Checking In 🗝️✈️ --> Let's Go ✈️
a newsletter about travel, mostly
Hi, it’s Matt Ortile. Many folks (maybe you’re one of them) know me as a writer, so I figured: I should be writing.
My personal creative practice has fallen by the wayside, I admit. I’ve been pretty consumed with my nine-to-five work for the last 18 months—admittedly, it’s been more like a ten-to-ten job—ever since I became an editor at Condé Nast Traveler based here in New York. It’s been a fun ride, traveling almost monthly and thinking about the tourism industry every day as I write and edit stories for Traveler. It’s given me plenty to chew on as a travel hobbyist-turned-professional. (Some of you may recall that I got my start via my obsession with credit card points and airline miles. Now I have to obsess about everything else in the travel world.) And because the magazine doesn’t have room for all of my scribbling, I’m here on Substack.
I’m Checking In Let’s Go. That’s what I’m calling it, this newsletter about travel. (I belatedly realized there are, like, ten other established newsletters already called “Checking In.”)
what to expect from Checking In Let’s Go
Checking In Let’s Go, with Matt Ortile is a bi-weekly newsletter about travel. Each edition comes with travel recommendations and advice, mini-reviews, links, and commentary, though perhaps not all at once, every time. I’ll share intel about the destinations, hotels, and restaurants I think you should try, news-you-can-use, and travel tips—such as, yes, how to parlay those Chase or AmEx points into a first-class flight.
That said, because it’s me, Checking In Let’s Go will also include short personal essays about my travels, dispatches from the road (or air), and the latest about other work I’m up to. (I’m teaching creative writing classes this summer. More on that soon.) As such, I’ll also discuss travel-related topics like food and cultural history, language, class, immigration, global news topics, and more.
Clockwise from top left: Spending a long layover in Hong Kong; exploring the tombs of Hegra in AlUla, Saudi Arabia; modeling my favorite tote bag across the water from the Sydney Opera House; looking very orange at a gala dinner at Splendido, A Belmond Hotel, Portofino.
I hope Checking In Let’s Go sounds exciting to you. If it does, click the “subscribe now” button above. The first proper edition of the newsletter will drop on June 13. And if you have any requests for travel topics you’d like me to talk about or demystify, let me know through this Google Form. Please be nice!
To come with me on my trips around the world (virtually), follow me on Instagram: @mattortile. Also, by the way, I’m a published author: You can get your copy of my essay collection, The Groom Will Keep His Name, wherever books are sold. I’m working on, like, four more, which is what I’m telling potential agents as I restart my literary career from scratch, sort of.
This newsletter is part of that project. I hope you’ll join me in checking in on and with each other. (Get it?) Let’s go.