24 Phrasal Verbs about Travel

Learn useful phrasal verbs about travel for your next holiday abroad with a new episode of the ‘Figure Out English’ podcast.

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Today we are talking about traveling again and I would like to help you with the phrasal verbs about travel.

Use phrasal verbs in your everyday English speaking

Everyday communication is usually informal and that’s why we use phrasal verbs a lot. It’s not bad words, they don’t spoil your language as long as you can switch between the formal and informal styles easily. If you start speaking in this long words
in everyday context, it will be unnatural because you probably know: native speakers use a lot of empty verbs like ’get’, like ’go’ (yeah). There are a lot of set phrases and they also use a lot of phrasal verbs.

I would like to teach you a list of phrasal verbs concerned with TRAVEL. You can use this verbs if you write or tell your friends about your trips or if you communicate during your trip.

Let’s start!

Phrasal verbs about travel: start your trip

When you start your travel, you say set off.

• What time are we setting off tomorrow? – It means ’What time will we leave home’?.
• What time are we setting off tomorrow?

And then, for example, you take a taxi and you go to the airport to travel to some destination. When you get into the
airport  — it means ‘enter the place’.

Then you board the plane but you can say get on the plane:

• We are getting on the plane in five minutes — hurry up!

Then, when you leave the plane, you will say:

• We are getting off the plane.

Phrasal verbs about travel: at the hotel

And in the hotel, you check in:

• What time should we check in in the hotel?
• What time is our check-in?

And then later, when you will be leaving the hotel, you will say:

• We are checking out at ten o clock tomorrow.
• What time are we checking out?
• What time is our checkout tomorrow? 

Important Note: the difference between LIVE and STAY

I hear this small mistake about the verb ’stay’ versus ’live’ from many of my students. They often say: We live in Ramada Inn.

But ’live’ means to reside constantly.

When you are on holiday and it’s just a couple of days or a couple of weeks or even a couple of months, if it’s such a long holiday, you should always use ’stay’.

Examples:

• Where are you staying?
• What hotel are you staying in?
• We are staying in Ramada Inn.
• I hate staying in the hotels! We always stay in the campsites on our travels. 

Phrasal Verbs about Transport

If you take a long flight, you could have to change planes (be careful! – you will not say ’to change a plane’).

For example, you need to go to Cuba, but there is no direct flight. So, you go to Brussels, then you change planes there and take the second flight to Cuba. If you spend the night in Brussels on your way to Cuba, it will be called a stopover (both noun and verb).

• I am stopping over in Brussels on my way* to Cuba.

’On my way’ – it is also a good phrase. Learn how to use it with my video.

And two more really good phrasal verbs. We say pick up somebody meaning ’come to this place and take this person from this place’.

Examples:

• The taxi is picking us up here. (which means ’this is the place we should be because the taxi will come for us here, the taxi is
  picking us up here’).
• What time does the taxi need to pick us up? (meaning ‘what time should we go to the airport’).

And the opposite of this phrasal verb will be drop off.

• Please drop me off here (means ’I will get out of the car here’).
• I will just drop you off at the parking lot. 

Learning Tip

This is a very good method for your phrasal verbs: to learn them in topical groups. I am strongly against learning the phrasal verbs in alphabetical lists.

If they are out of the context, you will not know what to do with them but if you group them around some certain topic this will be very useful because you will be imagining the real situations in your mind — this is also a good learning technique — and this will help you to remember them better.

I hope it helps. Please let me know if you would like to learn the phrasal verbs about other topics. Happy travels!

Thanks for listening!

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