Well, hi. It's been a minute. Okay, it's been almost six years.
The last time I wrote here, it was 2020, I hadn't been on a plane in seven months, and I told you I was taking a little break. Like everyone else, I stayed put through lockdown. Once the world opened back up, I got right back on planes, the way I always have. I just never came back to writing about it. That little break turned into a pretty long one.
So why now?
Because I'm frustrated. Like, really frustrated. And when I get frustrated about something, I tend to organize my way out of it. (Hello, it's called Type A Trips for a reason.)
You know the drill. You're scrolling, you see the most gorgeous little restaurant tucked into some cobblestone street, and the caption says... nothing. No name. No city. Just "Comment DINNER and I'll send you the link!" So you comment. You wait for the DM. You screenshot it. And then what? It lives in your camera roll next to 400 other screenshots you'll never find again when you actually land somewhere.
I get why creators do it. The algorithm rewards engagement, and comments are engagement. I'm not mad at anyone for playing the game. As the person actually trying to plan a trip, though? It's exhausting. And when you finally do dig up the information, it's the same ten places everyone else posted, or it's buried in a sea of reviews you have to read with one eyebrow raised, or it's a glossy magazine piece that was, let's be honest, probably paid for.
And now there's AI on top of all of it. I use it like pretty much everyone does, and it's great at sifting through a mountain of information fast. What it can't do is actually go anywhere. It hasn't sat at the table, slept in the bed, or wandered down the street to see if it's as charming as the photos. It doesn't know what you care about or whether a place is actually good, versus just well reviewed. It's repeating what's already out there, and it's getting harder and harder to tell what's real and what was generated for a quick post.
Good travel information shouldn't be this hard to get. So I'm done waiting for someone else to fix it.
My goal is to be the anti-influencer. I'm going to do what I've always done: research the heck out of a place, go there, and tell you exactly what you need to know. The name of the restaurant. The street it's on. What to order. Whether you need a reservation. Which hotel is actually worth it and which one just photographs well. No "comment for the link." No gatekeeping. Just the information, laid out clearly, the way I'd want it for my own trip.
And I'll be really upfront about how this works, because it matters.
I travel on my own dollar. I always have and I always will. I don't take advertising and I don't do paid partnerships. If I'm ever invited somewhere, I vet it first to make sure it actually fits what I'd recommend to you before I ever show up. And if the stay doesn't hold up? I pay for it, and I tell you the truth about it. I will never trade your trust for a free night in a nice hotel. It's just not worth it to me. Same goes for everything I recommend here. If it's on Type A Trips, it's because I've been there, done it, and would send my best friend there. No chatbot filler, just real trips from a real person.
I also know this approach means I'm probably not going to go viral. I'm not going to have the biggest numbers or the most engagement, and I've made peace with that. Honestly, my favorite part of this whole thing has never been the follower count. It's the emails I still get, years after I stopped posting, from someone saying they followed my itinerary for their honeymoon, or went to a place I recommended and it was just as amazing as I said it would be. That's the whole point. That's what matters to me.
I have a full-time job that I love. This isn't my business and it doesn't need to be. Type A Trips is for me, and it's for people like me: busy, a little particular, with limited vacation days and zero interest in wasting them on bad information.
So, what's first? Puglia.
I'm actually writing this from the heel of Italy's boot right now. After 20 years of coming to Italy, somehow I had never made it down to Puglia, and I have no idea what took me so long. It's a gem. It also feels like a completely different country from the northern and central Italy most of us know, which is part of what makes it so special.
It is not, however, the easiest place to figure out. Which, if you know me, is exactly the kind of place I love to untangle for you.
So I'm doing what I do. Taking very diligent notes (shocking, I know), meeting people who actually live here, and hunting down the tiny places you'd walk right past without knowing. Once I'm home and have made it through a truly unreasonable number of photos, the full guide is coming. Real names, real addresses, real opinions. Stay tuned.
So if that sounds like you, welcome back. Or welcome, period. I've got a lot of trips to catch you up on.
xo, Aimee