Since 2009, we’ve visited at least 33 international destinations and dozens of U.S. cities via non-rev travel (plus a handful more international destinations via revenue and award travel). I’ve mentioned plenty of times how harrowing non-rev travel can be, but looking back on the last decade, every single hour spent waiting around in airports and taking crazy back-up routes has been more than worth it. As a new decade dawns, here are some of the absolute best experiences we’ve had by traveling the world on standby.
Best International Road Trip
We have touched down and then hit the open road in South Africa, Cuba, Chile, Spain, Iceland, and the Pacific Northwest to Canada. The absolutely most beautiful, fun, and at times downright scary, driving journey was from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland and back.
The week of my graduate school spring break ended with St. Patrick’s Day on the weekend, and coincidentally timed perfectly with our dear friend’s 30th birthday. She had always wanted to visit Ireland, and so four of us packed our bags and prayed to the non-rev gods to get us to the Emerald Isle.
Please excuse poor photo quality throughout this post. It took me half the decade to figure out I should probably get a camera.
As soon as we touched down in Dublin, we hopped in the car and headed east. We visited an old bartender friend’s new watering hole in Cork, then it was on to Limerick, Galway, Derry, and Belfast before ending back in Dublin for the holiday. Along the way we visited castles, kissed the Blarney Stone, marveled at ancient megalithic sites, nerded out at Game of Thrones filming locations, and drank Guinness and whiskey in every pub and distillery we could find. As an added plus, we didn’t just observe the holiday celebrations in Dublin, we actually had the opportunity to participate in the People’s Parade.
Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland offered everything you could want in a road trip – idyllic countryside, stunning cliffs, adorable sheep. We all agreed, though, that it was the people that made this trip so memorable. In the town where our friend lived, we immediately made new friends wherever he introduced us. In every town, homestay, and pub along the way, we felt genuinely welcomed. The conversations were as warm as the hot toddies, and for both those things we were incredibly thankful.
Best Wildlife Viewing
Everyone who knows me knows I am utterly obsessed with animals and the wild outdoors. It’s the reason I seek out hiking and diving opportunities all around the globe, and why some of our trips have been specifically wildlife-focused.
All our friends and family were excitedly curious about what adventure we would choose for our honeymoon, given we had so many choices. Some non-rev travelers will say to buy a confirmed ticket for your honeymoon to avoid the stress and uncertainty, but we took the chance on a ticket that would have been otherwise out of our budget, so it would afford us the time and extra money to do what we love the most.
We spent a week in the Cape region of South Africa, followed by a week in the famed Kruger National Park. The highlight of the first week was undoubtedly witnessing the breaching of great white sharks in False Bay, a behavior seen nowhere else in the world. The sharks are what drew us to the Cape region, but we had no idea how much wildlife we would stumble upon at every turn along the way. There were penguins, ostriches, and baboons on the beaches. Cute hyraxes nestled into the rocks, while blesbok happily munched on grass, and birds of every shade darted overhead along the western Cape.
Nothing could compare, though, to our safari experience in the Sabi Sand region of Kruger. We spotted all of the Big 5, along with dozens of other species. Rarely a moment passed that we couldn’t spot at least one creature, whether they were hiding, feeding, drinking, sleeping, procreating, or simply playing in the savannah. The experience was incredible, and I couldn’t think of a better way to start the adventure of married life together.
Further reading: What to expect on a Big 5 safari in Sabi Sand.
Best Diving
Diving the Great Barrier Reef had been on my bucket list since I was a very small child. Though that dream was forged decades before I would venture under the sea for the first time, I somehow knew all along that I would love the experience. When the opportunity finally arrived to join Rufio on a work trip Down Under, we jumped at the chance to do our first liveaboard experience. Three glorious days were spent in the water, being utterly mesmerized by life on one of the great natural wonders of the world.
As incredible as it was, I still say Palau’s Southern Rock Islands Lagoon offers the all-around best diving experience we’ve ever had. Palau has gone to great lengths to protect their UNESCO World Heritage designated marine preserve. Strict regulations have been enforced for decades, in 2009 they developed the world’s first shark sanctuary, and a few years ago they implemented the Palau Pledge – an oath tourists sign in their passport, vowing to the children of Palau to protect and preserve their beautiful island home. Thanks to all their effort, the reef systems, marine lakes, and marine species are the healthiest we’ve seen.
Palau is perhaps best known for Jellyfish Lake, a marine lake filled with millions of stingless jellyfish. Diving is not permissible, but snorkel tours offer a truly unique experience.
Every single dive I have had in Palau has offered something extraordinary – schools of sharks (including one school of baby sharks, which is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen), cuttlefish, eagle rays, turtles, barracuda, giant clams, and lettuce coral that have been growing for thousands of years. The waters around the Rock Islands are the most exquisite shades of turquoise, and visibility is great throughout the year. The Rock Islands are a diver’s paradise.
Further reading: Discover Micronesia, the forgotten jewel of the Pacific.
Best Food & Drink
This is probably the hardest category. After the great outdoors, I’d say exploring the epicurean delights of this world is our second favorite reason to travel. We’ve had some truly incredible food experiences in our travels – from uni still crawling around on our hands in the outer markets of the fabled Tsukiji fish market in Japan to a seriously decadent honeymoon celebration in one of the Top 50 restaurants in the world in South Africa. While Thailand’s street food is a very close second, I’m pretty sure we both agree top honors for our favorite foodie destination go to Singapore.
Dinner of scorpions and ants
Whether this makes it really unfair or not, Singapore is a true melting pot of cultures, and so one can eat their way through all of southeast Asia and well beyond in one hawker center alone – and luckily there are dozens of them. Hawker centers, or open air food halls, are without a doubt one of the best reasons to visit Singapore. But Singapore doesn’t just get top honors because you can get delicious cheap eats from other countries. In fact, my all time favorite dish is a Singaporean classic. I feel like my life was changed the day I first enjoyed Singaporean chili crab. It’s spicy, a little sweet, and a million other flavors I can’t even begin to describe. I. Love. It.
Singaporean black pepper crab, my second favorite dish of all time.
When it comes to best drinking experiences, I once again am really torn. We’ve toured vineyards in the Pacific Northwest, Portugal, South Africa, Chile, Australia, and Tasmania. We’ve enjoyed beer in Germany, sake in Japan, grappa in Italy, rum in Cuba, sherry in Spain, gin in London, burčák in Prague, and the list goes on. Top honors in this category goes to Scotland.
Rufio and I had both been Scotch lovers for years before we traveled to Edinburgh, so we were thrilled to walk in to every pub and see walls filled with brown bottles. We were even more thrilled when we saw the prices, some of our favorites going for less than a bottle of water.
Wall O’Whisky
Oddly though, the real reason Edinburgh stands out when I think about favorite places we have shared a drink, is one fleeting moment we had late one night in a small, cozy pub called the Royal Oak, just a few blocks from the popular Royal Mile shopping street. The pub has two levels – a public house on street level and a lounge below. Rufio had noticed it sometime earlier in the trip and wanted to stop in, but we didn’t have a chance previously.
The night was growing late, but we decided to have one last pint. As we approached, we could hear soft music escaping onto the street. We opened the door to unexpectedly find the small interior packed to capacity. It was not a raucous bar scene, but rather, a small folk band were seated in the front and patrons were all silently swaying and listening to the balladeer sing an old folk song in their native tongue. We politely moved through the crowd to the bar, where we silently motioned to the bartender so as not to disrupt.
The mood was almost somber – the crowd were entranced by the bearded singer, and we could tell whatever this song was, it clearly had a powerful meaning to them. During the refrains, they would join in ever so softly. When he finished, a soft and polite applause was shared. After that song, the rest of the band joined in, this time performing more lighthearted fare and the atmosphere immediately became more lively.
It was just a small moment of no particular importance in an otherwise nondescript pub, but it was a moment that has stuck with me for years. Moments like these are one of my favorite things about traveling – the very human experience of stepping into a world that is so unlike your own, and yet being able to connect despite language barriers and cultural differences. Also, whisky.
Further reading: Get off the beaten path in Singapore.
Best Festival
We love a good party. So far we have celebrated New Year’s Eve in Thailand, Costa Rica, Mexico, Singapore, and Argentina. We’ve thrown tomatoes at the Tomatina Festival in Spain, drank liters and liters of beer at Germany’s Oktoberfest (twice!), and I already mentioned St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin. While Rufio touts Oktoberfest as his favorite, I think far and away the best festival in the world (so far) is San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain.
Obviously, the draw of the festival is the infamous running of the bulls and the subsequent bullfights. Both of us did run with the bulls, and it was the most exhilarating few minutes of my life. However, San Fermín wins my vote for so much more than the death-defying adventure of the run. While outsiders might think it a festival primarily for brave young men, it truly is a family-oriented event. Families, with toddlers and abuelos in tow, spend all day and night reveling in the streets together. They spend their days eating amazing food, drinking wine, watching parades, attending the bullfights, listening to and performing music, and end the evening marveling at a dazzling nightly fireworks display.
Despite my feelings for the bullfighting tradition (it’s that whole inconvenient animal lover thing I’ve got going), I fell in love with the atmosphere surrounding the festival. The vast majority of visitors do not participate in the run, but gather at daybreak to mingle and spectate from the safety of a balcony. As soon as the run ends, the streets come alive. The eating and drinking begins, parades ensue, melodies sung by old men begin to swell in the air. When the day warms, siestas are a necessity, and then as the sun sinks everyone reemerges to continue the singing, dancing, and drinking. It’s just an old-fashioned good time. Plus, I choose Spanish wine over German beer any day, sorry Rufio. 😉
A note on the bullfights: There is great controversy around the world about animal rights and the ethics of the bullfight. Many Spaniards vehemently defend the tradition, though not all. One day I will likely share my thoughts and feelings about experiencing the event, but for now suffice to say that San Fermín can be thoroughly enjoyed for reasons that have nothing to do with the bullfights.
Best Kept Secret
We first learned about Saba, the “Unspoiled Queen of the Caribbean”, years ago when we traveled to the neighboring island of St. Maarten for the Heineken Regatta, accompanied by a friend who was born there. Rufio’s sights were set on visiting Saba when he learned it was home to the world’s shortest commercial runway.
Luckily for us, that friend’s sister later bought a house to rent out on the tiny island. With that, we decided to celebrate our 10th dating anniversary/4th wedding anniversary hiking and diving this relatively unknown speck of land darting straight out of the Caribbean sea, hidden in plain sight among the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles.
Saba is home to around 2,000 people, making it a perfect place to get away from it all and relax. The reef system around the island has been protected since the 1980s, and it absolutely shows. The corals and marine life are vibrant and healthy. One of my top 3 dive sites in the world is Tent Reef, a shallow coral dive with incredible visibility and tons of happy turtles and sharks. Something I found fascinating was much of the hard corals, soft corals, and the fish who make the reef home are vibrant yellow – it was like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere.
Saba’s volcano, Mount Scenery, reaches 2,910 ft., making it the highest point in the Netherlands. The island is a verdant and lush tropical rainforest, with many stunning hiking trails. We spent the better part of one day hiking our way through dense rainforest all the way from the windward side to the aptly named Bottom, the capital town on the leeward side of the island.
The Bottom
What Saba does not have is much of a beach, which is why it doesn’t have as much tourism as its neighboring islands. For us, this pristine island is paradise, even without a sandy beach.
Most Beautiful Vistas
We’ve hiked, climbed, and scrambled our way all around the world. Without a doubt, the most stunning and breathtaking vistas so far have been in Iceland.
We explored the southern coastline by car and on foot, and at seemingly every turn was a jaw-dropping, otherworldly scene. The island in summer was at once all lush greens and vibrant ethereal blues, then suddenly punctuated by ominous blacks and stark greys.
Earth, ice, fire, and water all intermingled in stunning displays before our eyes. Puffins darted overhead as herds of reindeer roamed free beside our car. Reindeer! I can’t even talk about the Icelandic ponies without getting giddy all over again. Iceland is truly breathtaking.
Honorable mentions: A very close second in this category goes to the Azores (more on that below). I literally did squeal and was absolutely speechless as we wound up a mountainside on Sao Miguel utterly awash with massive hydrangeas. I thought I died and went to heaven. Third place, of course, goes to Palau’s Rock Islands. Tasmania is also high on the list, mostly because of the ubiquitous wallabies found looking adorable on every hiking path. Hawaii and Alaska take the cake for domestic destinations.
Further reading: Driving the southern coast of Iceland.
Craziest Route Home
This is perhaps a superlative I don’t love, but has to be mentioned as part of the non-rev journey. 🙂
Non-rev travel means always having a Plan B and a Plan C. There have been plenty of times we’ve had to add a connection because the direct to or from Atlanta wouldn’t work out, but on a couple of occasions we had to get really creative.
Our worst diversion was the time we had to layover in Dayton, Ohio in January. We had just come from the BCS National Championship game, which was played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, so we had absolutely no warm clothes – and temperatures were in the single digits. We had to dive straight out of the taxi into our hotel, where we stayed holed up for maybe 12 hours before inevitably heading back to the airport to try again. My longest diversion in terms of distance was the time I flew to from Palm Beach to New York…just to get home to Atlanta.
However, the longest in terms of time and certainly the weirdest route home started in Green Bay, Wisconsin. We drove from Green Bay to Milwaukee, because we couldn’t get anywhere out of Green Bay that day. Then, we non-revved the short distance from Milwaukee to Detroit. If memory serves me, I’m pretty sure we were racing to make that flight, as it was our only hope.
Wishing I could get on that plane.
Waiting…and waiting…
At this point, Rufio and I parted ways. With one seat left, he took the direct home so he could get his car from the airport in time to pick up our fur kid from the sitter. Meanwhile, I hung out in the Detroit airport for a few hours, until a seat to Memphis opened up. From Memphis, I finally made it home on a flight to Atlanta. It took over 12 hours for me to get from Green Bay to Atlanta, a route that is only 2.5 hours on a direct flight. I could have nearly driven the 900 miles home in the same amount of time. That, in essence, is #nonrevlife.
No matter how crazy the route or how long the waiting, it’s somehow always worth it.
Honorable mention: My weirdest route ever was BCN-JFK-LAX-BNE, all in one fell swoop. However, I did that one more or less on purpose, and luckily made every one of my intended flights.
Further reading: Take the stress out of non-rev travel.
Favorite Overall
We get asked this question all the time, and I feel it’s like picking a favorite child. I’m sure this may change as our journeys continue, but considering just the last decade, we vote Portugal our favorite overall destination.
Portugal has a little bit of everything that we love. History buffs can explore everything from pre-historic megalith sites, to ruins of the Goths, Romans, and Moors, to fanciful castles. One can feast on a bounty of amazing food, both from the sea and the vast farmlands. Not only are the locally-produced wines and Port wines incredible, but the Portuguese are obsessed with a good festa. There are dozens of national and local festivals throughout the year, and we happened to stumble upon one in Lisbon as well as one in the Azores during our travels.
…which leads me to the Azores. Words simply cannot describe the jaw-dropping, squeal-inducing beauty of this mid-Atlantic archipelago, an autonomous region of Portugal. On land, visitors are dazzled by lush temperate forests, pristine mountain lakes, waterfalls, hot springs, and an absolute flourish of flowers in every direction. Their location in the Atlantic also make the waters surrounding the islands a perfect respite for dozens of migrating species, including whales, dolphins, and mobula rays, as well as many pelagic sharks and other species. While the diving isn’t as “pretty” as nearly any other place we’ve been, the opportunity to spot such a variety of large marine life makes it an enviable dive spot.
Our best wildlife encounter was not on a dive, actually, but on deck of a whale watching tour. We decided to do the tour last minute, as we were disappointed a day earlier when nothing turned up during a mako shark dive. I wanted to make the most of our visit to Pico, so I implored Rufio to see if we could squeeze in on a tour the next morning. We were incredibly lucky to grab the last two spots on the boat. The tour started off on a good note, as we soon spotted a pod of Risso’s dolphins. Soon after, we spent time viewing a pod of sperm whales, with new babies in tow.
Suddenly, some chatter was heard over the radio and in an instant our boat was speeding away from the pod of grazing whales. Only the captain knew what we were in search for, but we all excitedly scanned the horizon certain something good must have been spotted. Soon in the distance we spotted something playfully smacking at the surface of the water. At first, we assumed it must be more dolphins based on the shape and the playfulness. As we neared, we could tell it was much larger than a dolphin, and at this point the smacking started to progress into jumps. The crew were noticeably excited. One started exclaiming, “This is a beaked whale! You have no idea how rare this is! You all are so incredibly lucky!” Even the previously crotchety captain was excitedly laughing. The whale, seemingly showing off, gave us a dazzling acrobatic performance for several minutes, until he finally returned to the depths.
Traveling through Portugal and the Azores gave us fun road trips, incredible food & drink, beautiful vistas, great hiking and diving, rare wildlife sightings, and festivals. Winner, winner.
Note: Beaked whales are highly elusive, and the least well known or understood cetacean. I thought the crew might be overselling the novelty a bit, until I posted a photo on Facebook and a childhood friend who is a marine biologist commented, with exclamation marks, that a beaked whale appearance was in fact incredibly rare!
Favorite Memory
A reflection on the last 10 years of non-rev travel wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the trip that started it all. On our very first non-rev trip together, we visited St. John, USVI. We had only known each other a short time, but Rufio took a chance on making me his travel companion. That trip changed everything.
The whole trip started out a little rocky – we didn’t get out of Atlanta at all on the day we planned (because, non-rev), when we did arrive the weather was terrible, and Rufio’s flip flop broke mid-island hop with no way to fix it or buy a replacement. But, those little moments were the sparks that would soon ignite and solidify our relationship. During that long 4th of July weekend, we began to realize what a good team we made, how much fun we had in each other’s company, how much we had in common, and – perhaps – could see how a future together might look.
That little beach getaway meant so much to us that we named our first (fur) kid after the beach where we slept under the stars – Maho. Whenever people ask what her name means, we get to momentarily relive the standby sojourn that started them all.
Further reading: Be like Maho and enjoy dog-friendly Asheville.
The Next Decade
While we can’t say for sure where the next decade will take us, we do have a few ideas. This year, we plan to dive with whale sharks in Mexico and visit ancient sites in Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Rufio is also talking about a third annual Oktoberfest trip!
Prost!
Other adventures we intend to complete before 2030 include a trip through Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, an expedition to Antartica, diving in Indonesia, and climbing Mount Kilamanjaro then enjoying a Great Migration safari in Tanzania, just to name a few. I can only hope the next decade brings us as many happy memories as the last.
Sojourn Information
What to Pack: Check out our Essential Travel Gear page for all of the travel necessities we love.
Where to Stay: We default to AirBnB where we can, but my second favorite site is Booking.com for finding affordable last-minute stays.
Non-rev travel: Every destination mentioned in this post was accessible via non-rev travel. If you have questions on best routes or alternate options, leave a comment or submit an email using the contact form. I’ll be happy to answer your questions!
What were your favorite travel memories of the last decade, and where are you going next? Leave a comment!
Disclaimer: Some links may be affiliates. That means if you make a purchase using the link, I’ll earn a small commission to help me run this blog, at no cost to you! As always, the opinions and recommendations presented in this post are mine, and always an honest reflection on our experiences. Thank you for reading!
