Skip to Content

Rendezvous with Barbara of Jet-Settera

Welcome back to our Weekend Travel Inspiration traveler interview! This week we’re interviewing Barbara from Jet-Settera who is a master at combining fashion and luxury with travel all around the world.

Barbara in Cuba.

Tell us a little about yourself. 

I’m Barbara, I m behind the luxury travel and lifestyle blog www.jet-settera.com. I’m Hungarian-American and I live in London. I started blogging about 3 years ago, because I felt like I had a lot of travel experiences that I wanted to share with people around me. As of now, I have lived in 7 countries and visited 76.

What inspires you to travel?

I travel once or twice a month for short trips within Europe and I travel overseas about 3 times a year on average. I visited 18 countries in 2017 and 23 in 2016. I love nature and beaches. National parks and deserts are my favorite places to visit.

Barbara in Atacama Desert.

Describe your travel philosophy.

I would say I’m somewhere in between luxury and backpacking. I pack very lightly. I don’t spend a long time in one city. I stay for one or two days and then I move onto the next destination. I stay in medium range hotels, which are not too expensive but also not the cheapest.

Barbara at Machu Picchu.

What types of things are you interested in while you are traveling?

I love adventure travel and I love visiting beautiful national parks. I also love being on the beach. I easily get bored, so I get into water activities like scuba diving and surfing. I also love history and I always join a free historical walking tour in every city I visit. This allows me to learn about the history of the city/country from a local guide.

The most popular photo on my Instagram profile is a photo of us in Seoul, Korea, where we dressed up in a traditional Korean hanbok and posed in front of the royal palace.

Another popular photo was a photo of me glacier hiking in Patagonia in Northern-Argentina. I was standing in front of the beautiful crystal clear blue glacier.

What is one funny, embarrassing, cute, or even frustrating anecdote from your travels?

Once I took a flight to the wrong airport on the island of Crete and we realized we were 3 hours away from the town we had to be. It was after midnight and we had to take a taxi for €150 to arrive to the destination. We got there around 2:30am.

Barbara on the Great Wall.

What is your next destination and what are you looking forward to doing there?

We are going to Luxembourg and Strasbourg this weekend to explore these cities/countries. It is supposed to be snowing this weekend, so we might be up for a cold surprise. We will be sightseeing there and learn about the local history. The weekend after, I am heading to Budapest to visit family and friends. Next month, I will be in India, I am riding a luxury train across the country for a week.

Barbara in Horseshoe Bend.

When did you start travel blogging and what was your motivation? And what is one piece of advice you would give a budding travel blogger?

I started my blog 3 years ago. I felt like I had a lot of valuable travel experiences that I could share with my followers. I think blogging should be a hobby; it should be a fun activity. If you take it too seriously, you will lose the enthusiasm and the followers can sense that you are not authentic. So just have fun along the journey.

Author Bio: Corinne Vail is a travel photographer, food lover, and a perpetual traveler who has been travel writing for over 14 years. For many years she lived overseas in Germany, Japan, Turkey, South Korea, and the Netherlands teaching the children of the US. military. She’s visited over 90 countries, and she’s not stopping anytime soon.

Barbara in Igauzu.

Pin Barbara’s traveler interview for reading later.

Rendezvous with Barbara.

Ryan Biddulph

Sunday 27th of May 2018

Very cool guys. I dig Barbara's style. Love that MP shot as well. I used to scrum it more but now my wife and I do an in-between bit as well; halfway because luxe and budget travel. We do travel on the cheap with house sitting but spend dough on what we value; food, some trips and those other things that enhance or travel.

Thanks for sharing :)

Ryan

Corinne Vail

Tuesday 29th of May 2018

Ryan, I hear you. The older I get, the more "luxe" I like it...