# How Two Years of Phone-Free Travel Rewired the Way I See the World

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/unpacked-by-afar-5453284/how-two-years-of-phone-free-travel-rewired-the-way-i-see-the-world
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/unpacked-by-afar-5453284/how-two-years-of-phone-free-travel-rewired-the-way-i-see-the-world.md
Podcast: [Unpacked by Afar](https://stenobird.com/podcast/unpacked-by-afar-5453284)
Published: 2026-04-09T07:01:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.afar.com/podcasts/unpacked
Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/p.podderapp.com/9063871245/mgln.ai/e/211/traffic.megaphone.fm/ARML5083711796.mp3?updated=1778084665
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/unpacked-by-afar-5453284/episodes/how-two-years-of-phone-free-travel-rewired-the-way-i-see-the-world
Duration seconds: 2737

## Resource

What if the secret to a great trip was leaving your phone in airplane mode — forever? Journalist Lisa Abend has been doing exactly that, arriving in cities she's never researched, GPS turned off, without a hotel reservation or itinerary of any kind. The result isn't chaos; it's the kind of travel that actually surprises you. In this episode, Lisa makes a compelling case for leaving the phone out of the travel process. Meet this week's guest Lisa Abend is a Copenhagen-based journalist and former Time magazine correspondent who covers food, culture, and travel across Europe. She is the creator of The Unplugged Traveler, a Substack newsletter in which she visits a new European city each month without internet access, a booked hotel, or a plan, and writes about what she finds. In this episode How social media and over-researched itineraries have stripped travel of serendipity, and what Lisa is doing about it The step-by-step logistics of arriving in a foreign city with no hotel, no map, and no plan — and why it's less stressful than it sounds A birthday coincidence on a Cotswolds hiking trail that felt like the universe intervening Why "second cities" — not capitals — are the ideal places to try unplugged travel for the first time How nearly two dozen phone-free trips have changed the way Lisa navigates daily life Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:00 Backpacking Before the Internet 00:04:30 What the Internet Took From Travel 00:09:30 The Unplugged Traveler Newsletter 00:13:00 How to Choose a Destination 00:15:30 Arriving With No Hotel Booked 00:20:00 A Cotswolds Birthday Surprise 00:27:00 Finding Food Without the Lists 00:32:00 Travel as Meditation 00:35:30 Tips for Going Unplugged Resources Subscribe to Lisa's ⁠The Unplugged Traveler newsletter on Substack⁠ Read Lisa's…

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