Tired millennial Kelly Meharg tries to recapture the magic of travel with a European jaunt – but she quickly realises that what worked in her 20s simply won’t in her 30s! Here are her biggest lessons
Capsule x Booking.com
I remember the Contiki days… twenty sweaty, hungover people crammed into a coach, a two-night stay in Rome where I saw one fountain and three bar counters and a trip surviving entirely on adrenaline, cheap pasta, and the kind of confidence that existed in me before my knees start having opinions. God, it was fun.
Well, it was fun then. These days it sounds like a very particular form of hell. So when I was planning my second European jaunt, this time with my husband as a 35-year-old, I realised pretty quickly that the old unshakable belief that I could survive on three hours sleep and a croissant wouldn’t cut it.
But here’s the thing I found as I travelled around France, the Netherlands and Denmark in January this year – Europe in your 30s and 40s? It’s actually better – you just have to do it differently.
Happy chappies in Paris!
You have more money (well relative to then, anyway), more taste, and a very healthy appreciation for a decent night’s sleep. You also have approximately 40% less tolerance for anything that doesn’t spark joy – queuing for two hours, carrying a 23kg bag up five flights of stairs or over endless cobbles (the COBBLES) or eating dinner at 5:30pm because that’s when the tour group goes. This is our era – and here’s how a millennial should tackle Europe:
Stop trying to see everything
The Contiki model – six countries in ten days – is a young person’s game, darl, as much as we might not want to admit it. I realised after one intense day in Paris trying to see it all (my husband had never been) is that your 30s and 40s, the magic is in going deeper, not wider. On our second day we found a neighbourhood that we loved and stayed there – wandering up side streets, exploring alleys, and even finding a cute café where we were able to write letters to ourselves, that would only be delivered in five years’ time. Magic. So, pick two or three destinations max and actually live in them. Spend a whole morning at a market. Sit in the same café twice. Walk a neighbourhood without a destination. The cities will reward you for it and your nervous system will, too.
I’ll admit that this took me a minute to get my head around – I felt like slower mornings meant we were wasting time and we should be leaving the hotel almost as soon as we woke up, but eventually we settled into a rhythm that was actually sustainable, and I’m so glad we did.
Use Booking.com as your one-stop travel HQ
One of the biggest travel upgrades you can make is consolidating your bookings instead of juggling five different apps and a loose prayer. Booking.com lets you sort out your entire trip in one place – flights, hotels, and rental cars – which means fewer logins (and fewer failed password attempts), fewer confirmation emails to frantically screenshot, and a much cleaner picture of what you’re actually spending, as well as how you’re managing to get from place to place. Hiring a car through them is especially worth it if you’re doing any countryside driving (hello, Provence or the Amalfi Coast), and comparing hotel options all in one interface saves the hours you’d otherwise spend with seventeen tabs open (either literally or in your brain). Highly recommend this one!
Choose hotels that do the work for you
This is the single biggest upgrade from our earlier travel years: a beautifully appointed, centrally located hotel is not a luxury, it’s a strategy. When your hotel is a destination in itself and sits in the heart of the action, you spend less time commuting and more time actually doing the thing.
Three that are worth every cent: Hotel Solly in Paris — an intimate, design-forward gem in Le Marais that feels like staying in someone’s incredibly chic apartment that’s walking distance to all of Paris’ best bits (and it also offers a fabulous breakfast!). The NH Copenhagen Grand Joanne might have been our favourite hotel…well, ever because the room was STUNNING, the location was literally across the road from Copenhagen’s biggest train station, meaning transport was a breeze, and the service was out of this world good (the receptionist who checked us in gave us the best list of places to check out, and once he heard we’d travelled from New Zealand, gave us a room upgrade because he thought Kiwis were nice and we’d come a long way!). The rooms are a bit old-world-meets-2026 and are soft, romantic and aesthetically VERY pleasing. And if you’re in Amsterdam, don’t bother booking anything but TRIBE Amsterdam City. Again, it’s right next to the metro so you won’t have to drop huge amounts on transport, but this hotel is so reasonably priced, you’ll be shocked at what you get for your $$ – a boutique four-star with serious style and again, incredibly lovely staff who helped me through a booking mix-up that couldn’t have been more my fault.
When your hotel has great coffee, a beautiful lobby to return to, and a location that means you can pop back for a rest mid-afternoon? Everything gets easier and more elevated.
Top to bottom: NH Hotel Grand Joanne; Hotel Solly; Tribe Amsterdam City
Pack like a professional (not like someone who’s moved house)
The packing game changes dramatically once you embrace a few non-negotiables. First: packing cells (also called packing cubes). We’re never going back. They sound fussy until you use them, and then you’ll never go back either – everything has a place, your bag opens neatly, and you can find your underwear without excavating the whole thing. You probably have an annoying friend that swears by this and thinks you’re nuts for not using them – yeah, that’s me now.
Second: The Sudoku packing method. It’s a 3×3 grid system for building a travel wardrobe and this is a real game-changer. You choose nine core pieces – three tops, three bottoms, and three layers – with one strict rule: every piece must work with every other piece. If something only works with one outfit, it doesn’t make the cut. Get it right and you can generate up to 27 different outfit combinations from just nine items. The secret weapon is a tight colour palette – when everything lives in the same colour story, the mixing and matching practically does itself.
Third: leave anything that needs ironing at home. Well, try to, anyway! Jersey fabrics, linen blends, knitwear, and anything with a bit of texture travel beautifully and look intentional even slightly crumpled. Anything that needs to be pressed is not your friend when you’re living out of a suitcase. And a good anti-wrinkle spray for the occasional item you can’t resist is your backup plan.
Build in recovery time like it’s part of the itinerary
Because it is. An afternoon nap in a gorgeous hotel room is not wasted travel time – it’s what lets you actually enjoy dinner at 9pm like a local instead of falling asleep in the entrée. Slot in at least one slow afternoon per city. Your future self will be grateful and you’ll get to experience the city more like a local.
Eat at the places you actually want to eat at
Book ahead – seriously. The days of rocking up and figuring it out are over, not because spontaneity is dead, but because the restaurants you’ll actually remember (the tiny wine bar, the chef’s table, the place with the legendary pasta) fill up weeks in advance. Make the reservation. It’s worth it, and plan your days around meals.
When you’re younger, travel often revolves around ticking off attractions When you’re older, you realise the real rhythm of a city is food. Well, I did anyway! We structured our around meals instead: a good breakfast in a local cafe, a relaxed lunch somewhere by the water, and a late dinner reservation that we researched and planned. Everything else – the museums, shopping, galleries fits in between.
This also naturally creates pauses in the day, which helps avoid the classic mid-afternoon crash where everyone becomes slightly grumpy and desperate for caffeine.
Plus, European dining is half the joy of being there!
We had the best time as slightly older travellers – I hope you do, too!
Kelly travelled to Europe with the partial assistance of booking.com
