Few people on earth travel as often as professional athletes. With On the Road, the GQ Sports Travel Questionnaire, they’re weighing in on everything from room service to flying comfortably to their favorite chain restaurants.
In 2002, near the end of his rookie season with the New York Giants, Jesse Palmer had a life-changing conversation with teammate and fellow quarterback Kerry Collins. “You know what you need to do this offseason?” the veteran told him. “You need to get on a plane, go to Europe by yourself, and spend a month there.” Later that winter, Palmer heeded his mentor’s advice, playing tourist in a handful of countries and quickly catching the travel bug. “Ever since that trip, I made it a priority in my life to find time to travel and see the world,” he says. “It's always been a big part of my life.”
More than two decades later, travel has become a weekly requirement for him. After a brief NFL stint, the former Florida Gator has spent the last 16 years flashing his good looks and traversing SEC towns as an ESPN college football analyst and color commentator. In between calling games, he spent a couple years at Good Morning America, began hosting Food Network’s various holiday baking competitions, and has served as a spokesperson for “Rooms to Go.” Then, two years ago, he made his biggest commitment yet, replacing Chris Harrison as host of The Bachelor and its various spin-offs, two of which—The Golden Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise—conclude their seasons this week.
Since returning to the show where he served as a contestant in 2004, Palmer has turned into a frequent international flier, making airports and hotels into second homes. He estimates he only spends about 50 days out of the year at his Miami residence, where his wife of three years, Emely Fardo, is due with their first child in January. It’s a stressful but rewarding whiplash for the Canadian-born personality, who has learned how to pack quickly and make small-talk in security lines with a uniquely diverse group of fans. “As long as people don't call me Tim Tebow, Carson Palmer, Carson Daily, or Ryan Seacrest,” he says, “I'm good.”
It's a lot. I got home recently and I think I’d been gone since the second week of September. Generally, it's Bachelor filming throughout the week, college football on the weekend. There have been weeks this fall where I have been on six planes in seven days—international and domestic. I always have a passport because I don't know how it's going to shake out, and I'm lucky that the travel people at The Bachelor and the travel people at ESPN are great because they can coordinate together. We don't find out where our game is until literally six days before the game, so I don't have a roadmap at the start of the year. It's like a tetris puzzle. You have to piece it together at the last second, and so it requires a lot of people helping out.
The big thing for me is a carry-on suitcase that fits in the overhead compartment. I have a "murse" that carries all my college football notes and the iPad. And the carry-on is really simple: it's just toiletries; a toothbrush; a couple pairs of underwear; a couple of undershirts; Vuori track pants, which I like to travel in; a pair of workout shorts; a pair of workout shoes; a pair of jeans; a light cashmere sweater; one or two T-shirts to wear with jeans; maybe a cardigan; and then a suit, because you're calling a game somewhere. I will wear the same outfits over and over, as long as everything is clean. But I've learned less is more. If you switch the dress shirt and tie, everybody thinks you're wearing a completely different outfit.
Oh, they do. They have everything. And that's why I don't have to bring so much, because I know if I need one piece, one item, a different dress shirt, or a different suit, I can swap it out. As I go to the airport, it's all about saving time. It kills you if you check a bag and then you have to wait to get it, and then you try to get through customs, and then you're having to make connections to make your game on time before flying back overseas to be on time for the rose ceremony. You just need to go, go, go.
In-season, it's a lot of football study. I have an iPad that has all the game film downloaded. In the offseason, ever since Covid, I've been reading a lot of classic novels. I just read The Count of Monte Cristo and The Master and Margarita. Maybe a Netflix series. I just watched Rise of Empires: Ottoman, which is about Mehmed II conquering Constantinople in 1453. I'm also amazing at sleeping on planes. I have an eye-mask at the ready. I can pop that on and I'm out.
Yeah, I shut it down completely. I felt bad for a lot of 360-pound teammates that just didn't look comfortable in the middle seat in the back of the plane. Getting sleep on my schedule definitely helps. People used to always say, “Eat right, sleep, take care of your body,” and when you're in your 20s and 30s you're like, “Whatever.” But now, at my age, I'm realizing that's really important. When you always have to be “on,” on camera looking fresh, looking sharp, that's really helped.
I usually always have power bars and flavored pistachios. I'm a huge water guy now. I just bring a big Smartwater. I wear out these poor flight attendants for water to the point where they will just bring the big bottle and give it to me. I'm just trying to stay as hydrated as possible. I usually pre-select the meals on flights. I'm not averse to that. I get it where I can get it.
You have to compartmentalize. That's been the challenge, being in the moment and then thinking about what's next. I always make an awful football analogy: It's like playing quarterback. All you can think about is, ‘What do I have to do next?” Let me prepare to do that, do it, turn the page.
Every time I fly to the west coast I feel it, so I just try to hydrate and stay awake and on schedule as much as I can until you'd normally go to bed. My wife and I alway argue about it, because she doesn't think it's a real thing. I completely disagree. It hits me hard. You take naps and all of a sudden you're waking up at 12:50 a.m. wide awake and you can't go back to sleep. It's a thing!
The restaurant and the gym is always a big thing. Loud AC units that buzz are generally bad. Outside of that, there’s not much. I love going to new hotels. I think oftentimes you can be pretty surprised. You shouldn't always judge a book by its cover. Some hotels on the outside don't look that great, but you get into your room and you're like, “Wow, this is actually pretty nice.”
Yeah, Bonvoy and Hilton Honors are probably the two. They're preferred hotels for ESPN, Disney, and ABC. I used to never use the points. It was such an afterthought to me. I love using Delta points, and I love using American points. My wife and I transfer so many Amex points to Delta and to other airlines, and we use them. But we never used the hotel points. I had all these points collected over 16 years that I never used, so we started using them for Emely's family. We traveled for our wedding in France and we got them a hotel in Paris and we're doing it again when her family comes to see the baby in February. That was such a weird afterthought, but it’s so helpful.
If I can, I always go to a restaurant. More of that is FOMO and knowing I just want to try something that's unique to the city. I feel like room service is kind of copping out. This goes against what I was saying earlier about saving time, but I'm all about the experience as a traveler. I would rather order the Uber and drive 30 minutes and have a great meal somewhere. I’ve driven 40 minutes to get an espresso in the past. Seriously, I'm a huge coffeehead. I will go out of my way to not drink the bad coffee in the hotel lobby.
Just 'spro. There's so many people on our crew who don't see espresso very much and they're like, "That is such a small coffee for a big guy." I always do my research. If I know I'm going to be somewhere, I research restaurants and coffee shops.
In Vienna, my wife and I ate at a place called Steirereck, a two-Michelin Star restaurant. They brought out a bread trolley. It was a production. There was this guy who took like 20 minutes to explain that the best bread comes from Switzerland. I always thought it came from Italy or France. He really drilled down on us to explain the yeast and the wheat. We've been really lucky traveling on the Bachelor to go to some amazing cities with unbelievable culinary environments. If I have time, I try my best to do it.
On a given season, I'd say maybe twice. She might come to L.A. for the beginning and maybe one city in the middle. Usually, she's with me during the exotic part for the proposal. We're usually there between 10 to 14 days, which has been really nice.
Over seven seasons, I'd guess I’ve been to around 20.
After watching this documentary, I'd love to go to Istanbul. I've never been. Emely used to model there. She lived there really briefly. I’m a huge history buff and foodie so that would be amazing.
Not a lot. The work schedule really takes up a giant chunk. The Bachelor eats up this chunk. College football eats up this chunk. Food Network eats up this chunk. Last year, Emely and I only had one vacation right before the end of the year. Then we went to France in the summer and we got away for seven or eight days. Emely and I used to travel four times a year, at least. And we always go to Brazil every year to see her family. We didn't get to do that last year. Even though it's not vacation, you're still in a new place listening to a different language with different money and food. I think that part is pretty satisfying.
It all kind of depends. You're kind of like a doctor, on call at all times. You have your days that you know you're going to be filming laid out for you. But so many times on this show, something happens and you're called in. Emely and I were in Amsterdam filming on a ship 45 minutes away from the city. There was a night where we thought everything was going to be copacetic. We went into Amsterdam, got a room at the Soho House, had dinner, and were in bed at 10. Then the phone in the hotel starts blowing up at 10:20. Something had happened, I had to get back, get on camera, there's a car waiting outside the Soho House. You're groggy, you get in the car, you're driven 45 minutes to the boat, you put on a suit, makeup, and go right into filming. You never know when it's going to happen.
There was a moment last year at ESPN when I was in Bristol, Connecticut. My studio day on Saturday is noon until 3 a.m. You're doing pre-games, halftimes, and post-games of all the games you're covering on the slate. I woke up and got a call that there was an emergency in London where The Bachelor was filming. Zach [ed. note: he was the Bachelor] had Covid and they needed me to go out and film. People had to get on the phone, coordinate. Next thing I know, I'm in a car being driven to JFK to get on a flight. I get off the plane, go right to a hotel, walk right into a living room with all the women, and download them on whatever just happened. That whole thing was insane. That's the nature of the job.
[Laughs] Yeah, at that point, you're right. You're the bearer of bad news. It's not the best reason to get on a plane—just to crush a lot of very nice ladies because of the circumstances. The good news was I got to stay there, so I went to Gymkhana, my favorite Indian restaurant in the world.
I hope so. Emely and I talk a lot about that. I hope it's going to be something that centers me and grounds me and just sort of slows me down. It's important. It’s something I can look forward to because it will become my number one priority. It kind of creates a new element in travel for us. I've always just traveled by myself or with Emely, and now it’s, “How do we do it with baby?” “Where can we bring baby?” That's a whole new thing I’m about to discover that I have no idea about.
It’s so true. I feel like in the past couple months I've been paying more attention to that and I've become so much more empathetic. I'm reading these books on nurturing babies and I'm watching videos on how to swaddle them and how to change diapers. There was a time earlier in my life where I thought, “Oh man, I'm sitting beside the person with the crying baby. This is going to be a tough flight.” I don't even have the baby yet, but I already understand it's part of it and it's nobody's fault.
Now I’m going to be the one carrying the baby walking down the aisle where everyone's giving me dirty looks. It's the cycle of life.
