Unpacked: 200th episode! Big news to share! Holly's husband Alex is here & The Danai, Greece

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1:29Hello and welcome to the Travel Diaries Unpacked. I am your host Holly Rubenstein and I am here to bring you your weekly weekend dose of wanderlust. And today is a really exciting episode because we have reached episode 200, a big milestone for the Travel Diaries. A huge thank you to everybody who has tuned in over these last seven years I want to say it is and kept the podcast you know going it's all thanks to your support for your likes and follows and subscribes and lovely comments so I am eternally grateful to you all as I did on episode 100 I am joined by my business partner in crime, Alex, my husband, who is my other half on nearly all of my travels.

2:26Both a very busy professional man, but also insta-husband. And he is here to help us reflect on what has been going on since episode 100. Hey, thanks for having me back. Just to clarify, no crime was committed in our business. But thank you very much for having me back. and congratulations to you. So we start the podcast off with some really exciting news. I have been asked this, I think, the most by you guys, the listeners. Is there a Travel Diaries map where all of the destinations that have been mentioned by my guests are plotted on? And the answer now, after all these years, is yes. I have got a map live on thetraveldiariespodcast.com.

3:14that's thetraveldiariespodcast.com you can go on there zoom in to the country that you're looking to visit and see the different destinations that have been mentioned by all my guests my 200 guests over the years I hope it's a really fun and useful resource for you guys and it also got me thinking as I was kind of looking at it and looking at where all the dots are about the destinations that are the most popular on the travel diaries. Now, we always laugh about how Japan comes up time and again. An all-time favorite destination for many, but also on the top of a lot of people's bucket lists. So that's definitely seeing a lot of action on the map.

3:58But interestingly, you know, the destinations that have come up a lot since we did episode 100, one that has really risen to the fore is Antarctica several mentions Gavin Thurston James Cracknell Ranul Fiennes Lorraine Kelly Susanna Constantine Simon Calder and on the bucket list of many Simon Reeve Jeffrey Kent and so on so Antarctica I think is definitely going to be you know continuing to be such a big and popular destination for those intrepid travelers don't you think definitely um and yeah as you say more and more and here are a few others that jumped out to me when you go around the world um india for instance gets a huge amount of mentions but when you actually look at the map and you zoom in it's really northwest and northern india that gets uh uh so much of the focus sri lanka is a heavy hitter when it comes to recommendations going back to india though then northwest like what are the destinations in those areas so so i would say what's being mentioned that there are three places in India that get the mentions the first is the foothills of the Himalayas up in Hamachal Pradesh up in Ladakh those kind of places in in the north Shimla, Leh those kind of places then you've got just the classical circle route of Rajasthan, Jodhpur, Jaisalmir, Jaipur, Agra and then Mumbai as a city just gets continually mentioned I think you've got you know eight nine ten mentions of Mumbai alone so there in its own right is just the the true highlights of India one destination that we've not actually mentioned is the US and it actually if you look at it in terms of pure number of mentions on the podcast is pretty much equal to the UK which is number one for people I mean so many early childhood memories favorite destinations are here in the UK for my predominantly UK guests But the US and in particular New York City is a destination there.

6:00I think it's maybe the most mentioned city as a favorite city. I do think that now in the most recent seasons, the US has come up less or at least is kind of people feel that they have to caveat their love for the US potentially because of the political situation there. but it's great to see a continued love for the US because it is a destination that I love and I love for its diversity and I you know I've talked many times on the podcast about the amount of traveling that both of us have done there and actually if you were trying to plot a road trip around the US this map is just fantastic because obviously you've got the dots where you'd expect on the west coast up highway one and California in the northeast around Boston around New York but when you go into the center of america that has so many hidden gems particularly in that midwest section around colorado new mexico utah and going up to montana we've had some fantastic mentions from guests of places to go there and it's all mapped out and it will just help you build that roadmap should we take them through the big road trip that we did because i don't think i've ever talked about that on the podcast in terms of the full itinerary yeah we did so we flew from london to denver which as a direct flight yeah and we did almost a c-shape so we started in in denver and drove sort of southwest through the wonders of utah and arizona going to the heavy-hitting national parks like bryce canyon like zion and all and monument valley and the grand canyon and the grand canyon of course yeah and we stayed in some really affordable places along the way on that trip that were really nice um one that i remember i mean it's been a few years now but it was called cliff rose lodge and it was in zion yeah zion national park and i remember that we looked out at a river and there were like deer just literally like lazing on the grass with the sun setting coming down over zion and the changing colors and actually talking about sunsets um i wouldn't say the hotel itself is spectacular but within monument valley there is only one or two hotels there's only one there's stay in the hotel definitely is not spectacular in terms of the rooms the restaurant was pretty good but but the view out of the back unbelievable is one of the best views of any hotels we've been to in the entire world and as the sun sets over monument valley yeah with this with the sun hitting the rock at the right time yeah sitting on a balcony looking out over it you cannot beat it it was unbelievable wasn't it it was astonishing there's the part of the road trip just to finish off that I have mentioned on the podcast I think I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago the our wedding story because we went from from there to California we went across to Palm Springs and then went up the coast of California do you want to take us through little stops that we did yes well starting in LA and I guess Santa Monica well we started in Palm Springs started in Palm Springs but in terms of the coastal stretch started in LA and then drove north first through Malibu what an amazing place that that is um then our next stop was santa barbara or montecito specifically where we got married in the rosewood which was a jaw-dropping hotel but santa barbara itself has this vibe to it that is it's californian but just has a has a very homely feel to it that we loved i want to emulate that here in our house agreed where did we go from there so from there We then did a big stretch of driving really through San Luis Obispo and some of the very nice and quite cool villages and towns that are on that route and ended up staying in Big Sur.

9:47Loved Big Sur. Oh, I loved it. So we stayed actually in a hotel that is like a total bucket list hotel. I was reviewing it for The Telegraph and virtually no journalists kept to go there because it's so in demand. but somehow we managed to get one night there and it was just after we got married as well so we view it as our honeymoon, don't we, night? We do. And it's called Post Ranch Inn and it's these tree houses. In fact, I follow Ariana Grande on Instagram and I think I saw that she was there the other day. There are these amazing tree houses, aren't there, that are suspended on the edge of a cliff.

10:29edge of the cliff side looking out over this sheer cliff down to the pacific ocean and you also behind you have these enormous mountains um emerging from the sea just going up behind you that are verdant and green and you sit there in your tree house or in your cabin or in the restaurant which again is on is glass fronted on stilts overlooking the pacific and watch these enormous storm clouds roll in and hit the the coast and it is very almost poetic in the way that the land and weather and everything else combines although we are glossing over the fact that i didn't have an amazing experience on our second day there no you got bitten by a black widow spider that was i think did i mention that on my hundredth episode as my worst travel experience i think you did but for people who haven't listened to that yeah um that was not i knew i knew i'd been bitten by a spider the second it happened i didn't see it i'm majorly arachnophobic so just with that in mind the notion of it was awful but i looked down and i genuinely saw the fang marks on my leg and alex is like the most casual person he definitely is not somebody who ever has health anxiety but um i could see him like googling on his phone without letting me look at his screen and for the first time in ages he seemed genuinely a little bit worried and it transpired that's because he had looked up that the the local spiders and the kind of bite that i had uh were black widow spiders yes so um we drove down we went to this well it was urgent care but it was one in post the big side the big server should say like a tight like a like a scout's hut somewhere and they drew um around it in pen and said if the venom spreads beyond this point then you need to go to the hospital get anti-venom if not then then um you know you're okay and we were then heading off to our next hotel which was one that i was writing an article about in santa cruz was it well actually before santa cruz you get to monterey and carmel oh carmel carmel valley ranch yeah no we were driving to carmel valley ranch and i remember meeting with the hotel manager there as is often the case as a travel journalist you arrive at a hotel and the first thing that you do is you maybe meet with the management and you go on a tour of the hotel so you get the lay of the land meanwhile in the back of my mind i'm thinking am I going to die from a black widow spider bite?

13:16And definitely, whether it was psychosomatic or not, felt really swirly or not. So my memories of that hotel were very much tainted by the anxiety of whether I'd make it through. But I'm here, I'm living, and everything was okay. It was an amazing hotel, actually. Great golf course. Yeah, I don't feel as though I really got... Maybe you went to play golf. And then we went, just to wrap it up, we went north to san francisco where you met richard branson yeah and really that's a full circle moment for us to talk about here because he was the first episode i recorded for the podcast so a lot of people ask me how did i get started with the podcast and i'm sure a lot of you already know this story but in case you don't i used to be a red carpet journalist an entertainment reporter for reuters and the bbc and i always had a love of travel and started to write about travel in the national newspapers but I was also a huge podcast fan and at the time there was no travel interview podcast there was no there were food interview podcasts there were fashion interview podcasts with celebrities but there was no travel and I had this idea for the travel diaries and we were on this trip and Richard Branson's publicity team said is there any chance that I could get to San Francisco because he was opening the Virgin Hotel there and we were down I was you know down in Carmel with my Black Widow Bite and I thought to myself right this is it why not carpe diem let's let's do this I had equipment with me on the off chance that something like that might happen and so we drove it was a few hours wasn't it yep went there early I did the shortest interview of all time with Richard Richard Branson but he was lovely and his son Sam has since come on and that kind of kick-started everything it did that was probably as you said the first interview yeah so um and then from San Francisco we went up into wine country and then flew back Sloma, Napa, and that was really the end of it.

15:32I would say that if you're looking for the hits of the West Coast, you're not missing, there are obviously some real things you are missing. You're not going up to Portland and Oregon, but you're getting the vast majority of the amazing things they do on the West Coast. Yeah, yeah, definitely. One of my all-time favorite destinations as a result. Do you want to chat a little bit about the guests that have been on in these past 100 episodes? Yes. guests so what are the questions that i'm asked the most on instagram and things who's been your favorite guest yeah it's probably the most common one yeah um i'd say you always say joanna lumley i typically say joanna lumley but perhaps i should do a kind of top five third and fourth and fifth yeah which i actually haven't given any thought prior to you asking me this so i'm gonna just say what pops into my head i would say sandy toksvik is one that i really loved i love tom malin's episode i thought that was a great episode oh there have been so many and so different in the last season um interestingly tom bradby's episode was the most listened to wasn't it the the news broadcaster yes it was very listened to yeah it's interesting seeing which ones are the most listened to spencer matthews is my all-time most listened to episode isn't it it is i'd also a call out though dom jolly as well because yeah i'm not sure you share this with your guests but off the back of him mentioning uh i want to say libya or tunisia algeria algeria um he was able to get a trip to algeria because various folks were listening to the episode and reached out to him and he's since either been or is planning he's about to go yeah we've been what i was whatsapping him yesterday actually there you go um you know the restaurant chain comp Trois Le Bonnais.

17:24You know, they're all over London. The guy that founded it, he is Algerian. And he said he'd host Dom when he's out there. I have actually hooked up quite a few of my guests with some very nice trips. So now you're a travel agent to the stars in the background as well. Travel agent with no commission. Just trying to be nice. Today's episode is supported by Una Italian Hospitality. You know how much I love Italy. and it's somewhere I'm always happy to return to once summer is over. An autumn weekend in Rome, a winter city break, a few days tucked away in the Tuscan countryside. There's so much to enjoy throughout the year.

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19:03Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.

19:39Oh, I should just say double bill of Steve Baxhul is definitely worth it. When I went back and listened to his first episode that he did, I was, you know, I do so many of these episodes that sometimes I forget really how good some of them are. Yeah, that was such a good one. I was going to call out all your episodes with wildlife cameramen have been brilliant because Steve's come back twice. Gordon Buchanan as well brought to life so many diverse areas of the world. Gavin Thurston. I was just going to say, Gavin Thurston, who, for those that haven't heard that name, he is one of the lead cinematographers, cameramen for David Attenborough's TV series.

20:24So he has been to every corner of the world. And he in particular was a great raconteur of stories of hair-raising adventures with gorillas and other animals that kind of had you on the edge of your seats listening to those. I'm surprised he hasn't, you know how Gordon Buchanan was a cameraman and then now was someone in front of the camera. He was such a great storyteller. I'm surprised he's not become a presenter himself. I think he does book tours and speaking tours. Yeah, he's written a great book. Okay, so now you've done 200 guests. Who's still left? Who's top of the list? That's probably my second most asked question.

21:03No, actually, my second most asked question is who is my least favourite interviewee? Are we going to go there?

21:12Let's just say if they've taken part on Celebrity Traitors, they seem to just not want to be so much. And most people are incredible. Sometimes you get somebody on a kind of funny day. I think though that you know particularly what those that are doing promo for something they're probably asked the same questions the entire time so coming in and talking about something like traveled is a nice variety compared to kind of the standard press junket set of questions they'll get every day yeah definitely so so you were saying um who has left to interview oh I have a list and guys I would love you to email me or DM me your ideas for who should be coming up in the next couple of seasons so um it's the travel diaries podcast at gmail.com or I'm at holly rubenstein on instagram and tiktok so yeah always really keen to get your guest suggestions um i would say that kind of on top of my personal list or people that i've just been hoping would come on for a really long time would be who are they cherry henry cherry henry cherry henry and every arsenal player past and present yes that would be fantastic one by one a whole whole arsenal season would be appreciated than everybody that has ever been a sports person for you i i i would love your whether your listeners would agree with me but i've been pushing sports people to holly for a while because there's lots of professions like golfers and tennis players who live a very traveled life and they go around the world experiencing the world and i would love to see more sports people on the podcast yeah i'm i'm definitely not averse to i think that that people come on typically when they're promoting something i guess that they're less like like if they write a book or something then that would be the right time for them to do it or if they're doing a speaking tour andy murray with his do you know what i'm going to try and get andy murray for next year and maybe kim his wife because they've got this new hotel yes um in scotland so they've got a real reason to come on be interesting to see whether how that would be yes but definitely i think it'd be great to chat to some you know we i'd like to get george do a round two with george clooney george clooney was my first ever celebrity interview well i'll tell you who who really surprised me was sam hewan oh of course sam hewan because i have never watched outlander in my entire life so I'd never heard of Sam Heughan.

23:57I don't think you've ever had an episode where it has exposed the most loyal following to an individual in any of the 200 episodes. There is a crazy set of followers out for Sam Heughan out there. There are diehard extreme fans for Sam and I actually really felt for him because I got some pretty crazy messages. You had one lady message you lambasting you for putting a picture of him on instagram in a color she didn't like yeah it was like baby reindeer style though you know it was crazy caps locks you know my sam oh yeah i i felt for him he's such a nice guy as well and very very dark earth and he was talking to me in sydney he was out there at the time and he would go for walks at five in the morning and wherever he was walking, he'd be like surrounded by people.

24:54Like he, his level of celebrity. It's really interesting that when you're not a watcher of that show, because neither of us watched Outlander, your parents watched it and really enjoyed it, didn't they? Can I also go for one of the most surprising guests that you had? Yeah. Charlotte Crosby. Ah, yeah. That was a chaotic one. Well, it was chaotic, but when you booked her, it was an interesting one. She'd obviously travelled a lot through Geordie Shore. But what shocked me was she was an unbelievable storyteller. Oh, yeah. Such a great energy. The energy, the comedic touches, the humility. It's a really good listen, that episode.

25:36Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good shout, actually. Now, I want to give another shout out to an episode that was a thought-provoking one for me, a philosophical one, and one of my favourites. And that was Tim Peake. the astronaut yes i feel as though that is a gem among the 200 that deserves being shining shone a light on and the reason was about how he could talk about his travel diaries viewing them objectively from space and like looking down at the earth and looking down at which countries you know how they looked and what they felt like from a through a telescope and um And also in a kind of more profound way about the lack of borders.

26:24And how that made him feel. In terms of profoundness, if that is a word. Profundidity. Wow. That's a word I've never heard before. I don't know if it is a word. Heston Blumenthal. Yes. And more about crazy science and discussion about water and energy and all sorts of elemental discussion. Parts of life. But then within that, he talked about his own demons and journey. And a lot of that was travel related and how places like France have saved him. So a great kind of diverse episode of profoundness throughout. Did you see that there's going to be a BBC program about him and Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay?

27:08It's going to be called The Rise of the Rockstar Chef. So definitely going to watch that. Nice. yeah so um let's wrap up with our hotel of the week i haven't done one with you although you've been to basically nearly all the hotels of the weeks so we've just got back from the danai which is on the halkadiki peninsula in greece so you fly into thessaloniki yeah do you want to paint a picture i will well firstly this peninsula is amazing because as you drive down to the hotel you are going down these small peninsulas but you're looking out over Mount Olympus so you are in a historic historically steeped area and nice and mountainous verdant green and I would say the Danai so there are a few absolute golden elements to a hotel obviously this you know the baseline line is key but there are a few things for me that elevate a hotel from being great to exceptional and i'm going to give you three of them and then i had all three the first is a killer sunset nothing frustrates me more than you're an amazing hotel you're sitting there as the as as the day ends and the sun is setting behind a mountain and you can't see it because it is just the peak of a great day in a hotel and this sunset was spectacular they built unreal wasn't it they'd built the bar almost to face it and everyone from the hotel would come down at sunset and watch this incredible scene as it just dropped behind the peninsula so that would be one the second thing again is the staff and i think your podcast people talk about the impact of good service on an experience and of people on an experience and i think it's always a good sign that the staff have been there for decades and are multi-generational and we had a family-owned hotel it's a family-owned hotel but also then it's a family feeling hotel and we had one lady who looked after casper for a little bit and the next day at breakfast she was introduced me to her daughter and her other daughter who also worked there and that had a wonderful feel to it and then the last thing which i think is makes this hotel certainly in our experience in europe at least unique which is its beach most european beaches are lovely but they are surrounded by other hotels or they are in a town or they just feel busy it's very rare to almost get an exclusive beach almost like a private feeling private feeling beach even though it wasn't a private beach there was no built up area whatsoever you couldn't see anything and as a result the beach had this beautiful calm to it and they had built i think it must have been a private beach no it wasn't i looked it up really yeah you can get to it down down the down the down the coastline oh no way um and yeah they'd built lovely cabanas they'd built the staff there were brilliant the beach service was fantastic and it just felt very peaceful in a way in europe you can struggle to get so for those three things i would say it was fantastic those that really excelled it but it also had the bait like the basics you expect fantastic bed and uh great rooms the food was out of this world the wine was incredible it's renowned for its wine um the setting uh yeah it ticked all of the boxes i think the only downside that we found on our trip there was and this is for for the families out there it's a family friendly hotel it has a kids club from very young but we went out of season out in school time and we were the only family in the hotel and I would say some of the other clientele that were staying at that time of year perhaps weren't as warm to our children as we would have liked and we perhaps weren't made to feel as welcomed by the other guests albeit the staff were wonderful yeah well you've given it an absolutely fantastic summary there babe i'm not sure that there's much more i can add except the highlight i think of my time there was the fact that along the beach um this really beautiful clean golden beach there are these cabanas that are the most pimped out cabanas you've ever known yes you know they are super king sized beds with two bedside tables then a sofa, two arm chairs and a table, a button for table service for people to bring you drinks and food and essentially you've got a room that's the size of our living room.

31:58And then your own sun lounges on the beach itself. Yeah and then you have your own portion of the beach where you've got two sun lounges and it's like designated for you and then your own little stretch of the water which is I think when you're traveling with a family to have that base, place to put all your crap, let them run around, you know, and not, you know, and have that feeling of privacy feels very exclusive and actually very unusual. I don't think I've ever experienced that at a hotel. Have we? Not to that extent. Not in Europe. No. Obviously in places like the Maldives, et cetera, you'd get that exclusivity, but you wouldn't get it in Europe.

32:34Yeah. Yeah. And the whole time when I was there, I kept saying like, why would you fly long haul when you could go somewhere like this so a big thank you to the Dan Eye for having us you can read my full review on Condé Nast Traveller right well I have got to sign off now Alex because I'm going on stage in an hour to speak to an audience at Kensington Olympia good luck and congratulations on 200 episodes thank you thanks everyone thanks for your support Alex and we'll be back on Tuesday with my Toronto destination special and then Anita Rani to follow. Thanks, everyone.

33:37Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's G-O-O dot G-L-E slash workspace with Gemini.

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