31 ideas for your next birthday trip on my 31st birthday
celebrating a decade of birthday trips!
first things first…it’s still just after midnight where I’m sending this from in Medellín, Colombia (the above photo is me on a flower farm this afternoon!!), so it surely still counts as a sunday series installment on my watch. after not sleeping last night—as in, not even a WINK thanks to attending a not-to-be-missed Kamala HQ NYFW party followed by last-minute packing and prepping my apartment for me to be out of the country for six weeks—I traveled on a 6:30a flight this morning from JFK to South America to kick off my tenth annual birthday trip. and here I am, settled and burning the midnight oil to get this into your inbox!
after first launching this newsletter in March 2020, it got stale for me in the intervening years. it wasn’t until I converted it to Substack last October with a new direction that I felt reinvigorated by this creative outlet. even with the complete chaos that is my life these days training for the NYC marathon, managing my FT job, working diligently on another project I hope to be able to share soon, and attempting to have a semblance of a social life, I’m committed to this Substack community because seeing it blossom has been a bright glimmer in my 30th trip around the sun. my goal is to continue to invest more time in the content I create here as next year unfolds.
so, in order to support that evolution and further growth, I’m launching my paid subscriber model today! paid subscriber support will help me to further invest in creating compelling content that will resonate. if you’d like to not only share the birthday love but also have future access to my in-depth recommendations, that option is now available! and alas, without further ado, let’s talk about one of my fave topics: the birthday trip.
the art of the birthday trip
the day before I turned 30, I called my sister crying from a beach club in Bodrum. a decade that I’d put so much weight on was closing in on me, and I didn’t feel prepared for the wave of emotions that came with that—despite being in the midst of an epic two-week trip spanning Paris, Istanbul, Cappadocia, and Bodrum.
so let’s start there: the birthday trip isn’t the fix to all your problems.
but it is a way of guaranteeing that you’re purposeful about how you usher in a new year. birthday trip magic is about cementing a new year and your intentions around it in a destination that you then associate with the start of the fresh chapter in your next trip around the sun.
every single year since I turned 21 in Barcelona, I’ve been away on my actual birthday; sometimes (as in, 2020 when I turned 27) I’ve been as close to home as Lake Canandaigua, and other times, I’ve been as far away as Sri Lanka (when I turned 24) or Vietnam (when I turned 26). I’m hoping to keep the tradition alive for as long as possible, but more than that, I’m hoping to encourage you to be unrelenting in your quest to celebrate YOURSELF when it’s your turn; because whether or not you have a partner or group of friends to bring along on a birthday trip, you can design a birthday trip for you and you alone. no matter how many birthdays you’re blessed with, the only person who’s guaranteed to be there for each of them is YOU, so here’s to making sure you’re showing up for yourself, making each of them special.
in this first-ever paid edition of the sunday series, I’m sharing not just 31 destination ideas but far more specific hotels, villas, trains, and boat buyouts to consider for your next birthday
ideas for where to celebrate your birthday solo
ideas for where to celebrate your birthday with a partner
ideas for where to celebrate your birthday with a small group
ideas for where to celebrate your birthday larger gaggle of friends (think milestone birthdays where you want to ball out!)
how to get started in planning!
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