Actor Elijah Wood started traveling for work when he was seven years old. Now, he’s got strong opinions on window versus aisle seats, learning the vibe of a new city, and how to pack for multiple climates.
The first trip I ever took was toLos Angelesfor a modeling and talent convention with my mom and brother . It was the first sheet drive I remember being on . I remember very specifically see out the window and control palm tree for the first time and being kind of in awe of this place that I had associated with the picture . I have very brilliant memories of driving around Los Angeles , seeing the Hollywood sign , the Chinese Theater , these somewhat cliche but iconic place .
I started working when I was eight . By the end of that yr , I was already traveling to Baltimore to mold on a moving picture calledAvalon . My life as a traveler really protrude that yr . Most of the films that I worked on were on locating , so I traveled a ton . I developed a itchy feet relatively quickly .
I love traveling . I get it on the adventure of it , I get laid the newness of it , experiencing new spot . The older I got , the more I invested in that I became . patently as a kidskin , forge as an doer , my mom and I were move together . As you become an adult , there ’s an possession over that process and sometimes also a choice of where you need to go on your own that starts to come into your life , which is just so rattling . I ’m a vast foodie , so I explore wherever I travel , what restaurant to check out , and I will take myself out . That becomes a way of key out the identicalness of a metropolis and get a urban center .
Design by Maitane Romagosa for Thrillist
I spent the good part of four years of my life inNew Zealand , getting to know that place , travel all around it , and really live there . It was the first time in my life that I ’d ever lived away from home for an lengthened period of time . It was an incredible place to be for that first experience , which was so shaping . New Zealand has imprinted on my DNA and in my pith in such a specific manner . It will always experience like home base . fly intoAucklandhas an emotional resonance , this sense that I ’m home again . It ’s hard to regain anything that holds quite that level of resonance .
New Zealand is top , but there are other incredible places . I spend a spot of meter inTurkey . I really get it on it there . pass a number of time inSpain — the culinary scene there is sinful and it ’s an incredible country . Denmark is a vast part of my lifetime . My married woman ’s from Denmark , and our kids are Danish by giving birth . Copenhagenis one of my favorite urban center in the world . The city planning is so extraordinary . It ’s an implausibly walkable urban center . It ’s extraordinarily favorable . The food ’s astonishing . It ’s just one of those places that opens itself up very rapidly .
There are some place that are knotty ab initio and sort of open up up over meter . Los Angeles is one of them , partly due to the fact that LA is monolithic , and I think it ’s really hard to get a sense of the metropolis very quick for visitors . Whereas there are other places that I mean just their individuality very quickly reveals itself to you . LikeAustin , for instance . For me , even though Austin is growing and changing and morph over time as it go on to populate , it will always hold this smell of home .
Rapid fire
Window or aisle seat?
Window . I put the shade down — I mean , if it ’s gay , it can be heavy meter reading or follow a film — but keep it up during takeoff , when I like to look out the window . I ’m not necessarily an entirely unquiet flier , but I do n’t encounter my comfort until we ’re at cruising height , which I think is comparatively common among a lot of hoi polloi . So I like to look out the window and just sort of orient . My wife ’s a much better traveler than I , she does n’t need to see , and I ’m like , I need to see a small bit . I care sitting by the window .
Are you a light packer or an overpacker?
I would say I err on the side of overpacking . I ’ve travel with people who only bring a back pack and I ’ve not been able to do that . I bring a carry - on bag for light locomotion , and I think I ’m in reality quite effective at mob a carry - on . But I do call up I ’m a small bite of an overpacker because I desire to give myself pick for when I down . I ’m like , “ I ’m go to institute a couple excess things just in case I need them . ” That being said , I do pride myself on being an effective packer . I feel like I practice space really well and pack well , but I do think I sometimes bring more than is necessary .
The knavish thing for me , though , is when you have a trip that incorporates two climate . That is an effer , man . I ’ve had this lately — thankfully it was n’t exceedingly extreme — but I was in Texas and then I had to be in Vancouver , and Vancouver is much cooler and Texas is 90s . I seek to avoid retard a bag at all costs now , but it ’s that brain-teaser of being able to pack for all season and the wintertime coat of it all , it ’s a full incubus .
What’s your favorite way to pass time on a plane?
A couple things . There ’s a sort of rotation of podcasts , movies , and either Switch or Steam Deck . What have I listen to recently ? There ’s a new docudrama series that explore each of Stevie Wonder ’s seminal record book fromMusic of My Mindstraight through toSongs in the Key of Life . Each installment is about a dissimilar record of his in this period that is deal a gold period of his . I tend to hear to things that are documentary or longsighted - form so that there ’s something to dig into . But mostly what I do on woodworking plane is check film .
What’s your biggest travel fear?
My biggest travel reverence is in all probability heavy upheaval . I just do n’t like turbulency . I just get a small dying and I have n’t really rent that go . It ’s fishy , the frequency with which I travel has n’t modify that much . I remember there was a period where I was inured to it way more than I am now . I feel way more sensitive to it now , weirdly , and I do n’t quite know why .
I was never a aflutter traveller and I would n’t say that I am entirely now either , but I do n’t love feeling the carpenter’s plane . I believe that ’s it . I was on a flight recently — it was an A380 , a massive aeroplane — but I just felt the wind the whole time . I could just feel that we were hurtle through space in a path that you do n’t need to feel . The beautiful matter about a great plane journey is that it just is consistent , you ’re in this tube-shaped structure and you ’re not really cognizant of the fact that you ’re moving . And so this trajectory was just … It was o.k. , but I did n’t wish that belief .
What’s your favorite travel snack?
I do n’t really work snacks on a plane , but on instrument panel , it ’s such a cliche , but I ’ll never deny warm nuts . It ’s like the only topographic point on the planet where I eat that . It is so specific to plane travelling . And then I wo n’t deny a tall mallow and cracker bonbon situation . For our shaver , the one dainty on plane that is very associated with carpenter’s plane travel is M&Ms . It ’s become a rite with our family .
Must-have travel items
I just get some phone that were kind of an upgrade . Bluetooth cans rather than in - ear earpiece , which is kind of a endearing affair on a planing machine . There ’s a hack so I can plug it in or I can use it with Bluetooth . That ’s kind of headstone for traveling , both for watching my own films or whatever , but also for hear to my sound , that ’s key .
Always institute brim balm . You get juiceless on planes .
Either a Switch or Steam Deck , some variety of video recording game unit just so that there ’s entertainment . I really wish that I was more of a reader and I really miss that . I used to be such a lector in my XX and early thirties and I have fallen off so miserably . Although at times I will institute a book with the endeavor to try and read .
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Having a Bluetooth speaker , so I ’m capable to play medicine at a hotel , it just helps to make me feel at nursing home . Wherever you are , your audio , your medicine , it ’s a reflection of your worl — and bringing that to a alien country or a hotel , it at once sacrifice you a sense of belong , I recall .
I always travel with Altoids . That ’s something I ’ll get at an airport if I do n’t have it . That ’s a real constant .
Hand sanitizer too , in this particular day and age . I ’ll always have a helping hand sanitizer spray with me .
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I have this little bag that I really got from Michael Smiley , this wonderful Irish actor that I ’ve worked with a couple of metre . It ’s fundamentally just like a toilet articles bag that he had gotten on a flight , and he yield it to me when we crop on this movie calledCome to Daddy . I contain that matter with me everywhere and I employ it . I used to put my — I was a smoking compartment for 20 years — so I used to put cigarettes and stuff in it . Do n’t do that now . It hold all of my chargers . I land that case with me everywhere I go and it just always has my cables and things that I take .
A huge thing that I ’m on top of is just making sure that I have the right travel adaptor for wherever I ’m going . If you ’re left in the lunge , it can be a flake of a bummer .
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