Author
Hi, I'm Lena — I wrote it all down so you don't have to guess.
I'm Elena Marchetti — Lena, always — former flight attendant, lifelong note-taker, solo traveler of 61 countries, and the hand behind every page of Jetset Jotter.
I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, in a big Italian-American family whose entire travel repertoire was one destination: my nonna's village in Abruzzo, Italy, every third summer. Those trips were my whole map of the world for years, and they taught me the two things I still believe most: travel is about people more than sights, and you should always sit near the kitchen.
The notebooks started at 19, on my first solo trip — a formative disaster of a week in Montreal featuring a missed bus, a very kind stranger, and a hostel fire alarm at 3 a.m. I wrote it all down that night, and I have written everything down since: 43 notebooks. 61 countries. Every itinerary, every cost, every mistake. That shelf of notebooks is this entire website. I just publish the pages now.
In between came the job that changed how I travel forever: nine years as a flight attendant, six of them on international routes. Flying professionally gives you strange gifts — layovers on five continents, packing skills that border on unsettling, an honest relationship with turbulence, and permanent immunity to travel panic. I've seen every kind of chaos from both sides of the galley curtain. Nothing about a delayed flight scares me anymore, and I promise that calm is learnable.
I hung up my wings in 2019 and turned the notebooks into this blog. Since 2022, it's been my full-time work. I travel four to five months a year now, mostly solo — slow, multi-week trips mixed with the 48-hour city sprints I never stopped loving from my layover days.
Here's what Jetset Jotter promises you:
Real trips only. Every itinerary and guide on this site comes from a trip I actually took, backed by a notebook page written that same evening. Nothing here is compiled from other people's blogs.
The Damage. Every trip post ends with a full, itemized cost breakdown from my actual receipts — flights, beds, food, transit, and yes, the mistakes ("€40 taxi because I misread the strike notice"). I publish the number even when it embarrasses me.
Dates and honesty. Posts tell you when I was there and what's been re-verified since. Travel info goes stale; pretending otherwise is how people miss trains.
Honest verdicts. I'll tell you when a famous attraction is skippable and when the expensive thing is worth every cent. My opinions are not for sale, and sponsorships never dictate verdicts.
Solo travel, told straight. I adore traveling alone, and I write honestly about all of it — the freedom, the day-nine loneliness, and safety as a practical skill rather than a fear campaign.
Home base is a small condo near Chicago Midway (chosen for airport proximity, I admit it freely), where a pothos named Layover tolerates my absences and a wall shelf holds all 43 notebooks in order. When I'm home, I'm cooking one dish from every country I've loved, running my slow 7 a.m. jogs (the best free walking tour in any city), or teaching first-time flyer workshops for anxious travelers — the flight attendant in me never fully retires. Every other year, I go back to Abruzzo. Those posts are this blog's soul.
My whole philosophy fits on one notebook page: the trip you document twice is the trip you take twice. Come plan yours — I've already taken notes.
Write it down,
Lena ✈️
