Updated August 5  /  Marisol Ferrante

About

I am Marisol Ferrante. I plan trips for a living, badly at first, and now less badly.

The job title is coordinator, which mostly means I book other people's travel for work: nine to fourteen trips a month, mostly short, mostly involving someone who will not tell me their passport expiry date. Doing that for eleven years taught me that the problems are never exotic. They are the last train, the six-month validity rule, and the wet socks.

Why this site exists

I kept sending the same four paragraphs to colleagues. Then I put them in a document. Then the document got long enough that people started asking me to send the document instead of the paragraphs, and at that point it may as well be a website.

How the trips are paid for

My own. The work travel is not where these lists come from - I book work trips, I do not go on them. The lists come from about nine personal trips a year, mostly to places reachable in under four hours, mostly in shoulder season because that is when it is cheap and empty.

What is not here

Gear reviews. Destination guides. Anything about points and miles, which is a genuinely interesting hobby that I am useless at. Nothing sponsored, no affiliate links, and no free gear - I have turned down three offers and the reason is on the method page.

Getting things wrong

The lists change. When they change, the date at the top changes and I usually say what got cut, because the cuts are more interesting than the additions. The carry-on list is on version eleven and version four had a folding hairbrush on it, which tells you roughly how much I knew in version four.