To our partners and whoever is watching our Instagram Stories, my best friend Jazmine and I are known for our trip-planning prowess. After years spent living in different cities, we’ve settled on a two-or-three-day travel format that took us to San Francisco in our mid-20s, Las Vegas in 2023, and to the Hotel Bel-Air for a particularly memorable staycation just this past spring, for Jazmine’s birthday. Our greatest and longest-held dream trip, though—a stay at the Icehotel in Sweden—hasn’t actually happened, and as I get older and flights to Sweden get even more expensive, I’m beginning to wonder if that’s maybe…okay?
Jazmine and I have been talking about going to sleep in a bed made of ice, inside a room made of ice, inside a whole hotel made of ice since some long-ago high school sleepover I can no longer recall the particulars of. Yet experience has taught me that even the best-laid plans for a girls’ trip can go awry, no matter how much you’re looking forward to it. (Remember my sage, White Lotus\–finale–timed advice about not taking three-person girls’ trips?) Sometimes, it’s more fun to dream and gossip and speculate about what you’d do on said trip than it is to actually go on it.
Here is the main advantage of a girls’ trip that stays in the group chat: It’s free. Honestly, decking ourselves out in sequins and satin and dining at the Peppermill Lounge in Vegas was worth every penny. But the economy being as it is (and I say this as a noted personal-finance expert), I worry that the guilt and stress I would feel shelling out on airfare to Sweden or on renting a big, gorgeous house somewhere in the Loire Valley with my college besties instead of paying for car maintenance or my dog’s ludicrously expensive dried duck treats would cancel out some of the fun of the experience.
Am I sickeningly jealous whenever I witness social media evidence of a girls’ trip that did make it out of the proverbial group chat? Of course! But instead of corralling my friends into replicating one for ourselves, I’m trying to invest more time and energy in micro-hangs with the people I love. No, a quick Negroni at a sunny outdoor bar followed by a requisite trip to In-N-Out isn’t exactly equivalent to a days-long European romp, but I defy you to find a meal more appetizing to the sun-baked, cocktail-basted palate than a Neapolitan shake, animal fries, and a burger—no, not protein style; never protein style—in the car while the new Lorde album blasts from someone’s phone because we can’t figure out how to hook it up to the car stereo. Who needs Paris or Rome when you’ve got a fried-food-redolent parking lot in Studio City?
In my experience, the more people you try to bring together for an impromptu girls’ trip, the more likely the whole thing is to go belly-up (as is beautifully demonstrated in the Netflix film Wine Country, which seems to have more or less been an excuse for the Amy Poehler–Tina Fey–Maya Rudolph extended universe to hang out and drink wine together). So when it comes to actually taking said girls’ trip out of the group chat, my advice is simple: Keep it small, and keep it local. You may actually have a better time eating ramen and watching reality TV in one of your apartments than you would on some costly, exhausting jaunt halfway around the world.
Is that plan particularly social-media-friendly? No—but I can almost guarantee it will be fun, which is famously what girls just want to have.
