TellUs: Vegan Travel Tips, Part 1

Vegan travel tips - part 1

I presume if you’re reading this, you’re either travelling abroad or to a different area and need some useful advice on how to eat vegan whilst you’re away from home comforts! If so, look no further! 

It can feel daunting travelling and being on a vegan diet, particularly if you’re a newbie. Also if you’re travelling to a location where you haven’t before and therefore aren’t sure of the options that are available for you. However no need to fret! Hopefully these tips will come in handy and you can have a stress-free, relaxing holiday, whilst continuing your guilt-free lifestyle!

1. Book in advance

If your travels require you to fly anywhere, make sure you book either online or on the phone and request a vegan meal from your airline company. This can be done up to 24 hours before your flight and is absolutely essential, especially for long-haul flights. Flights tend to only have two meat dishes and one vegetarian, with no vegan meal in site. So in order to keep a full and happy tummy throughout your flight, definitely do this. 

P.s. You tend to get your meals before everyone else and also requesting vegan tends to include all your added snacks they hand out on long-haul flights. However double check these snacks, just in case!

2. Bring snacks

Snacks (Source: Netclipart)

If you’re on the road for a long period of time, or even a flight, bringing vegan snacks from home is a great idea. You don’t want to be stuck in a situation where you’ve pulled into a small restaurant on the motorway and everyone is tucking into food but you. However if you’ve packed yourself snacks and some meals then you don’t have to worry about the restaurant catering for you or not. If they do, great! If not, no bother! 

Also when you get to your destination it is useful to hunt down a supermarket asap in order to stock up on snacks for on-the-go, when you’re out in the daytime doing activities or in the room at night. This way you always have a backup food option and won’t go hungry.

3. Don’t be afraid

Waiter (Source: Freepik)

Looking at a menu and seeing absolutely nothing on there for you can be intimidating. We’ve all been there! However more often than not the waiters/waitresses are more than willing to either point you in the right direction of what to order, explain the ingredients in a dish or request the chef to make you a vegan dish. 

It can be common also that vegetarian dishes can be made vegan easily by simply asking for no cheese or not to be cooked in butter etc. Again the staff are more than willing to accommodate these requests and not only that but are used to it! People switch bits and bobs off the menu all the time, so you definitely don’t need to feel singled out!

4. Research

HappyCow logo (Source: HappyCow)

Researching the area you’re travelling to and what options are available there is really beneficial, especially if you tend to get more anxious about ordering food. Making a list of a couple of vegan restaurants nearby to where you’re staying means you can relax and not have to worry about where your next meal is coming from.

A useful app for this is HappyCow, it allows you to view all vegan restaurants, or restaurants that do vegan options all around your current location. It is currently on the app store for £3.99 and is by far worth the price! It saves so much time and energy. Online sites like TripAdvisor are useful too, to look at peoples reviews.

5. Travel with understanding people

Happy people! (Source: All-free-download)

This is a pretty important point. Making sure the people you’re travelling with are aware of your food requirements and what you can and can’t eat makes life a lot easier. Plus it means that you can explore the vegan restaurants together and try out new and exciting food! You don’t want to be travelling with people that refuse to compromise on occasions and insist on going to the steak grill every-night. 

Therefore before you travel either chat or text the people you’re going with, if they don’t already know, and just fill them in on your vegan lifestyle. Let them know that all you want is for them to respect your choices. Also get them involved in it and share the vegan restaurants you’ve found - make it exciting!

I hope this blog was useful, I tailored it more towards new vegans that are travelling, so the points are just a starting basis. I am currently travelling right now, so am finding other points to add to this list all of the time. So in the future I will defiantly do a part 2 to this list and so forth.

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Check out my previous blog: https://www.tellusabouttheenvironment.com/2019/10/tellus-should-climate-classes-be.html