A 40-Something Travel Writer’s No. 1 Jet Lag Hack

Get a room.

My first arrival in Berlin was not an auspicious one. The 2016 presidential election results back in America were just a few days old; when my husband and I had flown out of New York City, most of the airport stood stock-still, in tears, staring at the news crawls on the ceiling-mounted televisions.

We came in on a train from Milan that deposited us in the German capital just as dawn broke; the city was gleaming and frigid in the astringent November light. We presented ourselves at our hip-as-could-be hotel in Prenzlauer Berg and were informed, politely but firmly, that our room wouldn’t be available until two in the afternoon. We traded our suitcases for claim tickets at the front desk and zombie-lurched off toward the Spree River to kill so, so much time.

For what felt like the next several dazed hours, we crunched across the dew-encrusted grass along sections of the Berlin Wall, where brand-new, anti-Trump caricatures and spray-painted slogans were already replacing older layers of graffiti. We and the world felt inside-out, but I was certain of one thing: I was too fucking old to roll into a foreign city and have to slap myself awake all morning before settling in somewhere. 

That was something I’d never do again—and it’s something you should never do again. You should, like I do now, pay for a hotel room the night before you arrive, for your early-morning self’s physical comfort and spiritual well-being. Here’s a bedtime story to that end; tuck in, kids.   

Overnight travel is a popular way to get from the U.S. to Europe and beyond, for good reason: Nonstop redeyes seem to optimize meager vacation time, and they’re often cheaper than diurnal alternatives. But trying to get quality sleep on those transatlantic flights is a whole other issue. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, it’s the number-one reason people upgrade their seats and “the highest priority for 70% of long-haul passengers.” 

Air carriers do their damnedest to convince us that the additional space and lie-flat perks of business- and first-class seats are the ticket to premium shut-eye, but what little peer-reviewed data we have to back that up isn’t especially compelling. One oft-cited study on the quantity and quality of sleep one gets in relation to how much one’s seat reclines was conducted on six 20-somethings. Our body of knowledge regarding what happens afterward isn’t all that helpful, either, as jet-lag studies are often conducted on cohorts like elite male football players. I’m going to assume that, like me, you’re not a Zoomer or Cristiano Ronaldo. 

But perhaps you do believe that a few thousand dollars can buy you premium Z’s. In that case, here’s a thought experiment. According to a recent KAYAK report, premium (i.e. business and first class) round-trip tickets for international flights in August—the month in which they’re cheapest—cost an average of more than $3,300.

Say you’re an ultra-frugal budget-flight jockey who decides instead to book an Iberia redeye that plucks you from JFK at just after six in the evening on Friday, August 7^th and, for a cool $709 round-trip before taxes and add-ons, deposits you at London Heathrow at 6:25 on Saturday morning. 

If you proceed directly to The Connaught in Mayfair and have pre-paid for the exquisite, stained-glass-and-carved-marble King’s Lodge suite for the previous night, you’ll high-five your butler and pad across handwoven Afghan carpets to a disco nap in your artisanal, Mughal-inspired four-poster bed, then awaken to a chilled bottle of Billecart-Salmon Champagne.

That suite will ring in under $2,400 at current exchange rates; throw in the cost of your overnight adventure with Iberia (and eventual return to New York City at a more reasonable time of day a week later) and you’re still coming in under what you would have paid for a round-trip business-class ticket and substandard La-Z-Boy recliners in the sky.

That interlude, even in an iteration several orders of magnitude humbler than the one I’ve offered for the sake of argument, is the savvy eastbound traveler’s ticket to better living. (Pro tip: Let your host know about your so-late-it’s-early arrival time so they don’t assume you’re a no-show and give your precious nap venue away.) 

“But Lauren,” you protest. “Rick Steves says you should stay awake until an early local bedtime. Plan a good walk and stay out until early evening. Jet lag hates fresh air, daylight, and exercise. Your body may beg for sleep, but stand firm. Force your body’s transition to the local time.”

Flight attendants, in turn, have been known to suggest that the simplest circadian-rhythm hack is to pretend that your old schedule multiple time zones away is still in effect at your destination—or to switch to your destination’s schedule immediately. 

Yeah, no. 

Much as Carrie Bradshaw’s most constant partner on Sex and the City was New York itself, mine is sleep. Or maybe I’m Liam Neeson’s character in Taken and my making-human-traffickers-lives-miserable skill set is sleep? Anyway, an unnerving portion of the extremely precious storage in my one-bedroom apartment is devoted to linens and blankets—or, as they are known hyperlocally, the components of my Nap Menu. (Making my bed in the morning is Transitioning to Day-Sleeping.) 

As an undergrad at Stanford I studied with William Dement, sometimes called the Father of Sleep Medicine. He was the founder of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the chairman of the National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research, and literally wrote the first textbook on sleep.

I’ve also been fact checking and reporting on how to sidestep and/or wriggle out from under jet lag for longer than some of the Zoomers and elite footballers in those sleep-quality studies have been alive. In-flight, a comfortable neck pillow, substantial eye mask, and stay-put ear plugs can all facilitate sleep, as can waving away free munchkin bottles of booze and bringing your own bland snacks—but you can’t fight hypobaric hypoxia or altitude’s enshittification of sleep via air-pressure changes. Going full Steves and sauntering through the Old World sun as soon as possible at your destination, in turn, might benefit your body clock eventually, but it won’t save you on that first pitiless day of travel.  

What will save you, in my professional and personal opinion, is eating the additional cost of lodging the night before you arrive so you can slip into town with the sun, shower off the plane patina and transportational residues that have been collecting on your person like striations of an unholy geode, and take a proper nap. It can be a half-hour nap that skims above REM sleep like a water strider on the surface of a pond; it can be, as in my travels, a feature-film-length endeavor that I awaken from like an aeronaut who’s been ejected from a hot-air balloon. That part is up to you, but if you can afford to invest in a room that will stand empty while you wing your way across the world and enfold you like a long-lost relative when you reach it, give it the old decades-since-college try. You are worth it.  

As I packed for a trip to Iceland a few years ago, I received an email from the folks at my favorite hotel in downtown Reykjavik. I’d be arriving, they explained, as final preparations were underway for the Víðavangshlaup ÍR, a 5K road race locals have been running through the city streets to celebrate the first day of summer since 1916. City-center road closures might make it trickier for me and my fellow travelers to reach them. Apologies for the potential inconvenience!

I pondered that inconvenience as my bus from Keflavik Airport crawled to the city and the sun crawled over the horizon. Thanks to reliably excellent Icelandic Wi-Fi, I learned that registration for the race was still open and it occurred me that the athleisurely outfit I’d worn on the plane in a (mostly fruitless) attempt to score some of that sweet, sweet in-flight sleep was something I could in fact wear for a spontaneous foreign feat of strength.

Upon reaching my hotel, I checked in, cleaned up, and crashed out—then rose and shone in plenty of time to collect a bib and participate with a clear head and un-lagged limbs in Iceland’s oldest sporting event, and receive a kicky little medal for doing so. That’s some pro-level travel right there.

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