Traveling well uses a set of mental muscles, and it’s good to keep them in shape. As much as I have traveled internationally in the last 30 years for business and pleasure, I’m still making mistakes—and still learning. I’m compiling this list to share with you on the plane on the way home from a trip to Aberdeen (business) and London (pleasure).
- The airport lounge is a great place to get caught up on that pesky, past-due expense report, but only if all the receipts have already been scanned. It’s dead time before the next adventure, and provides the added bonus of starting out the trip with a clean slate before the next set of crumpled receipts piles up (and feeling all virtuous about it).
- Speaking of feeling virtuous, that’s the only benefit from wearing compression socks, other than that prevention thing. They are hot and scratchy and grumpy-making.
- From now on, I need to make a checklist of the things I carry with me and to review it at every step of the journey, because I left my jacket somewhere in the airport – security? airport lounge? at the gate? – for the third time in less than a decade. This one was just a $30 canvas windbreaker, but I really liked it. I’m getting seriously good at shopping for a jacket in the cold on the day I land, which was never a skill that I wanted to hone. Aberdeen was every bit as chilly and rainy as can be expected in mid-April that far north in Scotland.
- Relaxing the rule of never getting chatty with fellow passengers on a long-haul flight can occasionally be a good thing. I prefer a window seat but dread disturbing my seat mates to get up when nature calls. This time, I was on the aisle, so in the spirit of “be the change you want to see”, I told the woman next to me to feel free to get up whenever she needed to and that I wouldn’t mind, even if I was asleep. We had a lovely conversation and later in the trip, I was rewarded with champagne in a crystal glass and chocolate truffles. Her husband was an officer on the flight, resulting in special treatment from the crew that spilled over onto me (in a good way).
- Wifi on airplanes is unreliable: don’t count on it. On some long-haul flights, it’s just mysteriously and maddeningly unavailable. I was hoping to do some work on the flight over, but with no wifi, I finished reading a book on my iPad, finished listening to an audio book, and watched the Downton Abbey movie (again) instead.
- Download that next audio or e-reader book before the flight, because you might finish the one(s) you’re working on and need a backup – and you can’t trust the wifi to work, right?
- The best neck pillow is an inflatable one that you can adjust to suit your preferences and neck size. I usually can’t sleep on an overnight flight, which puts a serious damper on the arrival day, but the Grill-Meister gifted me with a plush, inflatable pillow that had the Goldilocks effect. I still didn’t get much sleep, but even a little bit of shut-eye makes a difference. An eye mask helps, too, although this neck pillow comes with a hood that does the job.
- At Heathrow Airport, a layover between flights of just an hour and 15 minutes isn’t really enough time when you have to go through immigration to get to your next flight. Especially if you misunderstand which gate to go to and make a tactical (rookie) mistake with a tram. But some smaller planes still wait for passengers to arrive, and I wasn’t the only one running to catch the shuttle to Aberdeen. I wasn’t even the last one on board, although I might have been the sweatiest.
- Short layovers and other stressful travel adventures are good reasons to take blood pressure or other medications on the plane (if you need them), at the regular time. That’s one thing I didn’t forget. 😊
- The Jet Lag Prevention Protocols I shared here with you before remain golden. I put them all in play on that rainy landing day in Aberdeen and got acclimated to the time difference super-fly fast.
- Google Maps doesn’t know the London tube system better than an experienced traveler. It wanted me to get off at a stop and then walk for 16 minutes to my restaurant last night, but I knew I could change to a different line and emerge from a station only 3 minutes away from it. I felt a sense of pride at being smarter than Google, just this once.
- Speaking of AI, ChatGPT was a great friend to me on this trip. I’ve been to London many times but there are soooooo many things to do and see, and I wanted to scout out some lesser-known treasures. I asked it for a walking itinerary near my hotel in Holland Park, and it found two museums I had never heard of but will definitely recommend: Leighton House and Sambourne House. I spent several happy hours yesterday learning about a period of London’s art history and two very different artists, thanks to ChatGPT’s recommendations. I like to think that my prompt was a pretty good one: I asked it to scan the blog and particular attention to my interests to find some options that would suit me.
Those are my latest learnings and observations about how to navigate international travel. There’s more to come about the wonderful things I found on my adventure.
Do you have any travel learnings to share?
© 2025, Glover Gardens
Avoid Heathrow if you possibly can would be my advice! Awful place.
Agreed! Awful but ubiquitous.
Ok note: things to add to the list of man’s already greatest inventions including the wheel, fire (more of an accident than anything else – and they loved that log) the VCR (once), toast, and cat condo’s – compression socks AND neck pillows with hoods!!! I enjoyed this, thanks and glad it all went well and with unexpected museums too!
Awwww, thank you – you GET me! And yes, the VCR was a fab invention; I remember recording The Rockford Files when we couldn’t watch it, and a decade or two later, LA Law…. always a treat, both of them.
“you Get me” hehe. Now that gave me a smile. Now I didn’t VCR it but James Garner was THE MAN!! Other than Peter Falk was there anyone cooler than James Garner!? 🙂 🙂
No one cooler!
I was looking for a picture and stumbled on this. I’m done with WordPress. That said, two ways to void all of that if to fly business class and lay flat. Or, since Norah is filling 20,000 venues these days, we just fly private. Door to door service and board on the runway. No crowds or lounges. Oh, we bought a farm near Edinburgh that we share with MCC.