24th January 2012

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Our latest Featured Traveler is Lisa Lubin. Lisa’s story of globetrotting will surely give you a bad case of wanderlust. After three years of traveling, Lisa is focusing on her very own video consulting business, LLmedia. Find out more about Lisa’s travel experiences and her favorite Mexican restaurants in this Featured Traveler profile.

Name: Lisa Lubin 

Tell us a little about yourself:

I am a three-time Emmy® Award winning television writer/producer/photographer. After more than a decade in broadcast television I decided to chuck it all and take a sabbatical of sorts which turned into nearly 3 years traveling and working my way around the world.  I document my (mis)adventures on my blog, LLworldtour.com, with photographs and articles from the road/train/rickshaw/camel.  I recently launched LLmedia, a video consulting business along with an eBook called Video 101: Tips & Tricks for Awesome Visual Storytelling.

For three years, I took Spanish and surfing lessons in Costa Rica, rode through the narrow fjords and icy glaciers of the Chilean Patagonia, hiked up and biked down a snowy volcano in Ecuador, swam with dolphins off the coast of New Zealand, climbed high atop the Harbour Bridge in Sydney, sand-boarded the dunes of Dubai, kayaked between pristine islands of Belize, climbed like Moses to the top of Mt. Sinai, and successfully accomplished a two-week bicycle tour through the rice fields Vietnam.  I have also found work in many places—I served up coffee and sandwiches in a café in Melbourne, taught private business English lessons in Istanbul, performed proofreading work for a Turkish media conglomerate, worked as a research assistant at the University of Cologne, was a pet sitter and an ‘extra’ in Los Angeles, did public relations for a company in Madrid and did some English voice recording for a publishing company in Berlin. At present,  I’ve been to 6 continents and more than 45 countries.

Favorite city you’ve been to:

Besides Chicago, where I live and love it….ah, so hard to pick a fav…one of my favorites would be Stockholm.  It’s a gorgeous city set on a myriad of Islands. It’s very modern, clean, and there is this great general ‘look’ to everything - that well thought out Scandinavian design and aesthetic.  Plus there are tons of great cafes where you can go for a Fika (coffee break)!

Favorite restaurant:

A big part of my job at ABC (before I quit to travel), was doing TV segments on Chicago’s restaurant scene.  It’s the reason I am a bit of a foodie today.  There is so much good food in this town…I have a favorite in each category!  I now crave Mexican a lot more than I used to, as it’s not very common to find good Mexican outside of the Americas. Right now I am loving the tortas at XOCO (Bayless is known for all his fresh ingredients and you can taste it) and also the tacos at Big Star - super tasty and cheap!

Best place to relax:

Nowadays, with all the traveling and working I am doing…it’s actually just on my boyfriend’s couch.

Best place to have fun:

Well besides also on my boyfriend’s couch (hee hee), that would be usually trying new foods with friends in Chicago or when I am traveling. To me, food = fun!

Best trip you’ve ever taken:

Besides my entire 15-month ‘round the world trip, I can say a weeklong boat tour through the Galapagos Islands. This was one of those once-in-a-liftime trips. It wasn’t even total luxury, but at the time was a splurge while I traveled the world on a budget. It was fun to be on a boat with a small group of great travelers, eating fresh food, snorkeling, and being up close and personal with beautiful animals everyday.

What one piece of advice do you have for travelers?

Travel slow. Don’t worry about seeing it all - stay for a week, a month. Get an apartment. Build a community.

Get local. The best part of travel for me is meeting people. I try to do this everywhere I go - through social media (Tweet: who’s in London??), through the readers of my blog, through the amazing couchsurfing.org, and through friends of friends. I found that now that I am back in Chicago, I am still reaching out to people and meeting new folks every week in my own town. Life is good!

Where else can we find you on the web? 

My Travel Blog: LLworldtour

Tagged: featured travelertravelerwanderlustChicagoCosta RicaDubaiBelizeMelbourne