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I won’t tell you exactly how old I am…

…but I was already an adult before the internet became part of everyday life.

That means I booked airline tickets over the phone. I navigated with paper maps. I waited until I got home to find out whether my vacation photos had actually turned out. And yes…I even remember smoking sections on airplanes.

That being said, I MUCH prefer all the tools we have for travel nowadays. We can research travel locations at home instead of at the library or bookstore. It’s easy to compare airline prices. I have a GPS at my fingertips. And how about a round of applause for translation programs, instead of studying Japanese In 10 Minutes A Day, a book that taught me, not only essentials such as yes, no, thank-you and you’re welcome, but the name of every piece of furniture in one’s living room. Because apparently, when you’re wandering around Kyoto, knowing how to say “sofa” is absolutely essential.

Thank-you, Amazon, which really DOES have everything

Anyway, the other day I was perusing Reddit and someone asked a question that stopped me in my tracks:

How was traveling before smartphones and socials?

It was written by a user named u/abjustin and they wanted to know what it was like traveling back then.

Nowadays it seems as if some people travel just for a post or to show everyone they traveled. Were people more in tune with destinations back then? Was it more fun? Was everyone so lost and immersed in their trips and vacations back then? Anyone here from the times when all you had were the stories and had to wait some time to develop the pictures?

Some of the responses (there were several hundred of them) made me laugh. Others made me nostalgic. And more than a few had me nodding and saying, “Yep…I remember that.”

These were some of the things that were mentioned. How many do you remember?

• Lonely Planet books
• Rough Guide
• Let’s Go Guides
• Arthur Frommer’s books
• Travelers cheques
• We’d get triptiks from AAA (Note from Sharon: And if you could actually fold one back up correctly after using it, congratulations—you possessed a superpower.)
• Pre-paid phone cards
• I was a master at navigating using paper maps
• We did Europe as a kid, and I remember at each city looking for it “I” for the tourist information. You would wait in a line, and then at the front they had a big binder and telephone you would use to call local hotels and BnBs. We had 5 people, so finding places to stay was more difficult. I remember playing in the square in Brugge for what felt like hours. Depending on the city, my parents might send us off on errands like exchanging money or buying groceries. That part now seems crazy to me considering we were 13, 10, and 8 at the time.
• Amazing. Far less main character syndrome.
• Film cameras, paper maps, paper train and bus schedules, phone booths, international calling rates, people reading papers in cafes- it was GLORIOUS
• And Postcards! My 80s version of Facebragging! 😆
• Coupon books for the best deals.
• Books. I took so many books with me. I purchased books at the airport. So. Many. Books.

Other comments that I 100% related to:

• It was awesome, but also navigating around, making reservations, etc. was an absolute b**ch. You had to be much more flexible in terms of time and plans.
• When I first started traveling for work in 1999 I reached “gold” status with Continental. I remember calling the CO elite 1 minute after midnight to get an upgrade. If a seat was open (always was) I was upgraded.
• Getting lost in foreign cities is an experience the youngers will never understand.
• I feel like in general I was less afraid when I didn’t have a working phone/maps etc. There were times I didn’t have a working phone and I just asked people for help and used hand gestures when I didn’t speak the language and it always worked out. (Note from Sharon – I was basically fluent in mime.) Now I feel like I need the translation apps, data, etc. and always freak out if my phone is low battery.
• You WERE ABLE TO BE more flexible. Now you have to prebook tickets to just about everything so you need more of a solid itinerary.
• You took a camera and extra rolls of film. But you couldn’t see the photos until you got home! (And if somebody blinked…well…you didn’t know until after vacation was over.)
• I can remember just rolling up to the Louvre or the Ann Frank House and walking right in. Checking the hours in my Lonely Planet was the extent of preplanning. Never would have even considered restaurant reservations before arrival.
• i live in PA. when i was a kid in the 90’s, we’d just pack up the car in the summers and head to a beach like Ocean City. my mom in the passenger seat with an atlas the size of the dashboard. once we got there, we’d drive around and look for hotels that had their “vacancy” signs on. we’d get to the hotel and look at all the pamphlet/brochures and find things we wanted to do that week. sometimes i think about doing something like that just once. just 100% wing it with no plans.
• Maps and asking locals for directions was the way to get around.
• When my kids went to Europe I FaceTimed them in a cafe, When I was in Europe my parents were lucky to get a postcard from me every couple months and maybe one phone call in a year .
• I traveled for a year in the early 80s. You just were out of touch. I got the international Herald tribune to read what was going on in the news and it was a nice little newspaper slow check-in over morning coffee at an outdoor café.
  Long distance was incredibly expensive so I checked in with my family of origin rarely and frankly it was nice to be away from that bunch of narcissists.
  You never took out a film camera or a video camera and recorded what you were eating I’ll tell you that much… The camera was as big as half the table anyway.
  Also people hung out and talked. I remember staying in youth hostels and making new friends every time. Too bad those days are forever gone.
• When I was a kid in the late 90s early 2000s, I remember turning off my phone for take off in the States and not turning it on until we landed back home two weeks later. No connection, no socials, just enjoying where we were.
• You went away and were truly immersed in being away and living in the moment.
• It was definitely more of a challenge! The youngins these days seem to think of traveling as a badge of honor and a sign of being “brave” or “an adventurer”… But that just doesn’t hold as much water when it is now a piece of cake.
  Google Translate means the language barrier is gone. GPS and Google Maps tell you where to go (unlike pulling over in Norway to buy a map because you’re unsure where you are, and are you REALLY supposed to go up that dirt road mountain pass to get where you are going?!)
  So, it was more of a challenge, more of an adventure… but this also meant fewer people could (or were willing to) do it. So between that and no Instagram virality, places just weren’t as teeming and overdone. And, of course, when you had limited rolls of camera film that you could afford and carry, you had to be very selective with shooting photos! (No hogging a spot while your companion does a photoshoot of 100 shots in different poses and possibly even wardrobe changes)
  I’m glad I got to experience it.
• Most of us probably had a special bag for our film so photos wouldn’t get ruined going through x-ray. Never had to take off our shoes or worry about liquid size. Checking the Sunday section of the newspaper for cheap flights. Less rushed overall.

Reading through those comments reminded me just how dramatically travel has changed.

In so many ways, it’s better now.

I don’t miss unfolding giant paper maps in the middle of nowhere. I don’t miss wondering whether I had enough travelers checks. I definitely don’t miss paying international long-distance rates just to tell my parents I was still alive. And waiting a week to get film developed? Yeah…I don’t miss that either.

But I do miss something.

I miss being completely disconnected from home.

No texts.

No work emails.

No doomscrolling.

No pressure to post the perfect vacation photo before you’d even left the attraction.

You simply…traveled.

I wouldn’t give up today’s technology for anything. But I’m really glad I got to experience travel before smartphones, social media and Google Maps changed everything.

It was a little harder.

Sometimes a lot harder.

But it also felt like a much bigger adventure.

Your turn!

OK, fellow “old people”…what’s ONE thing you remember about traveling before smartphones and social media that younger travelers today will never experience?

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