This “Travel Easy Series” has been full as my belly on Ukrainian Christmas. 😋  

We started with a load of tips on how to travel with ease… 

Then we went through the best ways to immerse yourself in the local culture… 

And here we’ll end with the most important of all — how to experience it like a vagabonding monk (no joke). Let’s get started…

Just Slow Down Already

I remember being so damn excited the first time I landed in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, that I was nearly running through the streets. 

As the sunset along one particularly gorgeous calle, the trees lit up with thousands of sparkly white lights. It felt magical. 

…and then I realized I was doing it all wrong.

In the rush to do more, I was literally zipping through the experience just to check it off the list. 🤦‍♂️ 

But for some reason — thankfully — I came to my senses and slowed down. I stopped passing people out for a leisurely stroll and joined them, finally taking it all in. 

It’s an experience I think of often, and it helps keep me in check when traveling… It helps me travel slower, enjoy it more, and truly appreciate it all. 

Take a quick read of these 5 Benefits Of Slow Travel so you can squeeze out a bit more of the best stuff during your trip.  

Stimulate Your Senses

The richness of a place can’t only be experienced with your eyes or your taste buds. No… 

…the wise traveler engages all five of their senses to fully take in a new place. 

Not only will this leave you will more, and longer lasting memories (your memories are often tied to smell, sound and touch as much as sight and taste) but you’ll simply enjoy the experience a lot more too. 

Here’s 25 Fun Exercises To Stimulate Your Senses. Give a few a whirl… I promise it will make your trip better.  

Keep It Cool

A good life is a social one… 

Good friends make life wonderful. They’ll make you laugh, be there when needed, aid and abet in all your mischief, and will often annoy the hell out of you. 😆 

So although they can make your trip 1,000X better, they can also make it frustrating at points. 

The goal, then, is to nix the messy stuff so the trip is all aces. Here are how: 11 Brilliant Tips On How To Keep It Cool When Traveling With Friends.  

Remember It

The previous sections will definitely help you have a more memorable, enjoyable trip than you would have otherwise… 

That stuff is seriously more important than all the little details put together because it’s the stuff that actually makes or breaks your trip… it’s the stuff that turns a “good time” into a “f*ckin’ phenomenal time!”

But here’s a sad truth: your memories of this trip will fade… 

They will merge with others (even from different trips of different times), the details will altogether disappear, and you’ll get confused about where or when something sweet happened. 

You want to remember this trip, though, right? 

Of course! 

Well, that’s why the Journo Travel Journal exists — to make it an absolute breeze to track, document, and share your travels so don’t ever have to worry about forgetting it. 

Here are a few tips on how to easily do this while you’re still on your trip:      

• Start with today. You don’t have a ton of time each day and when you finally get back to your room at night you’re pretty beat. So don’t worry yet about previous days, just start with today (and catch up as soon as you can).      
• Think “highlight reel.” You can add as many details as you have time for, but the simplest thing to do is just add your highlight reel. Think about the top 1-3 things that went down today. Add those to your Journo.      
• Start in your phone’s photo album. Need help with remembering your highlight reel? Start by pulling up the date in your phone’s photo library. Find the best pics, add them to your Journo, and write a short snippet of each.      
• Consider giving your friends back home a touch of the #TravelEnvy bug. 😜 You can publish your Journo to your very own travel blog with a couple of taps: from the Journo settings area, just hit ‘publish,’ and then share that on Facebook or wherever you’d like. This will both make your friends drool and also keep you on track with adding more stories of your adventures.  

Those four tips alone will build for you a memento of this trip you will cherish forever, guaranteed. 

I hope this serves you in engaging, experiencing, and making the most out of your trip. 

And that ends this series…

…but if you wanted to take it a step further and discover how to turn your words into magic so you can look like a nat geo travel writer WITHOUT having to go through years of journalism school, then take a look at our Travel Writing Wizardry exclusive.  

Did we miss any tips on how to fully utilize all your senses while abroad? Please tell us in the comments below!