5 Little Travel Mistakes, 5 (Or So) Lessons Learned
Plus, come travel journal with me!
There is no such thing as a trip without mishaps. The big ones — missed flights, showing up on the wrong day — are generally avoidable, but the small stuff always tends to trip me up at least once. Here’s some of the stuff that I screwed up in Milan.
That museum you never thought would sell out? It’s sold out. I had no trouble booking exhibition tickets over the Olympic period, mostly because I stuck to smaller, more niche museums and events, and/or booked ahead. And then I tried to visit Casa Manzoni, the Renaissance revival mansion of Italian writer and philosopher Allesandro Manzoni. Doesn’t seem like the type of place that would be booked solid on a Wednesday morning, right? Well, it was. Turns out, the museum is jammed during the school year with student groups. If I’d contacted them in advance, they could have scheduled my visit, but alas.
Lesson learned: Call ahead. Even when you don’t think you’ll need to.
That famous designer exhibition? Which one? Turns out that there are two concurrently running Georgio Armani exhibitions in Milan at the moment. The first is the enormous Armani Prive retrospective at Armani/Silos, with its four floors of ultra-spangled couture gowns. The second is Milano, per amore, at Pinacoteca de Brera, where more than 120 garments are displayed against the backdrop of the museum’s many famous paintings. If you see both exhibitions, you get a discount — but only if you know that there are two exhibitions. Which I did not. You can see how researching this in advance proved tricky. I knew that there was an Armani exhibit and I stopped searching when I found it. (In this case, it was the Armani Prive exhibition.)
Lesson learned: If your destination is known for a particular thing (fashion, in this case), make sure you’re taking all of your options into account.
Armani Prive at Armani/Silos / Laura Motta, 2026 Public transportation? Sure, if you can figure it out. Public transit is one of those things. It’s slippery. Timetables change. Prices shift. Passes are available in a number of formats. In most cases, you can’t fully grasp it until your feet are on the ground and you’re standing in front of the turnstile, desperately praying for it to open. My challenge was metro passes. I read conflicting information about pricing on a few different web sites, so I got desperate. I used AI. And the AI was, of course, wrong. Milan does not offer a 7-day unlimited metro pass — unless you apply as a local resident who has access to something called a “fiscal number.” Not wanting to even go there, I opted for 3-day unlimited passes, which were a great deal. That is, until I made another mistake. Milan’s metro, like the London Underground, requires that you tap in and out at the turnstile. This worked fine until I went to a crowded Olympic event where the turnstiles stopped working. Having entered the metro without tapping in, I could not tap out to exit. The penalty? Five euros. That’s ⅓ the price of my entire unlimited pass.
Lessons learned: The AI doesn’t know. Sometimes you don’t know until you get there. Shit happens and it will cost you money.
A special sneak peek at a fabulous thing? Not for you, babe. I was excited about an exhibition at Sforza Castle — a restored, frescoed ceiling painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The web site mentioned that the room would be open during the Olympics and that visitors could climb scaffolding to see the work up-close. Well, you couldn’t. Maybe I missed the sign-up period for a special tour. Maybe it wasn’t available except to VIPs. I don’t know. But I saw neither the room nor the fresco and was never able to buy the ticket to do so.
Lessons learned: If you’re waiting for something special, check and keep checking. And when in doubt, enlist local help.
Why is this lunch bad? I researched. I watched hours of social media vids. I translated reviews from the Italian. And still, I had some solidly awful meals in Milan. This is happening to me more and more, both in New York and away from home — social media recommendations are failing me and left and right. Often, when I arrive, I can understand the issue immediately. An influencer was reacting to a vibe and not the quality of the food. The decor spoke louder than the menu. Or a place was trendier than it was excellent. Or, frankly, the influencer knows less about good food than they think they do. It was frustrating. I ended up reaching out to my friend Kaitlyn Rosati, an Italy expert and a food expert, who got me back on track.
Lessons learned: Trust people, not the algo. And, critically — trust people who have the same taste as you.
Come Journal With Me
Yes, I love to travel. Yes, I’ve spent a career writing about travel. But I also love to keep a journal, noodle around with art supplies, and preserve my travel memories offline. I’m excited to lead my first travel journaling workshop this month, where I’ll share lots of advice for how to do all this. We’ll also take some time to make a journal page during the session. The workshop is online and space is limited!
Come travel journal with me on March 22! No experience is required, and in fact no travel is required. See you there!
Where to Stay, Where to Go, What to Ride Right Now
Marufukuro, Kyoto: In 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi began selling playing cards out of a small Kyoto storefront – a business that would eventually grow to become the largest playing card manufacturer in Japan. By 1930, the renamed Nintendo company had built an Art Deco headquarters. Three of its buildings are now an elegant hotel, with a new annex designed by Tadao Ando. Forgoing Mario- and Donkey Kong-themed rooms – we’re glad they resisted the urge – Marufukuro has instead leaned into squeaky clean, minimalist aesthetics.
Sainte Marie de la Tourette, France: In a rural town outside of Lyon, you can stay in a monastery where a community of Dominican friars spends much of its time in quiet reflection. Their home was Le Corbusier’s final work. The reinforced concrete and glass structure seems to stand on stilts, balancing along a hillside. The rooms were built for monks and are referred to as “cells,” so this is not luxury accommodation, but this place is designed for spiritual awakening, not indulgence.
The Silk Road by Train: Fully obsessed with this 22-day Silk Road journey from Beijing to Uzbekistan by Golden Eagle Luxury Trains. If you, like me, were enthralled with Peter Frankopan’s 2015 book and his description of the Silk Roads as “the world’s central nervous system,” this might be of interest. With stops in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China, this trip puts together destinations that would be difficult and time-consuming to reach on your own. It also does it in immaculate style, which doesn’t hurt.