Women Who Travel | Condé Nast Traveler

Leaves are changing, cool weather is upon us, and it's time to start thinking about holiday plans, which means you've got questions on where to go, what to pack, and more. And this week, we've got answers. Joined by Traveler's digital director Stephanie Wu and senior editor Megan Spurrell, we're doling out advice on planning fall foliage trips, what to buy for the solo traveler in your life, and where to take your mom on your next joint-vacation. Needless to say, we cover a lot of ground.

Find a full transcript and all of the links we mentioned here: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/answering-your-fall-travel-questions-women-who-travel-podcast

Follow Stephanie: @bystephwu

Follow Megan: @spurrelly

Follow Lale: @lalehannah

Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Bookstores typically have been a place where I escape myself—and [a place where] I find a new self,” says this week's podcast guest, Nadia Wassef. “I feel like I walk in there and the world is open to me.” The author of the newly released Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller knows a thing or two about bookstores: she co-founded Diwan—the Egyptian capital's leading bookstore—with her sister and friend back in 2002. We caught up with Nadia, who now lives in London, to talk about the power of the bookstore and the books within them, how she stays connected with Cairo, and what books she hopes travelers read before visiting her home country. 

Read a transcription of the episode and find links to the books mentioned here: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/nadia-wassef-women-who-travel-podcast

Follow Nadia: @nadia_the_bibliophile

Follow Lale: @lalehannah

Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere

Follow Women Who Travel: @womenwhotravel

All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With travelers around the world taking their first flights in a while—and vacations beyond a drivable radius—we're starting to get back in the swing of things when it comes to travel, albeit very slowly. But as we get back out there, we wanted to look at what had changed (for better and for worse) about our travel habits, so this week, we tapped three industry experts to clue us into what they're seeing. 

First, we catch up with Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants CWA, to hear about the fights and unruly passengers many flight attendants are facing in the skies right now—a sharp turn from when we talked about lobbying for a federal mask mandate last summer. Then, we speak to Divia Thani, Condé Nast Traveler’s global editorial director, about producing a travel magazine when, well, no one was traveling and what's brought her hope throughout the past year and a half. And finally, we chat with Lindsay Nelson, Tripadvisor's chief experience officer, about what changes they've seen in our travel habits over the pandemic—and how the company is changing tactics to keep up with travelers' evolving needs. 

Read a full transcription of the episode and more links here: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/the-good-the-bad-and-the-surprising-ways-were-traveling-now-women-who-travel-podcast

Follow Sara: @FlyingWithSara

Follow Divia: @DiviaThani

Follow Lindsay: LinkedIn.com/LindsayN

Follow Meredith: @Ohheytheremere

Follow Lale: @Lalehannah

Follow Women Who Travel: @WomenWhoTravel

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Laurie Woolever didn't step foot on a plane until she was more than halfway through college—but fast forward a decade and she was sitting in business class heading to Vietnam, Sri Lanka, alongside Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain's assistant, cookbook co-author, and frequent collaborator for more than 10 years, Laurie got to know the travel quirks, habits, and needs of one of the most beloved figures in travel—and learned how to make the most of every trip along the way. Now, with her latest book—Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, out this week in bookstores—she's sharing memories of the icon from more than 90 friends, family members, and collaborators. In the latest episode of the podcast, we sat down with Laurie to find out how she got into food writing, what traveling with Bourdain taught her, and why she prefers to travel by scooter. 

Read a full transcription of the episode here: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/laurie-woolever-women-who-travel-podcast

Follow Laurie: @LaurieWoolever

Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere

Follow Lale: @lalehannah

Follow Women Who Travel: @womenwhotravel 

All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While we don’t have a new episode for you this week, we do need your help. Spoiler alert: for an upcoming episode, we’re chatting about the ways that travel and the ways we approach travel have changed over the last 18 months. While hearing from people in the industry is a great temperature check, we also want to hear from you, our listeners. How has your relationship to travel changed? Your habits? Your bucket list? If you have answers to those questions, record a voice memo of yourself on your phone and email it with your name and where you’re from to womenwhotravel [at] cntraveler [dot] com. You just may find yourself in an upcoming episode! Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back with a very exciting guest next Wednesday. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A few weeks ago, we published an advice column, offering advice to a Women Who Travel reader who was feeling self-conscious about stepping out in a swimsuit on an upcoming group trip because of changes to her weight during the pandemic. The question and subsequent advice from Amy Pence-Brown and Stephanie Yeboah, two body image advocates and writers, led us to an even deeper conversation about our bodies—and how the pandemic has affected our relationships with them. So, this week, we're joined by Amy and Stephanie to chat about how they got to the place of self-love they're at now, how the conversation has shifted around fatness during the pandemic, and how we can have healthier relationship with weight changes. 

Read the advice column: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/im-dreading-wearing-a-swimsuit-on-a-group-trip

Listen to "How Travel Taught Me to Love My Body": https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-travel-taught-me-to-love-my-body-women-who-travel-podcast

Read a full transcription of today's episode: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-our-relationship-with-our-bodies-has-changed-women-who-travel-podcast

Follow Stephanie: @stephanieyeboah

Follow Amy: @idaho_amy

Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere

Follow Lale: @lalehannah

Follow Women Who Travel: @WomenWhoTravel

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lauren Groff's name has been thrown around a number of times on this podcast as the author of some of our favorite books to read on vacation. Her latest, Matrix, is out this week—and was one of our most anticipated releases of the year. It's the fictional retelling of the life of Marie de France, a historical figure from the 12th century with no known backstory to speak of. In the lead up to actually writing the novel, Groff took a trip to live with Benedictine nuns in Connecticut to get a sense of abbey life. In fact, many of her novels and short stories have been birthed from family vacations, research trips, and even her honeymoon. We sat down with the Gainesville, Florida–based writer to learn more about her travels, writing process, and what books she's excited to read this year. 

Find a transcriptions and links to Lauren's reading suggestions here: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/author-lauren-groff-on-the-trips-that-have-inspired-her-books-women-who-travel-podcast

Follow Lauren: @legroff

Follow Lale: @lalehannah

Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere

Follow Women Who Travel: @WomenWhoTravel 

All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally published in September 2020.

A special three-part series of the Women Who Travel podcast, presented by Cloudy Bay

We've long admired Kimi Werner, a Hawaiian freediver and spearfisher, so we thought there was no better woman to join us this week. A new mom, she's had to find a way to balance her active new role above land and the regenerative power and calm she finds underwater. We chat about how she's found that balance, what it's meant to introduce her son to the ocean, and how she's managed to leave her anxieties on the shore and just relax.

Follow Kimi: @kimi_swimmy

Follow Lale: @lalehannah

Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere

Follow Women Who Travel: @womenwhotravel

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally published in October 2020. 

This week, we're revisiting our conversation with Hawa Hassan, whose cookbook, In Bibi's Kitchen, could be found on many of last year's most anticipated book lists. The cookbook is filled with recipes from eight African countries that border the Indian Ocean and stories from 24 grandmothers, and brings a new narrative to the table, one that Somali author, sauce maven, and former model Hawa Hassan is honored (if not a little overwhelmed) to share. “I was telling these new stories—I was expected to carry these stories—and I didn't know I could," she says on this week's episode. "I lived somewhere between inspiration and fear a lot of last year.”

That self-imposed pressure has paid off. Her book launched earlier this week, so we sat down to hear about her time with those bibis and what it was like to create a cookbook written and photographed exclusively by women and featuring recipes crafted exclusively by women, based everywhere from New York City to Comoros.

Order In Bibi's Kitchen: https://fave.co/3gnIVLA

Read a full transcription of the episode: www.cntraveler.com/story/how-hawa-hassan-built-a-cookbook-around-east-african-grandmothers

Follow Hawa: @hawahassan

Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere

Follow Lale: @lalehannah

Follow Women Who Travel: @womenwhotravel

All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices