Reawaken Your Soul (and Stomach) by Traveling on an ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Journey
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love explores simple pleasures and pizza in Italy, devotion in India, and love in Bali, bringing readers with her on a one-year journey of self-discovery and empowerment. Taking the bookshelves by storm in 2006, the book spent more than 200 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, eventually translating into a movie starring Julia Roberts and selling over ten million copies worldwide. As a result, readers have been inspired to begin their own soul searching, and perhaps even more noteworthy, to travel more as part of a journey to self-discovery. After the ten-year anniversary of the book in 2016, Elizabeth Gilbert released Eat, Pray, Love Made Me Do It, which chronicles the stories of more than fifty people who were inspired to make a big change, from taking a solo road trip to chasing their dreams of teaching abroad.
Whether you’re a fan or a critic of the memoir, it has undoubtedly changed the lives of its readers and prompted transformative trips around the globe. While people may not have a full year, like Gilbert, to immerse themselves in destinations, there are thoughtfully designed itineraries that encompass these cultural and educational experiences in one to three week long itineraries. Most notably, the Eat, Pray, Love travel Learning Journeys Series which offers immersive, women-focused itineraries across the world.
Based on your interests, trips may focus on cooking, dancing, yoga, photography, and more.  You can even travel to Malta, India, or Greece with a group of like-minded adventurers by organizing your own private tour with ten of your family members, friends, or members from your book club. The trip is entirely customizable based on your group’s interests. Want to go hiking? Practice knitting techniques? Learn to belly dance? Whatever it is, every traveler will find something that fills their hearts and feeds their soul on their own journey to self-discovery and empowerment. Here are some of my favorite trips for 2019.
For a focus on wellness, gastronomy, and fashion, the Mystical Malta eight-day trip takes place in Gozo, Medina and Valetta, offering a hands-on cooking class and a trip to a local horse farm. Travelers will learn the sustainable art of painting, jewelry making and ceramics from a local artist at her studio and there’s a chance to visit the fashion house of Charles and Ron, renowned international fashion and lifestyle designers who have a distinct Mediterranean flair.
A transformative journey to the birthplace of Western Civilization and the land of muses, gods, and goddesses, the Greek Goddess Journey of Wellness In Crete offers an eight-day itinerary that includes daily yoga and meditation, a lesson in Greek dancing, and cooking classes with a local figure. There’s ample time to experience wine tasting and experience the vibrant culture of the city.
The sacred land of Bhutan, untouched by the modern world, offers sacred temples, ultimate peace and serenity, and a warm local community with the 14-day Sacred Bhutan- The Land Of Happiness trip. The itinerary includes visits to the well-known Tiger’s Nest Monastery and the Kyichu Lhakhang Buddhist temple. Enjoy your meals in the sunshine, explore the museums, and learn traditional Bhutanese weaving.
The 11-day sojourn, Spiritual Northern India, is designed for personal reflection and growth. In addition to visiting key destinations like the Taj Mahal and Red Fort, travelers can shop for sarees at the market with a local fashionista, participate in community service projects including a visit to a girl’s orphanage, take cooking lessons, meet an astrologer, and much more.

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As you get ready to embark on your own summer vacation, here’s a quick list of smartphone apps that can help you get organized, find great deals, and save you money along the way.

1. Waze  – Whether your trip involves a lot of road travel, or you just want to find a faster way to get to places in your own city, consider Waze. Recently purchased by Google, it uses social media input to give real-time updates on traffic situations. So, for example, if there’s a game downtown in the city you’re visiting, as you’re trying to navigate that same area to get to a restaurant, Waze will let you know where the jams are so you can avoid the tangle and the time (and fuel) wasted waiting for game-goers.
2. GasBuddy – GasBuddy is another app that takes advantage of the constant updates and interaction of crowdsourcing. People input gas prices and keep an eye out for low prices, so users can quickly and easily search for gas stations nearby and compare prices to ensure the best deal in their area.
3. TripIt Travel planner - This is a great tool to use in partnership with your travel agent! Reservations, tickets, events, meetings, personal gathering with friends or family — you can basically have all the important details of your trip at your fingertips, all in one convenient place. You know all those confirmation emails that you get from hotels, airlines, car rental services and the like — the ones you frantically search for in your Inbox the night before you leave on a vacation? Your travel agent can simply send all these emails along to plans@tripit.com, which will then magically generate a digital itinerary that you can refer to on your mobile device. It also provides weather info and maps of your destinations. You can add multiple trips to TripIt if you're a frequent traveler, or just use it for a single vacation. TripIt was awarded Best Travel Mobile App for 2011 at the Webby Awards. All the services described above are free, or you can upgrade to a paid version for even more cushy service and alerts.
4. Around Me  — Ever find yourself in an unfamiliar city, and you just want a decent cup of coffee or a place to buy an extra toothbrush? This application tells you all the points of interest that are located near you. It detects your current location, and lets you select from categories like bars, cafés, hospitals, pharmacies, and hotels to filter though the results.
5. Road Trippers  — This is a fun travel tool made for the iPhone as an app, but that is also available via mobile web so you can use it with Android, Blackberry, and other smartphone platforms. Here’s how it works: you type in your starting and destination points and it tells you distance, time and estimated gas costs. This is great for day trips — think of a great tour of Napa while staying in San Francisco (or vice versa!). While the distance-finding feature in itself isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, RoadTrippers goes one better and tells you about all of the attractions worth seeing along the way, from the obvious to the wonderfully ridiculous.

There are tons of apps to explore, of course, and this is just a glimpse — but these should add some fun and help you plan and save a few dollars. Once we’ve worked together to plan your awesome summer vacation, give these apps a try and let me know how it goes!

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