that, I want to see the seed art. I know the different things I want to see. So I suggest go in with a game plan. And if you are with certain friends who you know they want to go to the home economics displays and you want to see the baby animals, have a meetup spot. You don’t have to do everything together all the time, but prioritize what you want to see because you might get exhausted faster than you think and then wrap it up and call the day while you’re happy. Don’t stay until you’re overheated and overly tired.

LA: Are there any other state fairs that you are obsessed with or that you really want to visit?

KM: Well, people always tell me I should visit the Texas State Fair because Texas likes to say that their fair is larger than the Minnesota State Fair.

LA: Very Texas.

KM: And they say that because they get… There’s a slightly higher number of visitors every year to their state fair the Minnesota does, but I don’t think that’s fair because their state fair lasts twice as long as Minnesota. But I will say I do like to visit little county fairs.

LA: Actually, Kristen, I was going to ask, we’ve been talking about all the trips that you have done recently, but is there anywhere that you have your eye on that has lots of human stories and history that you might be going to next?

KM: Yes. So one trip I dream of taking is the Prince Edward Island Track. So Prince Edward Island has a walking track that goes around the entire perimeter of it. And there are different sections of the walk you can do. Some that go inland, some that are only to see lighthouses. There’s one section of the walk that is just for Anne of Green Gables fans, where you can go to the Lucy Maud Montgomery House. You can see various sites where Anne of Green Gables supposedly did this or did that in her books. And the walk, I believe can take up to seven days if you’re doing shorter sections. But if you are a more long walker like me, you can do the whole walk, I think in three to four days and every night, walk from one village to the next. Stay in an inn, drink some cordial or whatever it is that Anne of Green Gables would drink, eat some sandwiches, have a picnic, spend the night in the inn and then wake up the next morning and go to the next spot.

LA: Oh, that sounds magical.

If people want to follow along with you, when you hopefully embark on this trip and hear your stories, find your podcasts, just follow your work, where is the best place for them to go on the internet?

KM: Well, you can go to my website, kristenmeinzer.com, that’s K-R-I-S-T-E-N-M-E-I-N-Z-E-R.com. Kristenmeinzer.com, or you can follow me on Instagram. My handle is @k10meinzer. So those are the two best places.

LA: Oh, that was so fun.

KM: That was so fun. You guys make it so easy. Thank you so much.

LA: God, you make it so easy.

KM: Oh, what a joy.

LA: Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel. I’m Lale, and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineer is Pran Bandi. And special thanks to Jake Lummus for engineering support. Our show is mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound. Jude Kampfner is our producer, Stephanie Kariuki our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is head of Condé Nast Global Audio.

In Zagreb, Rajka used her leftover dough from sweet Knedle plum dumplings to make savory gnocchi. At grandmother Esma’s, in the thriving market town of Selcuk in the south of Turkey, Esma used the leftover green ends of the spring onions she used in the wild greens and cheesy borek fingers as a base for her fried eggs with sumac. This was a revelation—she had created an entirely new (and delicious) dish from the off-cuts of another. Elsewhere in Turkey, in the hilltop village of Kusadase, nonagenarian Ayten swapped out bicarbonate of soda with ash water, using the remnants of ash from her wood-fired oven to bake her Kalburabasti (walnut biscuits). We sat in her garden, lush with the scent of citrus and jasmine, sipping sweet tea and savouring her sweet biscuits as Ayten explained that simplicity, above all else, was the key to living a happy and long life.

Before “zero-waste” was a trend, grandmothers across Italy and the rest of the Mediterranean basin were using the milled husks of their wheat or dried lentils as chicken feed. Meats were cured in order to keep a family going throughout the winter, hence prosciutto and other cold cuts. Biscotti—a staple in most Italian nonnas’ homes—were famously baked twice to ensure they would last longer. The term “Cucina Povera”—kitchen of the poor—originated in rural Italy but on my travels, it became clear to me that this style of thrifty eating has been adopted by the matriarchs of kitchens across the Mediterranean and it makes sense. Why buy food if it’s only going to end up in the bin?

In its simplest sense, Cucina Povera used the best of what people had available to them to create hearty, filling, and cheap meals that could power a working day in which most of the tasks to be accomplished were labor-intensive and manual. This meant using ingredients grown locally and seasonally and making use of everything. A main ingredient used in Cucina Povera is bread. Cheap to produce and a key component of a meal that guarantees to fill the belly, a loaf of bread can go a long way.

In the rural villages around Tunis, I discovered one of my favorite dishes featured in my book. Grandmother Latifa poured a soul-firing chickpea stew atop days’ old bread husks, topping it with kicky harissa and a boiled egg to create a lablebi—a worker’s lunch that is both filling and comforting in equal measure. I ate this in Latifa’s chaotic kitchen surrounded by various family members, arms crisscrossing over a retro print table cloth to seek out favorite toppings (capers, spicy chili, harissa, eggs, tuna) for their lablebi. It was a kind of build-your-own-dish that felt so decadent, it surprised me that it was born out of necessity.

Beyond the purse strings, religion and cultural norms have very much shaped the healthy diets these women have followed their entire lives. There’s an element of fasting in cultures all across the Mediterranean, regardless of the specific religion, and this has added an element of regimen and restriction that has obvious health benefits, not to mention those for the planet. “Everything had a sort of logic to it, even if it masqueraded as religion,” Nonna Anna told me as we cooked up her favorite Easter Monday lunch of ricotta balls in a rich tomato sugo in Puglia. “After breaking our 40 days of lent and feasting on Easter Sunday, we then picnic on Easter Monday, eating lighter foods to make up for all of the gluttony of the day before.”

As with my own Yiayia, meat for most of the women I cooked with has always been a treat, appearing at Sunday lunch or on celebrations. We no longer have the luxury of denying climate change. Though meat is now very much a commodity, Mediterranea is packed with vegetarian and vegan options, purely because the nonnas of the Mediterranean have always eaten in this way. Given the current demands on our climate and the obvious health benefits, it makes a lot of sense to cook meat as these women do, and seek out good quality, grass-fed, and slow-grown options from a local butcher.