Travel Tips 2: The Holiday

This post is about how to survive the actual holiday part of travelling, also lifted directly from my old blog! Once again, this is just a list of things that I personally find helpful – they’re not always possible in every situation, and they may not help everyone, but hopefully someone will benefit.

1) Plan ahead.

Whenever I’m going on holiday, I make sure that I know exactly where we’re staying when. I also find out what we’re planning to do each day if we’ve planned that far ahead! This makes a huge difference as it means that I’m mentally prepared, and that nothing is a surprise to me – I can just relax into places without wondering where we’re going next.

2) Snack bars.

I am somewhat of a serial snack bar hoarder – my friends know that I’ll always have at least 2 snack bars about my person at any given time! Having a snack bar or too with me makes me feel less stressed (as I know that I can just eat that if I can’t find any safe foods) – so when I go on holiday, I apply the same strategy. I tend to take at least 1 box of snack bars with me (sometimes more if the holiday is 2 weeks long!), with the reasoning that I’ll be able to eat a meal’s equivalent of them if I have a meltdown and can’t eat anything. Honestly this tip has saved me many times – although I’ve not yet had to eat a full meal’s worth of them, they’ve prevented me from getting overly hungry while exploring cities, therefore preventing extreme nausea and anxiety (as when I get too hungry I struggle to eat meals).

3) Bring an ’emet survival kit’ with you everywhere.

This tip is probably my biggest! On my last post, Travel Tips: 1 – The journey itself, I outlined some things to put into an emet survival kit and how useful it can be. Click here to go to that post!

4) Use breathing/distraction techniques.

Once again, I’m going to link to my previous post (click here), as I outlined some ideas for breathing techniques and distractions which apply to the whole holiday. Whenever you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed, take a moment to do some deep breathing. This should hopefully stop you from spiralling! You might also want to download some TV shows etc that you know you love – that way if you ever can’t sleep or are freaking out, you have something familiar that you can watch and hopefully become absorbed in.

5) Try to eat foods that you know work for you.

This almost goes without saying: if you’re looking at a menu and you know that a certain food always makes you nauseous, avoid it where possible! However, you may not always be able to avoid everything, so go for meals that you know have components that you can eat and will fill you up. For me, this means going for more plain meals involving vegetables and carbohydrates such as pasta or bread – but it’ll be different for everyone.

6) Communicate.

Speaking to your family/friends/whoever you’re with about your emet before going on holiday (or at the start of the holiday) is sohelpful. Just making them aware is brilliant, as it means they won’t ask you questions that you have to fend off when you’re feeling anxious, but it’s even better if they can make small changes to directly help you. This could be just making sure that they give you breathing space and don’t get angry at you when you’re overwhelmed, or it can be bigger things like basing when and where you eat on what you want to do (my family did this for me on our last Italy road trip and it helped SO MUCH, I’m honestly forever grateful to them).

7) Take some time for you.

This one can be tricky, especially if you’re sharing a room with your family – but if you can, make sure to grab a few minutes away from all the chaos and constant bustling and just breathe. Perhaps read a book, or write, or even meditate. This helps to ‘reset’ yourself and bring your stress levels back down.

I know some of these tips are a bit a) obvious or b) rubbish, but they’re just a few things that I find helps me to cope with holidays just that bit more. Once again, if you have any other tips you think are helpful, put them in a comment so others can see!

~ Alice