Aside from preparing your bags and pockets for your next holiday, you can also make your experience extra special by reading all about your destination ahead of your trip. Jackie Lapin can help you with this through her blog, The Historic Traveler. She joins Gail Zugerman to discuss how she marries her love for books and history to provide in-depth articles about today’s hottest and trendiest travel destinations. Jackie also shares how she utilizes her journalism background, photography skills, and first-hand travel experiences to craft well-written blogs every traveler and history buff will find enlightening.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Level Up Your Trips With Historic Traveler Jackie Lapin

A Great Time For History Buffs & Travelers

Welcome to the show. This is a show that focuses on people growing older in a positive and productive way. We have as a guest, Jackie Lapin from Los Angeles, who is called Historic-Traveler-In-Chief at The Historic Traveler, a media outlet and membership community for people who love history, traveling resources, and stunning photo galleries, which set curated recommendations for historical novels, biographies, films, and all that illuminates some of history’s most true stories.

Jackie is coming to us with her growing old with Gusto-infused, philosophy. She was a photojournalist who focused her storytelling style on historic travel after serving as one of the nation’s first female sports writers. She has been the author of four books and has pioneered multiple communication industries. She has so much talent. Let’s get started. Welcome to the show.

I’m delighted to be here, Gail. Thank you for inviting me. I think this is a cool show.

From Sports Writer To Online Blogger

Thank you so much. You’re so accomplished that I don’t know where to begin, to be honest with you. You took your background as a sports writer and author of several books to reinvent yourself. What kind of sports writer were you, out of curiosity?

 

 

At the age of eleven, I decided I was going to be a sports writer. There were no women sports writers at that point, but I married my two favorite things, the Los Angeles Dodgers and writing, and said, “This is what I’m going to do.” I studied the Los Angeles Times every day. At the age of 20, I was at the Associated Press. At 21, I was at the Detroit Free Press and on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. At 22, I was co-hosting Dodger Dugout, and I was at the Washington Post and appeared on national television.

 

 

From there, I went on to have one of the two largest sports special events in cable TV PR agencies in America. You would know my client list. It was a world-class client list. I went from there to writing two books on personal growth. I was called to write those books. Something inside of me encouraged me to do them. One ended up being the best spiritual book of the year at the International New Age Trade Show.

What was the name of it?

That is called Practical Conscious Creation: Daily Techniques to Manifest Your Desires. The first one was called Art of Conscious Creation: How You Can Transform the World. They’re all about practical conscious creation. When I completed those books, I promoted them myself to a lot of shows that at that time were new, which were internet radio, in addition to broadcast radio.

I thought to myself, “I want to serve the people who are making the world a better place.” I transitioned the agency to serve that community, and it became Conscious Media Relations. Ever since then, which has been many years ago, we have been doing podcast radio tours for authors, leaders, and experts where we introduce them to 9,000 podcasts and radio shows with a minimum guarantee of 30 interviews.

Now I know who to call when I hand my book.

Absolutely. Come talk to me. We specialize in personal growth, spirituality, health and wellness, women’s empowerment, life improvement, and especially people of a certain age. I’ve been doing that all these years. I hit 70. Keep in mind, all that time, I’ve been traveling all over the world, when I could escape, and photographing beautiful places. Photography is my sense of art, and I love history and historic travel.

I got to my 70s and I thought to myself, “There are fewer years ahead than there were behind. Now you need to focus on doing the things you want to do.” I jettisoned some things out of my life. I took a trip to Europe and hit all of my top-list cities that I’d always wanted to see, nine weeks of travel, and came home inspired. I said, “I have to share this world.” That’s when I started building and creating the Historic Traveler and bringing it all together in one place.

What’s To Find In The Historic Traveler

That’s a great story. Tell our audience a little bit about the Historic Traveler.

It’s an online destination for people who love travel, history, and historical novels. I tie it all together because we have three articles a week and an 80-page magazine. Every one of those gives you a perspective on a particular location, a little bit about its history, and then what to see from a historical standpoint when you get there. The photos then illustrate that. I also give you the books to read to make you feel as if you lived it.

The Historic Traveler is an online destination for people who love travel, history, and historic novels.

To me, you’re differentiating yourself and have differentiated yourself from a Fodors or some other wonderful travel book, which is wonderful.

Also, travel websites, because it’s the books that make this such a complete package. It’s historic novels, mysteries, history books, real history, and biographies. We’re going to give you everything that makes you understand what it is that you’re seeing about this place. You have the choice of whether you want to read deeper. Beyond that, we created a database of the world’s leading historic novels, 8,000 historic novels by country, state, or city.

You get to read before you go, or if you’re not out and about, you just want to have some armchair traveling, some time travel in your mind, then you can go to the directory and gather our directory of historic novels. That’s just one of the many things we have over there. Besides the articles and the magazine, the first half of the magazine is destinations, and the second half is media. We even have Q&As on each of those.

One is a history expert, and the second half is one of the best-selling historical novelists in the world. We had Tony Riches, who’s a specialist in Elizabethan and Tudor books that are everywhere. We’ve got other great people that I lined up at the Historical Novel Society of America. We’ve got the magazine. We’ve got the director’s historic novel directory. We’ve got a directory of historic TV dramas, where you can see them online, streaming broadcast. We have a directory of films, the top 200 films that are historically oriented in the last century.

We have a directory of historic hotels worldwide, and a directory of historic museums, which is being built. We also have a travel concierge who doesn’t charge you anything to travel when they book you. That’s one of the great features we have. We have a community, a book club, a meeting once a month, where you come and you meet other people who love this travel in history and books.

There are all kinds of other resources. We’ve added my hundred top historic books if you want to peruse them. We’re about to launch in September the 50 top historic novels currently, what’s selling, and what’s new on the marketplace. If you sign up for our membership, which by the way is completely free, you’ve got access to all of that.

A directory of insight guides, which are the best guides for people who love history, we have 200 of those. You get book reviews, and you get all kinds of other resources. Our newsletter comes out twice a month. That’s where you’re going to get more reviews. You’re going to get news about what’s going on in the world of history. We’ll tell you about posts you might have missed. We’ll tell you when the new magazine is out.

All kinds of cool stuff there. You can sign up for the newsletter if you want, but I encourage you to sign up for the membership because you get more. You’ll be on our list to know what else we’re bringing to the table, and then you’ll get to come to the community meetings and hang out with people who love this and take advantage of the travel concierge. It’s a cool package. If you love historic travel, we’re home.

Jackie’s Favorite Travel Destinations

It’s very unusual. You mentioned you’ve been to many destinations, like 500 destinations. What are some of your favorites?

My first is always Bruges. Bruges, Belgium, is a mini Amsterdam with canals and swans in the canals and the big, tall Dutch buildings with the winches on top. I love Bruges. Some of my others, I love and adore Prague. It’s very natural. Dubrovnik is another fabulous city. It’s where they filmed a lot of Game of Thrones. You’re walking back into history, the old town there.

There are a bunch of wonderful small towns that I love. Lucerne is a great city. They have these covered bridges over the Reuss River with a big round tower in the middle of the bridge. It’s an iconic photo all over Europe. I got to stay in a historic hotel. I looked out the window and there it was. Also, in Prague, I love the astronomical clock. That was also walking distance from where I was staying.

On top of that, I love Verona. Verona is a fabulous historic city, and it’s got three layers in it. It’s got the Roman era, the Medieval, and the Renaissance. What’s cool is that I stayed in a hotel, which was two original 13th-century palazzos, and the area in between them was a courtyard that had been turned into the hotel lobby. You went up one level into the breakfast area, and they had a window in the floor, and you could look down into a Roman home.

That is amazing.

I have one article, for example, in the magazine on the first issue about the four Roman arenas where you can still see a performance. One of them is in Verona, and it’s well put together. Another one is Arles, France. That’s fun. There are always amazing places. Arles, France, is one of them.

You’ve discovered a lot of untouched gems that most people don’t know about or have experienced, which is wonderful.

I’m going to keep giving you individual little gems three times a week because I’m in 500 different locations.

Jackie’s Favorite Books And Authors

You mentioned you have this blog, which pairs your destinations with your favorite authors. Could you tell us maybe 1 or 2 of your favorite authors that you like?

I’ve always been a lover of James Michener, Irving Stone, Leon Uris, and Gore Vidal, the great classics. There are a lot of people who are very good today. I met both Fiona Davis and Kate Quinn at the Historical Novel Society. There’s a series that I adore that’s called the Chronicles of St. Mary‘s by a gal named Jodi Taylor. I’m on Audible because they are hysterically funny. It’s about a group of historians in England who go time traveling, and always something messes up.

Bringing Writing And Photography Together

I’ll have to tell my husband. I don’t do Audible, but I’ll tell him about it. He loves history, so that would be great. You said you love photography. What are your favorite types of images to take when you’re traveling?

There’s a structure. I love taking scenic kinds of things too, but if I’m doing historic stuff, I’m going to take a structure, but I’m not just going to stop there. I’m going to take the window with the flowers in it. I’m going to take the steeple or the tower. I’m going to take the nuance in the doorknob or door knocker. I’m going to find the elements of that building that are very interesting and that teach you something about that place. Also, the same goes on the inside. I’m going to be looking at things that inform you about what life was like. I love the little nuances in anything. A little kitten sitting in a corner will also tell you about what kind of place it is.

That’s a great idea. I love to travel. My husband and I’ve done a lot of traveling, and he likes photography also. It’s interesting to see what other people take photos of and what’s in them. I think you’ve got something unique, and that’s great.

We talked about the photo gallery. That’s the one thing I forgot to mention when I was talking about all the resources. You go to the photo gallery, and there are over 60 individual collections. You could decide what collection you want to look at for a particular place. My roses, or my hot air balloons, or landscapes all across New Zealand or Africa. My animals, where you can see the animals that I’ve taken in from different places. The photos give you a wider breadth of the images that are available. Go have a look and enjoy them. If you love them, you can download them for wall art on your phone, and all those other kinds of stuff.

Building An International Membership Program

That’s wonderful. That’s what I’m always looking for. You began your Historical Traveler International with its membership offering. What inspired you to take this? It seemed like quite a large undertaking. What inspired you?

First of all, I have never been able to share the photographs that I’ve pulled together all these years. Having that in its sense gave me the impetus, but I love to share what I learn. I know that I’m not the only person who loves delving into history and experiencing it from a first-person standpoint. Having read about things in advance gave me a perspective when I walked in there. I knew what I was looking at. I knew what created this. I knew who the people were.

 

 

There’s nothing more exciting than going to the Château de Chenonceau in France. Of course, I not only read, but I’ve seen there was a star show called The Serpent Queen about Catherine de Medici. She’s a fascinating character in history. One of the things she did was that her husband, Henry II, had given his mistress this beautiful chateau over the water with these arches on it. It is stunning.

The minute that her husband died, Catherine threw Diane out of the chateau and took it over herself. There I was standing in Catherine de Medici’s bedroom. I was right there, seeing what she saw every day. I remember going to Holyrood Castle in Scotland and standing in the room where Mary, Queen of Scots’ secretary, was murdered. You read about it, you see it on television and in the movies, and here you’re standing in that place. Reading about it gives it so much more reality for you. I was so excited to bring that together.

Reading about a travel destination gives you so much more than just seeing it on television or hearing it from other people.

A lot of context.

I love bringing it all together.

Jackie’s Book Swap And Book Club

That’s cool. There’s the book swap and the book club. Tell us more about that.

The book club will start up again in the fall, where we’re going to bring people together to talk about particular books or authors. Occasionally, it might even have an author there for one of the Q&As. The book swap allows you to swap your books. We have a community where you can go in there and you can say, “I’ve got three books on this. I’m looking for this book. Anybody want to switch off?” That’s a very cool way to get new books. One of the things I love to do is also haunt used bookstores. That’s another great way. For example, library bookstores are the cheapest way to buy a used book. I go to a lot of them. You can generally buy a book for a dollar or two. We’re talking big hardbacks.

What Jackie Does In Her Free Time

Interesting. Take note, readers. That’s wonderful. I hear you have all your passions in travel and history, and reading. What other passions do you have? Do you have free time at all? Anything else you want to share with us?

Truth be told, if I have free time, most of the time, I’m sitting in my backyard listening to the waterfalls in my backyard with a historic novel. That’s my happy place. Even if it’s not on a big excursion, I love to explore. Even when I’m walking in my neighborhood, I’m with my camera. Thank God for the cell phones. I always carried a backpack full of cameras when I’m on the road, but the cell phone camera quality is so good these days. You can take pictures of flowers, and come home with a gazillion shots.

Jackie’s Future Travel Destinations

I love flowers, too. What travel adventures are next in store for you?

Egypt, definitely. That’s one of the big places that I’ve missed. Turkey is after that. My only disappointment is that they put the Hagia Sophia mosque under scaffolding to do repair work. I’m not going until that gets done, but there are a lot of other places. I want to go to Malta. I can give you a laundry list.

Are you planning on going to Bhutan?

It would be further down on my list. If I were to go to Asia, I want to see Thailand and Bali first, and then beyond that, I might expand. I don’t resonate as much with Asia. I’ve been to China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, and Tokyo, all of the above, but I tend to resonate better with the European. Another place I want to go is Morocco, and anything around the Caribbean. I want to spend more time in Greece. I’m not spending a lot as much time in Greece as I’d like.

Have you been to South Africa?

I have.

Do you like it?

Yeah. Cape Town is beautiful and it’s lovely.

When you’re talking about experiencing something in history, I remember standing in Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robins Island. That’s another one. That gives one pause.

Yes, absolutely. An incredible man. History is about the people who make it. That’s part of what’s exciting about it.

History is about the people who make it.

The Historic Traveler’s E-Guide To 20 International Cities

You mentioned you have a gift or something for people who join your community. Can you tell us more about that?

It’s available to anybody. All you need to do it’s an e-guide to twenty international cities where you can immerse yourself in history and the books that will make you feel as if you lived it. You can get that e-guide. I’m going to give you one for the US, too. This is an international one. Go to TheHistoricTraveler.com/guide to get the international guide. If you want one of the eighteen North American cities, then you go to TheHistoricTraveler.com/guideNA, as in North America. Grab either one of those.

Get In Touch With Jackie

Jackie, what’s the best way for somebody to reach out to you if they want to talk to you personally or get in touch with your community?

You can always get to me through the website, but you can also reach out to Jackie at TheHistoricTraveller.com.

I’m out of questions, but this has been an illuminating conversation. Is there anything else you might want to add? You’re so excited, and this is wonderful. It’s wonderful to talk with you. You’ve got a great thing going.

Thank you. In the future, I’m going to lead trips to some places. If you’re interested in joining us for some of those, then make sure that you’re signed on as a member and take advantage of everything else in the meantime. When I’m ready to get traveling again, I’ll take you with me.

Thank you. That’s great. I think the readers will also reach out to you. I think this is exciting. Thanks, Jackie, for your time. Everybody, stay curious and stay connected.

Thank you, Gail.

Thanks.

 

Important Links

• Jackie Lapin on LinkedIn
• The Historic Traveler
• Practical Conscious Creation: Daily Techniques to Manifest Your Desires
• Art of Conscious Creation: How You Can Transform the World
• Conscious Media Relations
• Historical Novel Society
• Chronicles of St. Mary
• Historical Traveler International
• The Historic Traveler Guide
• The Historic Traveler Guide NA