The Trip That Changed Me

Travel blogger extraordinaire Brenna Holeman started traveling solo in 2006 and has since been to 103 countries, chronicling her adventures along the way on her blog This Battered Suitcase. What sets Brenna apart from other travel bloggers is her candid style of storytelling. Always personal, intimate and inviting, her work immerses you. In this episode, Brenna shares the story of her first solo trip backpacking around Europe and the ways it ignited her career as a travel writer. Esme and Brenna speak about Brenna’s personal, confessional approach to blogging, the ways travel sets the stage for falling in love, and the joy of moving home to Winnipeg, Canada, after living in Japan and the UK for many years.  

You can find Brenna on Instagram @thisbatteredsuitcase and visit her website thisbatteredsuitcase.com.  

Learn more about Full-Time Travel by visiting fulltimetravel.co and follow us on Instagram @full_time_travel. Be sure to rate, review, and follow so that you don’t miss out on travel tips, inspiration, and your potential next adventure!    

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This week’s guest is the insanely talented Mari Andrew, a writer, artist, speaker, and our host Esme’s personal favorite social media follow. She is known on Instagram for her beautiful watercolor illustrations and profound musings on life's messiest experiences. The success of her beautiful books, Am I There Yet? and My Inner Sky, are a testament to the fact that the more personal the experience shared by an author, the more universal it ends up being. Mari has always been a big traveler; specifically, she’s always loved to travel alone, be the observer, soak up experiences, and channel them into her creativity. But a solo trip to the Greek island of Hydra changed that preference for aloneness. While exploring this idyllic island, so dazzlingly white she describes it as "diamond-like," Mari had the realization that beauty is made to be shared. In this episode, Mari and Esme discuss the shift from self-seeking to self-sharing, the hyper observational mindset travel creates and how it inspires art, and the ways that exploring new places helps us explore new sides of ourselves.  

You can find Mari on Instagram @bymariandrew, and find her books and more information on her website bymariandrew.com.  

Learn more about Full-Time Travel by visiting fulltimetravel.co and follow us on Instagram @full_time_travel. Be sure to rate, review, and follow so that you don’t miss out on travel tips, inspiration, and your potential next adventure!  

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Our guest today is one of America’s most beloved chefs, Marcus Samuelsson. Marcus is a man of many accolades; he’s the youngest person ever to receive a three-star review from the New York Times and the winner of multiple James Beard awards including one for his PBS show, No Passport Required. He’s been a judge on the Food Network’s Chopped and authored several books including a best-selling memoir, Yes, Chef, and 2020s The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food. When Marcus is not busy running multiple restaurants around the world, including his latest Baha Mar Fish + Chop House, he also hosts a podcast called This Moment with Swedish rapper Timbuktu. In this week’s episode, Marcus shares a truly unique and personal story surrounding a trip to Ethiopia to meet his birth father. Esme and Marcus discuss his early experiences of cooking with his adoptive family in Sweden, how the diversity of New York City opened up possibilities for him as a young Black chef, and the importance of establishing a connection with our roots – be it a person, a place, or an idea.   

You can find Marcus on Instagram @marcuscooks, listen to his podcast This Moment wherever you find podcasts, and be sure to grab his books including his latest, The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food.

Learn more about Full-Time Travel by visiting fulltimetravel.co and follow us on Instagram @full_time_travel. Be sure to rate, review, and follow so that you don’t miss out on travel tips, inspiration, and your potential next adventure!   

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Sarah Dusek is the co-founder of Under Canvas, the massively popular safari-style glamping company with locations just minutes from America's most iconic national parks. After turning Under Canvas into an Inc. 5000 company, Sarah set her sights on backing women-led businesses in South Africa with her private investment fund Enygma Ventures. Both of Sarah's companies were influenced by a trip to Zimbabwe in 1999; Sarah had just graduated and was taking six months to volunteer with a local organization during the AIDS crisis. Zimbabwe brought out the activist in Sarah and shaped her belief that changing the world starts with uplifting women. In this episode, Esme and Sarah discuss Sarah's passion for championing the underdog, the beauty of living and working in a place that's nothing like home, and being a lifelong voyager. 

Follow Under Canvas on Instagram @undercanvasofficial and learn more about Sarah's investment fund Enygma Ventures by visiting enygmaventures.com. 

Learn more about Full-Time Travel by visiting fulltimetravel.co and follow us on Instagram @full_time_travel. Be sure to rate, review, and follow so that you don’t miss out on travel tips, inspiration, and your potential next adventure!   

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Ruben and Rachel, the couple behind the popular blog and Instagram Gamin Traveler, crossed paths for the first time when Ruben, who's from Spain, was exploring the Philippines. He was on a tight budget and used the site Couchsurfing.com to find free places to crash each night, which was how he wound up staying with Rachel. The two hit it off, fell in love, and in 2015, started backpacking together. The couple has now built a successful business monetizing their blog and social media and running an agency that helps solopreneurs follow in their footsteps. In this episode, Esme speaks to Ruben and Rachel about traveling on a budget, building a successful blog, finding time to just be a couple when you also run a business together, making long-distance relationships work, and taking an open-hearted approach to strangers. 

Follow Rachel and Rubin on Instagram @gamintraveler and visit their blog at gamintraveler.com.

Learn more about Full-Time Travel by visiting fulltimetravel.co and follow us on Instagram @full_time_travel. Be sure to rate, review, and follow so that you don’t miss out on travel tips, inspiration, and your potential next adventure!   

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If you like travel podcasts, then you may already be familiar with this week's guest. Jason Moore is the host and creator of the top-rated Zero To Travel podcast, on which he shares thoughtful interviews, unconventional perspectives, and actionable advice to help people travel the world on their own terms. He's also the co-founder of the Location Indie community and the Lifestyle Launch Academy, through which he's mentored hundreds of budding entrepreneurs, helping them build a side hustle and break free of their 9-5 so they can do more of what they love in life. 

On this episode, Jason and Esme discuss the highs and lows of his first big solo trip backpacking through Europe on the Interrail. Ultimately, Jason says the experience made him determined to make travel part of his life in a more permanent way. If you've dreamed of becoming a digital nomad, this episode is a must-listen. 

Follow Jason on Instagram @zerototravel and find out more about the Zero To Travel Podcast here.

Learn more about Full-Time Travel by visiting fulltimetravel.co and follow us on Instagram @full_time_travel. Be sure to rate, review, and follow so that you don’t miss out on travel tips, inspiration, and your potential next adventure!  

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Before Adrien Behn became a triple threat storyteller — writing, podcasting, and performing live — she worked with baked goods. Specifically, she made pies at a bakery in Portland, Oregon. Disillusioned by her job, her city, and her toxic relationship, Adrien decided to travel from Mexico all the way down to Peru. It was a trip that recalibrated her life entirely. Weeks into the journey, Adrien split from her boyfriend, discovered a passion and aptitude for storytelling, and began recording soundscapes and conversations from her travels — audio that would become her podcast, Strangers Abroad. She boasts that her tales have galvanized women to book one-way tickets and caused grown men to faint.  On this episode, Esme and Adrienne discuss using travel as an escape hatch when life is not going the way you want it to, the joy of traveling solo, and why she loves Utah more than any other state.  

Follow Adrien on Instagram @strangersabroadpodcast to hear about her upcoming comedy shows and learn more about her podcast.  

By the way, that Ira Glass quote Esme and Adrien were referencing will be sure to inspire you: 

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.” 

Learn more about Full-Time Travel by visiting https://www.fulltimetravel.co/ and follow us on Instagram @full_time_travel. Be sure to rate, review, and follow so that you don’t miss out on travel tips, inspiration, and your potential next adventure!  

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Avid traveler and distance runner Liz Warner was on honeymoon in Namibia when she came up with the idea for Run to Reach – a global journey that would involve running 30 marathons in 30 different countries before her 30th birthday – all in support of women-focused NGOs around the world. Run to Reach went on to raise over 50,000 dollars, and would take her from the dense jungles of Sierra Leone to the central highlands of Afghanistan. Liz would wear out six pairs of running sneakers, burn 156,000 calories, spend the night in 64 different places and encounter infinite acts of kindness along the way.

In this episode, Liz and Esme discuss running and traveling as a way to process grief (Liz ran her first marathon in Tokyo shortly after her father passed away), her deep love for Afghanistan, why travel is and will always be the best form of education and her victorious pivot after the pandemic canceled her final two races.

Liz is the host of From Her View Podcast and founder of Run To Reach. Follow her journey on Instagram @runtoreach.

Learn more about Full-Time Travel by visiting https://www.fulltimetravel.co/ and follow us on Instagram @full_time_travel. Be sure to rate, review, and follow so that you don’t miss out on travel tips, inspiration, and your potential next adventure!

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The spirit of wanderlust has always been present in modern-day explorer Jacki Hill-Murphy. After many unfulfilling years working as an English teacher, Jacki made the decision to recreate the journey of Isabel Godin, an intrepid woman she had previously studied during her master's program. In 1769, Godin became the first European to travel down the Amazon river and the sole survivor of her 42-person, 3000-mile expedition. Following in her footsteps, Jacki braved piranha-infested waters in a dugout canoe, meeting locals and having extraordinary experiences along the way. Today’s episode delves into the highs and lows of that adventure and the ones that followed, the intentions of female explorers and how they differed from their male counterparts, and what it is like to be a vegetarian in remote locations.  

Jacki is the author of three books that reflect her empowering belief that adventures can be ageless. You can find her books and more info by visiting jackihill-murphy.co.uk  

Learn more about Full-Time Travel by visiting www.fulltimetravel.co and follow us on Instagram @full_time_travel. Be sure to rate, review, and follow so that you don’t miss out on travel tips, inspiration, and your potential next adventure!  

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Eric Weiner, a travel correspondent for NPR, was experiencing a self-described midlife crisis when he came up with the idea for his first book: The Geography of Bliss. The project took him to the world’s most contented countries, including Bhutan, a place famous for its Gross National Happiness index. It was there he met Karma, a buddhist monk and academic who changed how Eric saw the world and how he defined happiness. 

Find out more about Eric, his work and his latest projects at www.ericweinerbooks.com

Join Eric for a writers workshop in Bhutan

Buy Eric’s latest book 

The Socrates Express

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