Jessica Biel is no stranger to hitting the road. She grew up in Minnesota, Connecticut, Illinois, and Colorado before graduating from high school, and frequently traveled once she rose to fame in the 90s on the hit TV show 7th Heaven. And it seems the 36-year-old’s wanderlust has only grown since marrying Justin Timberlake in Italy in 2012.
The pair ventured to Africa for a safari honeymoon and had vacationed in Iceland, the Caribbean, and Paris. They also just packed up again with three-year-old son Silas for Timberlake’s “Man of the Woods” world tour taking the family all over the United States and Europe.
But in between her busy jet-setting life, Biel took time to chat with me at The American Express Experience on April 9 in New York City celebrating the launch of the Live Life Moments campaign. Here the actress dished to me about her favorite (and weirdest) travel moments.
Q: Do you have a particular travel moment that stands out to you as one of your favorites?
A: I love to travel, and I travel a lot. But I think one of my most recent travel moments was I just went on a three-day vacation with my college girlfriends – no partners, no kids. I don’t remember the last time we did it. It’s been ten years maybe that I have been with these women and it was fantastic.
Q: Where did you go?
A: We went to the Bahamas for just three quick nights. I wish it could have been longer, but it was really that moment where we all just put a stop to our regular lives and said, we will figure it out, we just got on a plane and went, and it was amazing.
Q: On the flip side, what’s one of the strangest things to happen when you’ve traveled?
A: Weird things do always happen when you travel. Food can be weird. You think you’re ordering something, especially when you have a kid around, and then it arrives, and it’s so strange, and you don’t know what you ordered. There was a translation mishap.
Q: Have you had any weird fan interactions on planes?
A: Oh yeah! I get that, “Did I go to school with you” question. That I love. Who do you think I am? Like an old friend? It’s funny. That can always be interesting.
Q: How did travel change once you had a kid?
A: Well, we sort of stopped traveling so much the first year. We really didn’t go anywhere really. Maybe a couple of easy places. And that was different for us. We travel all of the time, and we are always on planes, and it was different when we weren’t doing that. Now, we are back into a little bit more of a regular routine because he’s older now and it’s in one way easier and in another way not easy at all.
Q: Why do you say that?
A: Because when you have a newborn, that newborn is just hanging out. Now, the three-year-old is like a Tasmanian devil. So, it goes both ways a little bit. It’s a double-edged sword I guess.
