Women Who Travel Podcast: Kelsey McKinney of ‘Normal Gossip’ on the Chaos of a Group Trip

KM: So then it’s like the Sex and the City code. You need the fun one, the planner who’s uptight, the one who’s always going to push you to go to the club when you don’t want to, someone who’s going to lead you in a direction you maybe don’t want to go. And then I guess what does Charlotte do? Whatever Charlotte does.

There’s also another type of person who is too loosey-goosey to travel with. And if that person is in charge of your trip, you’re doomed. If the person in charge of the travel and planning is like, “We’ll just walk in somewhere,” and you’re a group of more than four, you are absolutely screwed. You have no chance.

LA: And I actually think tangentially related to that is someone who doesn’t care about eating.

KM: Oh yes!

LA: You get the people who are like, “We’ll just grab something.” And I’m like, no, but I’m starving and distraught.

KM: No. That is a person that I don’t know because I don’t have any friends like that. I’ve weeded out all the people that are like, “I’m not interested in eating.” I’m like, okay, we don’t need to be friends anymore. What are we going to do?

LA: I have an ex-boyfriend like that. Weed it out.

KM: What are you supposed to do with someone who doesn’t like to eat? All the activities I have planned for us are walk around and look at stuff and eat. So if you don’t like the eating, we’re not going to have any fun.

LA: Few places are more ripe for conversations with strangers than the dinner table.

KM: When you eat dinner somewhere in a different city that you don’t live in and the tables are close together and you end up gabbing with people you don’t know, that’s a perfect story that endears you to them.

LA: It sounds like you do strike up conversations with strangers when you’re traveling.

KM: I love to gab.

LA: How do you get talking to people?

KM: I am not great with foreign languages. I speak Spanish. That’s about it. With Spanish, you could kind of make your way in Italy and France, but not well. You’re limited in the amount of people that you’re able to talk to in Europe. In South America, you’re great. If I can talk to someone in the language that they speak, I want to. So I’m like, if I’m somewhere where someone speaks Spanish, I want to gab it up with them.