Travelgogo meets top travel bloggers: Meet Eleanna— Miss Travelist
Tags: Travel Tips, Greece, Blogger, Experience, Travel

In order to share with you the best tips, we meet top bloggers from all over the world. Our Head of Social Media Slavka Terekova talked with Eleanna Giannopoulou, a famous travel & lifestyle blogger based in Athens. Eleanna is one of the top influencers on Instagram. She shared with us her passion for travels, her most memorable experiences, where she finds inspiration and many more. Are you ready? Then let´s start!

1. Hi 🙌 Eleanna! It´s our pleasure to host you on Travelgogo. Can you summarize who you are and what your solo female & experiential luxury travel blog Miss Travelist does?

Hi Slavka! Thank you for having me, it’s my pleasure too. I am a travel & lifestyle blogger, based in Athens, Greece. I created Miss Travelist in March 2019, it’s a new project but based on 7 years blogging and media experience. The focus is on having authentic travel experiences as a solo female traveller. When I travel, I wish to immerse myself as much as possible into the local culture and life, but I also like a bit of comfort when I travel. It’s easier to explore a new place when you’ve had a good night’s sleep in a comfy bed! Moreover, as a woman traveling alone, there are particular challenges but also joys to have. Oh, and food! Food is big part of local cultures, so it’s a big part of my blog too.

2. What goals did you have when you started blogging? Have they changed over time?

I started blogging in 2012, with a food blog. It was a great experience, as it allowed me to collaborate with some of the biggest Greek chefs and eat at the best restaurants in Athens. I even got to cook on TV! I also worked as a food journalist for a big Greek food magazine, which was a great experience. But things evolve and even though food is fun, my biggest love is traveling and photography. I went on my first solo trip abroad right after finishing school, while I still waited for my University entry exam results! And I continued to travel solo afterwards. So as successful as my first blog was, it was always missing something and that was travel.

3. Where do you find inspiration? What motivates you?

Ever since my first experience of air travel, when I was 4 years old, I’ve been in love with travel. I was always curious to learn how people lived in other places. As I come from a mixed-ethnicity family, I’ve always felt more of a “global citizen” than national of a single country. I grew up in a home where five-six different languages were spoken. So I think all these influences led to my natural curiosity about other cultures. It’s a big, beautiful world, with so much to see and learn!

4. What’s the most difficult part about being a solo female experiential luxury travel blogger? What advice do you have for aspiring bloggers trying to break in?

It’s might seem odd but one of the trickiest parts of travel blogging is deciding where to go and when. I just can’t decide, I want to go everywhere! The other thing is being a one-man-team. You have to do everything: create quality blog posts and often, promote on social media, budget and organize your travels etc Plus traveling is demanding physically and emotionally, especially solo travel. It’s not easy to do all the time, particularly as you grow up. It’s important to pace yourself and be patient. Also, don’t start travel blogging just for the press trips and other perks. These may or may not happen, or may happen after a long time. You should get into travel blogging because you love it. You love traveling as well as sharing your travels to others. Anybody can go on vacation. The difficult part is to be able to tell good stories from your travels, that will engage and interest people. The press trips seem cool but in the end they too are work. Keep that in mind.

5. Which country and place you have visited the latest? Could you please tell us what caught your attention?

My most recent trip was Belgium. I went to visit a friend from Uni who lives permanently there now. I was surprised to see that there is a fun and quirky side to Brussels that most people aren’t aware of. They even have a museum just for comics! And where else can you find statues of Smurfs in public? The Belgians also have great food. After all, it’s the birthplace of French fries and waffles! You can’t go wrong with a place that has good French fries everywhere.

6. Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

As a travel destination, my current favourite is Istanbul. It is so rich in culture and vibrant! Perhaps it also had to do with having family origins there, but I loved it. It is both modern and traditional at the same time. It sounds cliché but it is indeed a bridge between East and West. There is so much history, so much culture to explore, as well as delicious local cuisine and nice, welcoming people.

7. What has been the most memorable experience of your blogging adventures?

I’d say that one of my most interesting trips was the one to Sao Paulo, Brazil. It is a country of great contrasts and kept surprising me every day. For instance, I remember the time we went for lunch at a Greek local resident’s home, a lecturer at the Sao Paulo university. Even though the house was a splendid villa, full of urban comforts, its “backyard” was in fact the jungle. So, we could see the monkeys in the jungle looking at us while we were making caipirinhas and grilling meat on the barbecue. The fact that urban life in Brazil was so close to wildlife was something I had never experienced before. Definitely a memorable experience!

8. Which travel experiences would you suggest to travellers who want to live some unforgettable moments and where?

In my experience, more than anything else, it’s the people you are with that make a place unforgettable. Even the simplest experiences, can become unforgettable because of the moments you shared with friends, either the ones you traveled with, or the ones you met in your destination. So even if you travel solo, it’s a good idea to take a small group tour locally and have shared experiences with other travelers.These moments will be your best memories!

9. Do you like the idea of experiential tourism by Travelgogo?

I think it’s great! Nowadays, people no longer wish to have a sterile experience of another place, and see the usual monuments from a tour bus. You can’t really say you’ve known a place if you haven’t talked to its people, see how they live, what they eat and so on. So a platform like Travelgogo, which brings visitors and locals together, and promotes unique travel experiences, is indeed a great idea. There’s no better way to really get to know a place than unique local experiences.

Thank you Eleanna👏

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