Jessica Puckett: What I’ve been craving lately is a super nice hotel—the cushy hotel where you can be a little bit waited on. All my trips this year, I’m trying to figure out how can I stay there and treat myself to that after two years with just pretty much being at home?
MC: Wow. Love an upgrade in every destination.
LA: Out of interest are there any luxurious hotel perks that you are craving?
JP: I love the mini bar. I just love a great mini bar. That’s pure luxury to me. So, maybe a nice turndown, too. I know a couple hotels will give you a turndown amenity where there’s a little macaron or something—that’s what I’m aiming for.
LA: It’s funny that you say mini bar, because I saw a tweet a couple of months ago from someone saying, I’m 33 years old and I’m still terrified of taking anything out of the hotel mini bar. And I still have that thinking. I’ve paid for the hotel room myself. I can have whatever I want from the mini bar and still I think I’m going to suddenly bankrupt myself for life if I take like one bottle of beer out of it.
JP: I know. I know. It feels like a splurge, no matter what.
Sarah Khan: I mean, it is. I was just at a hotel last week and I was just craving the M&M’s and I think they were $15. So the most expensive M&M’s I’ve ever had.
JP: The snacks… Yeah. They get you on the snacks for sure.
LA: Sarah, what about you? How are you trying to prioritize yourself this year?
SK: Well, I just moved to Dubai recently, as you guys know, so a lot of it has been I just really love exploring Dubai, especially while the weather’s so good, but then there’s also that desire to get out and explore as much as possible because we haven’t been able to in the last few years. So I’ve just been trying to really be very thoughtful about which trips I take and where I go.
And for instance, my first big trip of the year is coming up next week, and I’m going to Kenya because as some of you know, I used to live in South Africa, I’ve covered all different parts of Africa from a more historical and cultural lens for a while, and I’m really missing that. It’s been three years since I’ve been on any part of the continent. So that to me was a really important trip to prioritize if I’m going to take some time and go out of the region. So I think that’s what I’m just trying to think of the places that really mean a lot to me that helped me travel in the way that I miss a lot.
MC: Lale, how are you prioritizing you?
LA: Well, actually I just took a little trip that was very much for myself. Me and [my husband] Chris just went to California for five days. It was the first time since 2018 that we’d gone on a vacation that wasn’t tacked onto someone’s wedding or to visit family. And it felt so good. It was five days, it was domestic, but it felt so good to just completely travel on my own terms. I think I have talked so much about this on the podcast, but it feels like a rare and special thing sometimes to be able to plan of that is literally just because you want to go to the place. If you want to be out and about all day, that’s great, if you want to sit by the hotel pool, that’s also great—we did both. And we also stayed in a really nice hotel. And Jess, I can confirm that it felt very luxurious and very nice and I dove into the mini bar multiple times. So I think trying to do a lot more of that, even if it’s just little trips.