The summer camp secret to planning trips with friends

The power of unstructured, unselfconscious time together

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Who among us hasn’t spent time daydreaming about a big trip with a friend? While we yearn to plan a lavish European vacation as much as the next person¹, an adventure at that scale can easily end up in the “maybe someday” category.

That’s why, this week we’re delighted to pass the pen to our friend Carly Romeo², a travel advisor and the writer behind Travel with your Friends, where she helps women get their friend trips out of the group chat and into real life.

We asked Carly for her thoughts on how people can lighten the lift of planning a friend trip. Since Carly’s motto is that spending time exploring the world with your friends is radical (yes!!!), we knew she’d have plenty of insights to offer. Her ideas below made us nostalgic (in the best way) and reminded us that meaningful adventures with friends are more within reach than we think — no matter how last-minute the trip or how small the budget.

We’ll also be going live with Carly on Wednesday, June 3 at 3 PM EST to chat about all things traveling with your friends, from how to make a normal visit feel more special to the secrets for making those big vacations happen! We’d love to see you there, and feel free to drop any questions you want us to ask Carly in the comments ahead of time.

That summer camp feeling (and how to get it back)

By Carly Romeo

Little Carly and a friend at a sleepover

Think about the last time you felt genuinely, unselfconsciously close to a friend. Not the warm-hug-goodbye feeling at the end of a dinner, but the kind of closeness where you forgot to perform. Where you were just there, present with this person, no agenda.

Where were you?

My guess is that you weren’t at a restaurant. You probably weren’t doing anything that would photograph well. You were maybe doing something a little boring, or a little silly, or both. You were tired in that good way. You stayed later than you planned.

What you were doing, whether you knew it or not, was Summer Camp.

Summer Camp worked — and if you went, you know exactly what I mean by worked — not because of the lake or the friendship bracelets or the s’mores. It worked because of the conditions. You were together long enough for the performed version of yourself to get tired and drop. You shared space. You did low-stakes things side by side. There was enough unstructured time for real conversation to find its way in, not because anyone scheduled it, but because there was space for it.

If that sort of experience sounds as dreamy to you as it does to me (Unstructured time? I love her), I’m happy to tell you that you don’t need to plan a whole friend group trip somewhere exotic to make it happen. In fact, the Summer Camp conditions are reproducible with less time and effort than you might think, and can lead to incredible togetherness.

The most important piece to start with is being together overnight. Something specific happens when you stay — when you don’t pack up and drive home at 10 PM. You see someone’s morning. You’re both a little tired and a little unglamorous. You share a bathroom or a coffee maker or a patch of sunlight on the floor. The guard comes down, not because you decided to be vulnerable, but because there’s no energy left to be anything else.

I’ve had more real conversations on the morning after a sleepover than in years of monthly dinner plans.

This doesn’t require a flight or a villa or a carefully planned itinerary. Anywhere you can be together overnight will work. Someone’s guest room. A shared rental house (hit me up, I know the best ones) where you split the cost four ways and it’s cheaper than a hotel. A state park cabin, which is genuinely the most literal summer camp option and is often available with advance notice for very little money. A family member’s empty place.

The location matters less than most people think. What matters is that you’re not in a hotel with separate rooms and a checkout time that starts the clock on everyone leaving.

Then once you’re together? Come up with something to do with your hands while you talk.

The moments that build the most closeness at summer camp were the side-by-side, simple activities. Making lanyards. Paddling a canoe. Learning knots. Parallel play, it turns out, is not just for toddlers. Doing something low-stakes together — cooking a real meal instead of making a reservation, working on a puzzle, going for a walk with no destination, sitting outside after dark — takes the pressure off the friendship itself. You’re not performing connection at each other. You’re just existing together.

A few ideas for any budget or group size:

• Cook together. Not a dinner party where one person cooks and everyone stands in the kitchen holding wine. Actually cook, side by side, with someone else’s mise en place system and a recipe nobody’s tried before. The mild chaos is the point.

• Make something with your hands. I’m biased because I knit, but it doesn’t matter what it is — a collage, a friendship bracelet (genuinely), a potato stamp, a terrible watercolor. Crafting creates the conditions for the best conversations because your eyes have somewhere else to go.

• Enjoy music together. At the Girl Scout Camp I went to, singing silly songs was an integral daily ritual. We belted out classics like Alice the Camel and Thunderation, shrieking with laughter. You don’t have to do a sing-along, but even sitting quietly and enjoying a curated playlist can help you tap into your emotions or bring up memories to share.

• Go outside for something low-stakes. A walk. Stargazing in the backyard. Swimming if there’s water nearby. Sitting around a fire pit. The point isn’t the activity. It’s getting out of the house and into some version of the natural world together, even briefly.

• Stay up too late. This one’s self-explanatory.

One thing to avoid: too much screen time. I enjoy doomscrolling next to someone I love while the TV drones in the background as much as the next millennial, but you would be amazed at how nice it can be to just do the sitting-near-someone-you-love part without the scrolling/TV parts.

Here’s what I’ve noticed from years of helping friends actually get on trips together: the overnight visit — the one that felt more like a vacation than simply a visit — is often the thing that makes the bigger trip possible. That experience is proof of concept: You know how to exist together outside your normal contexts. You know what you talk about at midnight. You know whether the friendship has travel chemistry. And once you know that, Portugal stops feeling like a logistical mountain and starts feeling like a matter of time.

Start here. The rest follows.

Your Forevers focus: Plan a mini trip with a friend

Time to put Carly’s advice to use and start planning an overnight with a friend! Don’t let it feel overwhelming — instead, keep it as low-stakes as possible and aim for action over perfection.

Step one: Send this article to a friend who you want to do this with.

Step two: Pick a date (maybe a deadline to do it sometime this summer so you don’t let it languish as just an idea?) and a place. Again, low stakes is the name of the game. It can just be a single overnight! You could just do it at one of your houses on a weekend when you’re going to be home alone! Or pick a quirky small town or campground nearby! If your friend lives far away, make a mental note to plan a “summer camp night” next time you visit each other.

Step three: Don’t plan too much, but plan at least one shared activity that involves no screens. We can’t wait to hear about the memories you make together — and the future trips your time together inspires!

Ready to take the overnight to the next level? Carly has made it a goal to help plan 100 friend group trips in 2026! Learn more here and get on her books to make your friend trip dreams a reality.

1. Fun fact: Carly and Erin grew up in the same hometown and even went to the same high school, but actually didn’t become friends until years later when their paths crossed while Carly was helping run Feminist Camp retreats in NYC. Just a fun reminder of the winding nature of friendship 💛

2. Sam and Erin have had Mallorca on our minds for years, and have more recently been musing about visiting Sam’s family in Sicily after both devouring The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza. And it was a friend trip to Denver that inspired this whole project!