My boyfriend Søren and I have both been working as freelancers for years, and our backgrounds are in fashion. I was a lifestyle and fashion writer for several international newspapers and magazines, while Søren has been running a successful street style blog called The Locals for eight years. We were lucky because that made it possible for us to travel together a lot. Twice a year we were attending the big fashion weeks, visiting Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, New York, London, Milan and Paris. We realized that we had an eye for cool places and started collecting travel tips. As our friends and readers realized how much we were on the road, they started asking us our recommendations. And since we had always planned to work together on a bigger project outside of the fashion world, we decided to start 12hrs. I’d like to say we had a glamorous launch, but sadly not — it was just the push of a button while sitting at our kitchen table, after one long year of work leading up to it. And if I remember correctly, we were actually wearing our pajamas.
Condensing is key
I guess we are different from other travel sites because we don’t collect random travel tips. Instead, we cover the very best a place has to offer, organized into 12-hour itineraries. This means we need to be very selective about what we recommend people to see, do and eat in one short stay. We ignore a lot of the usual tips, because we trust that our readers will find the obvious tourist highlights by themselves. Instead, we provide locations off the beaten path, and first-hand knowledge from us and locals. Our guides tend to feature quite a lot of fashion and design, and our readers can follow our schedule, or they can just pick a few things and ignore the rest.
Style from the street
Søren’s eye for style heavily influences the site. He shoots all the pictures in our guides, so his aesthetic leads the way. We also almost always feature street style in our guides to give our readers a better idea about the vibe a city has to offer.
Staycation < Vacation
Holidays close to home can be amazing! You avoid all the hassle of traveling — queues at the airport, delayed trains or traffic jams — and still enjoy all the good stuff. A holiday in my own city would involve tons of great food. I’d drink lots of coffee, go out for dinner and have a picnic in the park with friends.
Pack like a pro
We have become packing professionals. First we have to pack all our tech of course — cameras, lenses, my kindle, a laptop and phones. A few other things I always bring are Birkenstock sandals, cashmere sweatpants to put on after a long day of exploring, lots of dresses that I can dress up and down, and a giant scarf that keeps me warm and doubles as a pillow on long flights. I also always have hand cream by L’Occitane and Aesop Immediate Moisture Facial Hydrosol in my bag.
Traveling is amazing and inspiring, but when it’s your job it’s also daunting and exhausting at times. To combat that, I have my little rituals. No matter how tired I am and at what time of day I arrive, I always take a short walk around our new hood to feel that I have properly arrived in the new place. And I always check out the nearest supermarkets. It’s amazing what you can learn about a foreign culture by perusing the grocery aisle. A good coffee the next morning makes me feel at home easily, and having my boyfriend by my side does the rest.
As told to Sophie Hay.
Photos: Courtesy of 12hrs and The Locals.
Originally published at www.lyst.com on August 7, 2015.
