Christine Warren exudes energy. She’s fun and funny; she has a can-do attitude and has always been great at motivating people. I’ve known Christine since 7th grade, and we also attended college together (Go Tarheels!). She worked for years in marketing, then left the corporate world to pursue writing full-time. Her two books, Paddlefish, about the Texas Water Safari, and Honky Tonk Debutante, are available on Amazon. Christine has one daughter and, along with her husband Tom, splits her time between Austin, Texas and Mobile, Alabama. But even with all these other interests and accomplishments, Christine has always nurtured her love of Italy. She now puts that passion for all things Italian to work for others planning their dream trips abroad.
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Tell me about your fascination with Italy…
I wish I had a reason, or that I had any Italian heritage in my family, but I do not. We had a family joke about that since I was little. My grandmother spent a decade researching her family tree. This was long before ancestry.com made it so easy. And I begged her: “please find me somebody Italian; I know they’re my people.” And there was no one.
This is actually the true, funny story about why I got so hooked on Italy. When I was little, we lived in London for two years. I was in fourth and fifth grade. My parents were so young and wanted to take advantage of doing everything in Europe because they may never get back. And so we traveled and traveled nonstop. One of the things they planned for Easter was a trip to Italy. Prior to that, over Christmas or a winter break, we went skiing in Austria. I was a scaredy-cat. I’d been skiing one time and it terrified me. I was secretly having anxiety attacks about this ski trip.
All I could think about was Italy. If I make it to Italy, that means I lived. So, by the time I got to that Italy trip, I’d built it up in my head of this goal that I was more excited about than anything. Then when I got there, it really delivered. I loved it and I loved the people. We stayed in the countryside. I made friends with this Italian girl; she took me to her grandmother’s house and they didn’t speak English. I ate all their food and we played soccer.
Everything that is the most iconic Italian character of the country I totally clicked with: I loved the food, the museums, the language (I didn’t understand any of it). I was 10 years old and I thought “these are my people.”
So I hounded my mother for the next few years and she took me back to Italy in middle school. In high school, I did a study abroad in the summer before my senior year.
So you started studying abroad there in high school?
My mother found a 3-4 week study abroad in Venice. Everything reinforced my love for the country. I studied there again in college in the summers: I did all three of my summers in college studying in Italy. I thought I might study abroad there in my junior year in college but I never wanted to miss football or basketball season at Carolina. After freshman year I was in Siena, a program through Villanova. After sophomore year it was kind of interesting. A lot of the programs pulled out that year because of the Gulf War, and everybody decided that they were too scared to study abroad.
I studied with the Language Institute of Florence, but I really didn’t go to those classes very much. I pretty much just lived in Florence for the summer. We stayed in this really crummy apartment. We had apartment-mates that we didn’t know. And then the following summer I studied with UPenn in Florence. That was hardcore, studying medieval Italian poetry. Any course I took in all of college, that summer was the most challenging.
What was your major?
I was an English major but I took a lot of Italian at Carolina. I only needed three more hours to be an Italian minor. Italian literature, Dante and the Italian poets — I loved it all.
But then you get out of college and it’s time to get a job, which usually you only have two weeks’ vacation, and I had no money. I didn’t have the time to get over there once I graduated except on the coattails of a generous family trip that my mom planned once or twice. Point being: about the time I graduated from college and my Italy time slowed down a bit, my mother’s ramped up. And that was about the time she became a travel agent and Italy became her specialty. She randomly decided to have a job for the first time in her life (except when she taught preschool when I was little).
It was a joke, really. When I was in preschool, my mom taught preschool. When I was school age, my mom was a room mom/ PTA mom. Then when I was in college at Chapel Hill, she became a rush advisor at Vanderbilt. And then when I get my first job, she gets her first job. I remember being at my job talking to her, and she
So she started taking groups over there and it kind of became this thing: no one wanted to go to Italy unless my mom took them, because she knew everything. Everything. And she was fearless.
She would rent a car, drive everywhere. She started going over there about three times a year. I’d share information… I did make it over there a little bit but it wasn’t once a year like it had been. She was going with such frequency, she kind of became this Italy expert.
Then life frees up a little bit as my daughter Sophie gets a little older, I have a little more time and ability to travel, so we started going. We went with my mom, we went as a family, I started taking Sophie more. My life worked that I could start doing it more, and then people started asking me: where do we eat in Rome? Where should we go?
What happened was that every time somebody asked me for advice, I would spend days preparing information for them. And my mom and my husband Tom said: “You need to do this for a living.” But I said, “I don’t speak Italian, I’m not an art historian, I’m not a travel agent — why would anybody pay me to do this? It doesn’t make any sense.” So this went on for about a year or two.
And long story short, my mom passed away and I was in this conversation with someone who said they used to lead these trips to France, and people would pay them to put together a
There are
I don’t want to come in like the tour bus. I want to eat at really cool, small places, and I want everyone to be able to eat and talk together.
Especially if the tour guide is with us because he or she is telling us really interesting things. And the other practical reason is, if we have a tour guide, all these little Mercedes mini-vans that we hire for the day can only have 8 people. Also just walking down the street together, I’ve got to keep all the chickens together, so 7 is the max for that. And to have the feel of the trips that I’m offering, they need to stay small.
So that’s one part of what I started doing, and people love it. They don’t want to plan everything. And even my friends and women I’ve become friends with through this process, that do plan their family trips or that do like to research travel: they like a break from it.
So this led to your concierge program?
Yes, so how I am making a little money and what I’d really like to get the word out about: once I started doing this, I found out there’s this whole world of travel consultants. It pre-existed me; I didn’t invent this. Basically, how people tend to describe it is for the independent traveler who can handle their own bookings.
If you were planning a trip and said, “I wish I had a cousin who knew everything about Italy so I knew how to get started or didn’t have to do so much research,” that’s where I come in.
I do not handle bookings: I don’t book airfare, hotels: I don’t book anything. Most people get that. But the thing is, you can take everything that I suggest and hand it over to your travel agent. Because you’re not double-dipping. You pay me for strategy and they’ll take a percentage of the commission of the transaction. Some people get all the scoop from me but they still don’t want to deal with their flights and their lodging. I tell them, “take everything I’m telling you, hand it to your travel agent, and they will book your flights and hotels.” They’ll take a cut of that but it’s valuable to some people.
Basically, I will help people
Because I explain over and over again to people, Italy only became a country in the
And I always tell people— and then break the rules as you see fit. Because it’s your vacation and you don’t need to be too legalistic about it.
But I largely find people in general enjoy the food and the experience more if they have a little knowledge about what you eat in Rome vs. what you eat in Florence vs. what you eat in Venice (which are the three biggest cities for tourism). So I spend a lot of time on the food. I’ve done everything from help plan an elopement and very
So you wouldn’t say you’re an exclusively super high-end service?
No! If anything, I feel like spending a little money on me will save you money on your trip. Tom (my husband) is always telling people, “pay her $400 which is a couple of
I think I help people the most in plotting out what they should do based on their goals with the amount of time they have. Pretty much nine times out of ten, with a new client, they have an idea of where they want to go, and when they’re going. They’ll say, “here are my dates, and I want to go to Venice, Florence, Rome, Milan, and the Amalfi Coast. Typically. Oh, and maybe Sicily.
Do you think people are too greedy trying to cram too much in?
I think it’s a little naivete’, and they don’t understand how getting around place to place is going to affect their trip. And this is a big trip for people, and they want to get the most out of it. The airfare’s expensive, maybe they’ve saved up time-wise on the calendar to go as a family. For whatever reason, it’s understandable they want to get as much out of it as they can. But the other reason is, for people our age, if they traveled in college and they haven’t been since, they all just think of the Eurail Pass.
That’s the last time I was there!
This is a real thing, and I had to readjust my husband’s thinking. Everybody thinks you just jump on a train, and it’s basically free, and you have this little card.
That’s not how it is anymore?
First of all, you’re not buying a Eurail Pass for a nine-day family vacation. So you’re buying each individual train ticket, and those really can add up. On our first trip to Italy together, my husband thought we would just hop a train everywhere. He is the classic example of his eyes bigger than his plate when planning a European trip. Because all he sees are the dollar signs of that airfare to get over there. So he’s like: we are literally going to do and see everything, and it’s so great in Europe because you can get everywhere for free on a train. And I had to explain to him that’s not true.
So as delicately as possible, I help people figure out how much time they have. And I have a pretty good read on the average human being’s capability for sightseeing and killing themselves.
As I tell people, I understand you want to see all these things, but you won’t remember any of them. Planning a big important trip is so much to me like editing a book. You write a book and you plan your dream trip. And then you’ve got to get the red pen out and to make magic happen, you have to slash. Because — you know there’s that thing in writing you’ve got to be willing to kill your babies? You’ve got to be willing to cut your favorite line out of a book. Or cut that chapter that you love but it’s not working. And that’s how a great book gets made.
It’s the same thing on a trip. I’ll say, okay
So part of what you do is help your clients realize these parameters and help them scale down to a more realistic itinerary. What about helping them with other aspects of their trip?
I’ll give an example. I helped a single dad who wanted to take his daughter on an Italy trip for high school graduation. I talk a lot with people about the difference between the hotel and the Air B&B. Because I do both, and I do them at different times in my trip. People who have never stayed in an Air B&B in the United States suddenly want to when they go to Europe. Which is fine, but I have to explain there is no breakfast waiting for you in the morning. You have to
Now, the positives are: you really feel like you’re living in that city a little bit, and it’s definitely more space for the money. We do it as a family a lot because it’s hard to get two bedrooms at a hotel, especially when Sophie was younger, I didn’t want her alone in a room. So you could get a two-bedroom apartment, you can get more bathrooms, you just get more for your money. But you’ve got to work a little harder.
T
What if somebody came to you and they don’t have their dates, necessarily? What advice do you have for somebody starting from scratch? Would you say plan two years in advance? Or should they come to you first and you’ll tell them when to go and how long to stay?
If they really came and they were tabula rasa, blank slate, I would say don’t buy my $400 flat fee package right now. Instead, do my hourly rate which is $40, and I pro-rate, so if we talk for 16 minutes, I’ll figure it out on the calculator what that costs. I modeled my hourly rate from Rick Steves’ travel.
That was my guidebook when I traveled.
Rick Steves is awesome! I listen to as many Rick Steves free walking audio guides as I can. Some are better than others, so I can tell people: don’t do the one of the Roman Forum. You will be lost the whole time. I’ve done enough I can tell you which ones to do and which ones to splurge for a guide. Some people will tell me, I can only get one guide in Rome. I’ll say don’t do it for the Pantheon, because Rick Steves’ free one is great. But do it for the Vatican.
That’s where I’ll help people discern where to spend their money. But if they were totally starting from scratch, they should just do the hour with me. Rick Steves’ travel consultation is $75 for 30 minutes. And you’re not talking to him obviously, you’re talking to one of his employees. It’s 30 minutes and you take notes — they don’t give you anything.
I modeled my hourly off of that; I’m more affordable at $40/hour. But the client takes notes. I’ll sit there on the computer and email some things while we’re talking, live, in
But what I will tell them, if you’re trying to go during the summer, go in June or early July, not
I really like to tailor my advice to the person I’m talking to. Whether it’s their budget, or the time of year, or the amount of time they have off from work.
One client was a movie buff. He’d say, “I’m a big Godfather movie fan, so I want to go to Venice and Florence, and I want to go to Rome and see the studios in Rome. Also, I want to go to Milan. And I want to go everywhere in Sicily where the Godfather was filmed. I’d say, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you can’t. So let’s start prioritizing.”
Do you have specific advice about airline tickets?
People have completely different attitudes of what level of seat they want to buy on an airplane. Someone asked me about it for our upcoming trip in June and said, “should I fly business class?” I said, “I don’t have the budget for it.” It doesn’t bother me: I can curl up, I take a sleeping pill, I’m in a ball. I really don’t mind being in the back and I want that money for the actual trip. But preferences differ; you really have to understand what people care about. Some people are tall and just want the extra space. Or they have trouble sleeping and it’s going to ruin their trip if they get there and they’re cranky. It doesn’t ruin my trip; I hit the ground running with no sleep. I have no sleep anyway in my life.
I’m going to save money on the class of ticket that I buy; I’ll be content in the back of the bus. That being said, I’m going to get there in the shortest amount of transfers that I can do. I’ve worked with people who have gobs of money, but they do not want to spend money on airfare they don’t have to. They want to be business class, but they’ll get there in four transfers when they could have done it in two.
And I caution people in that situation to say every time you change planes, that’s an opportunity for your luggage to get lost and a flight to get canceled. So, they make their decision on their own from that point, but all I do is arm them with information. I’m really not at all interested in the conversation of economy class, business class, first class — do it, don’t do it, it doesn’t interest me that much. What interests me is getting the fewest number of flights and at least a
What about the fact that in travel, no matter how hard you plan, things go awry. One of my friend’s luggage didn’t arrive for her European cruise,
Oh! Totally! Every single trip I take I learn something to do a little bit differently the next time. I’ve had no luggage… to some degree, that’s travel. If you don’t want any of that to happen, you shouldn’t leave the house. I kind of giggle a little bit about people who take to social media ranting about lost luggage. If you actually look out your airplane window and see them, aren’t you surprised any luggage ever gets anywhere? And so put that on a global scale; luggage does get lost. Frustration mounts when they’re not helpful and that’s valid. It’s annoying, it’s a bummer, but you’re not a victim.
We left for our really big family trip this past May: Tom, Sophie, and I. There we were in Mobile, Alabama, boarding a plane to go to Atlanta to Paris to start our trip. We get on the plane in Mobile, and the pilot thought he was having a heart attack. As it turns out, he was fine. But he couldn’t fly the plane. Our flight was canceled, and we’re in a small town and there’s no other pilot. Our whole schedule is messed up and we barely had left our house.
So when stuff like that happens, I tell people the number one thing is somebody get on the phone, and somebody get in line.
Because one of them is going to be moving faster than the other. So we stood in line and I sat on hold and we ended up getting to the desk before I got off hold. We had to go to Pensacola and we had a
Do you still enjoy going to other places and undiscovered places? Or do you want to stick to Italy?
If you made me choose between only ever going to Italy again, or going everywhere else but Italy again, I would take Italy. Thankfully, no one seems to be threatening me with that decision. I love traveling. It doesn’t matter if it’s Florence, Italy or Florence, Alabama. I love new places. Wherever I am I don’t think I know that place until I figure out its food; it makes me so happy figuring out the food of Athens, Georgia or wherever we are.
But what’s kind of fun is to balance it out, because I am so obsessed with Italy, and frankly would love to live there but I can’t because I have a family who’s not ready to make that move. So this is my way to stay immersed and connected with it in a really intimate way.
As I explained to my husband, I don’t want to just GO to Italy, I want to KNOW Italy intimately. That matters to me.
I want to know when
They love Italy and they would love to keep going back, but at the same time, Tom wants to see other places. With my
Since you’re a big fisherwoman, have you fished in Italy?
I have not; that’s a really great question. I do follow a couple of fly-fishing guides in Italy. I have a friend who is as much of an Italian-
So part of me wants to do that, but at the same time, it’s kind of highest and best purpose. I’m there with the greatest Renaissance and Baroque Art. Do I really want to tear myself away and fish when I could be seeing this architecture or doing things I can’t do stateside? But yes, there is freshwater fly-fishing in Italy, and I follow a couple guides over there. But then I think if they didn’t speak English, that would be kind of hard. How would I take advice?
On a bigger scale, what do you think travel does for us, and what does it do for you?
First and foremost, family memories. Because I have a husband who is keen and open to travel, and a daughter who’s been brainwashed to love travel, that is the one place where we’re not arguing, and we’re really clicking on all cylinders. Especially since Tom is Sophie’s stepdad, and blended families are hard, travel is this one special place.
It’s not just the nine-day trip or weekend trip or whatever it is — it’s all the time leading up to it that I love for my family.
Because we research it and we talk about it. I give people assignments. We have jobs we have to go look up and report back. I got that from MY parents. All of my
The funniest stories that my dad and I sit around and talk about are the travel mishaps.
My parents were thirtysomething years old, living in England with a 10-year old child, and they had no money. We had this broken down Jetta that they bought used. The steering wheel’s on the English side. Try doing
Very specifically, it’s really turned me into a cook. Because I didn’t grow up loving to cook — my mom was such a good cook I never had to. She never wanted me to, and she didn’t want me messing everything up. But it’s travel that’s made me want to learn to cook. I can’t get the pasta here that I have there, so I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to have to learn how to make it. Same with Morocco or Spain. I really try to milk it. We don’t have unlimited funds and time, so if we do a big family trip, it’s going to be a heck of a lot more than the 10 days we’re over there.
You all do research and reports for the trip?
The one that Sophie teases me about the most is in 2017, we did a family trip to Greece. My dad and I had been, but neither Tom nor Sophie had ever been. I thought while I’ve got Sophie under my roof still in high school, I need to do the trips that have the most homework involved. Greece is the birthplace of Western civilization. So everybody had assignments: philosophy, democracy, theater…and nobody did them.
At Christmastime, I checked in and nobody had done anything. My mom would do this and everyone listened to her but nobody listened to me. So we were all together in Austin for Easter. I decided I live in Austin, Texas with a University of 50,000 students — someone at that university could come over to the house and teach us about Greece. So I created this job description for the Classics Department at the University of Texas. Only one person responded.
You are hilarious.
Tom and Sophie were like: you are so embarrassing, this is not happening. I said, “oh, it’s happening!” The itinerary was already set, so I described the itinerary and what we needed to learn. We would have a Greek feast; it was going to be a party. I had Greek wine, Greek decorations, Greek food (I cooked all week), I had Greek flags on the front porch. And it was going to be five hours and I was paying them very well. I wanted someone fun; this could not be like a classroom. “My family’s fun,” I thought, but we need a lot of information.
I literally got one reply from this graduate student named Caolan who’s Irish. He’d been in Austin one semester. I had to go to YouTube and look it up and figure out how to
I don’t know anyone who has the energy, much less the creativity, to do all of that just to get ready for a trip…
That’s my point! The trip itself can’t be it. It’s got to have some life before and after. Sophie mocks me. She’s like, “Oh yeah, the day I had to spend the Saturday of Easter in class in my own house for hours?” I’m not sure she actually loved it. But she did learn a lot. And she is getting a lot of mileage making fun of me. And she loved
Any final thoughts?
I’m so intrigued by your question about what if somebody comes to me with nothing planned. I’ve probably had only two people come to me like that. I actually would love to get more of that. But typically people come to me with their dates and the cities they want, and sometimes their lodging. The only thing is that people always say they want to get off the beaten track, and they always come to me and say we’re going to Rome, Florence, and Venice. And that is literally the most beaten track. They’re fabulous. I love those cities so much.
And if you’ve never been, it’s probably important to go see at least one or two or even all three of them. But I think if people were a little bit adventurous and were willing to get a little house in the country, or an apartment in a small town, and drive and do day trips, you can really stretch your dollar that way. It’s a lot more affordable to get something in a smaller town.
But you’ve got to be willing to drive, and you’ve got to be willing to have some of the mishaps that come with that. We’ve had a lot of great family trips where we stayed outside of the little town of Cortona. Then you can also cook dinner some nights so it’s not restaurants 3 meals a day. But you have to be willing to say okay, I’m not going to be in Venice, Florence, and Rome the whole time.
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To reach Christine for travel consulting services, email her at christinejwarren@yahoo.com.
To read the last post on my blog (Guest Post by my husband), click here: Miracle On Cemetery Lane
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