5 Questions with Julie Hartigan
Interview by Jennifer Cooper
photos by Eva Perocsenyi
Chef Julie Hartigan looks for dreamy places to visit—think Tuscany, Sicily, the Loire Valley France, Ecuador, and the Galapagos Islands—and then she goes there. The destinations she chooses have a robust mix of historic city and authentic countryside, food culture, and communities that value the arts. Oh, and “pampering,” Julie adds. Pampering is definitely part of her itinerary.
She says incredible trips shouldn’t be reserved for honeymoons, travel shows, and instagram influencers.
Recently divorced? That deserves a trip. Kid just graduated? Celebrate with your own European tour. Hit a personal milestone? Book that flight. Because, as Julie reminds me, “Your best years aren’t behind you, my friend. Your best years are now!”
Any reason is a good reason to travel, especially if it includes meeting other positive, like-minded women along the way. That’s why the chef created her own travel company for other women who want to find authentic connection with others while experiencing the best the world has to offer.
I recently spoke with Julie about her approach to travel, food, and why this is the right time to go out into the world. Plus, I ask her how to deal with the surprisingly strong reaction women can receive when they choose to live life on their own terms.
Tell me about these trips-of-a-lifetime you’re leading—although I hope all these people get more than one of these trips in a lifetime. What’s your approach? I imagine, given your background in food, there’s a lot of eating. By the way, can you tell I’m hungry already?
Laughing! As a chef, my tours do have a food and wine undercurrent—think a mix of street food plus Michelin-starred dining. But it's more than just eating.
A big focus of all my trips is women supporting women so my itineraries feature visits with women artisans, supporting women-led businesses, tours and tastings with women winemakers and women chefs, and having local women-guides tell us about the towns we visit from their perspective.
Their stories are inspiring. There’s a pioneering winemaker who quit law to run her family estate, a young artist who formed a shoppable arts collective, an expat artist who leads art classes and serves prosecco while her pet bunny hops around her studio, and a local guide who knows all the best spots in her medieval Tuscan hilltown. I love that she shares what it's like to raise a family, live, and work in a 1500s town that’s so tiny and charming we can't even get our heads around it.
And because a big part of traveling should be about self-care, I throw in posh experiences and lots of pampering. There are 4-star hotels, visits to spas, massages, local shopping, sunsets, picnics, time to relax.
I want the entire experience to be stress free, relaxing, and fun because, damn, women do an awful lot of work in the world and deserve to be taken care of!
“I’m going to be eeking all the fun and adventure I can out of my life”
What’s the response been like?
The response has been fantastic both from the women who are excited to have this kind of "uniquely for them" travel experience, as well as from the incredible women we get to visit with in our destinations who are so excited to host us.
The trips give solo women travelers a safe, supportive community to meet like-minded women to travel with. We do a series of group calls ahead of the trip to get to know each other, so by the time the tour starts we all feel like friends.
I've had lots of married women join me too. Maybe they don't love traveling with their husband or they’ve spent so many years married that they're really craving more of a "girls trip."
I get a surprising number of mother-daughter duos joining my tours too, which is so sweet to see. I love traveling with my college-aged daughters and hope it's a tradition we can keep.
What do you think women get out of traveling together on a trip like these?
Oh gosh, so much more than a typical trip! They get an inspiring, authentic, non-touristy experience seeing the world through a local woman's eyes; much needed self-care and pampering; and some seriously fun laughter and girlfriends' time.
There's such an incredible camaraderie that's created when women get to cut loose and have fun together—from taking over a shop trying on clothes together, laughing our asses off wearing little blue hairnets as we learn to make fresh cheese, oohing and ahhing at the beauty of the world together, confiding in new friends about things we may be struggling with at home.
My trips create a really positive, supportive, loving vibe. That's always been important to me as a woman in the world, as a mom, as a friend, as an entrepreneur, as a coach. So I make sure to infuse my trips with that. A woman who recently traveled with me said "Julie, this was such a gift to me. It's the first time I can ever remember feeling beautiful for an entire week straight.”
That’s beautiful. Okay, I’m going to wade into some deeper waters here. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but when someone is out there living their joy (especially if you’re a woman), it can cause others to lash out. It’s so upsetting to me because I suspect it’s why many out there are timid about taking that trip, or that leap of faith themselves. Have you ever experienced backlash for your choices to live life on your terms? And if so, any advice for how to handle it?
I've always marched to my own beat, going to engineering school when "women didn't do that" and then later ditching a lucrative tech consulting career to go to culinary school which was a long-held dream of mine. I had SO many people tell me I was crazy or in the case of former co-workers, ghost me because I wasn't living up to their expectations of me.
As my food career grew and became successful, working with major nationwide outlets like Real Simple, Food Network, Bed Bath Beyond, doing regular TV segments, running my own video production agency, many former friends in the tech world refused to take my new career seriously. They’d belittle the things I was doing. Maybe it’s because they thought “work couldn't be fun" or the only way to do things was to have a traditional corporate career where you worked for "the man" until you retired.
In my 40's when I ended my marriage I went through something similar. People would say things like, "What if you wind up alone?” or "It's awful you'll only see your daughters part-time.”
It used to enrage me to be honest, but I had a massive mindset shift when I realized they were just projecting their fears or sadness or angst or jealousy onto me. Judgemental and mean people are generally the most unhappy ones.
But once I realized that, it was a lot easier to shift to feeling pity for the person, letting anger go, and even making the hard decision to let the person go.
You only get one lifetime and we can all agree the decades fly by. I've made it a policy to focus on positive, supportive friends who don't shit talk or judge other women. Many of them are fellow entrepreneurs who also march to their own beat and take creative risks. You get to choose what type of people to surround yourself with and spend time with. It might be one of the most important decisions in our lives really! Quality over quantity always.
“We’re reduced to a sweaty menopause caricature of ourselves. Screw that!”
And finally, I know you’re looking to help shatter some of those outdated cliches about “older women.” What’s the cliche you hate the most?
Oh wow, there are so many! Let’s start
with that we're not fun and sexy anymore. We're reduced to a sweaty menopause caricature of ourselves. Screw that! I'm going to be eeking all the fun and adventure I can out of my life, for as long as I physically can. Sometimes I joke that I'm "living for my deathbed" but not in a morbid way! What I mean by that is, I want to be looking back and laughing and smiling at all the amazing things I got to do and that I spent my time living true to myself.
