%3Amax_bytes(150000)%3Astrip_icc()%2Ftl-flowy-amazon-dress-tout-fbe4a86ef3f247e99ae2273a5aa3f37b.jpg&w=3840&q=100)
I'm a Travel Writer, and This Flowy Amazon Dress Has Earned Me Compliments Around the World—and It's Only $25
I know, I know—it's a tall list. But fortunately, expensive is the one thing it doesn't have to be. This best-selling Misfay Spaghetti Strap Tank Dress from Amazon checks all of my boxes. Plus, it's just $25. I purchased it in February for a trip to Costa Rica, and since then, I've worn it everywhere from the islands of the Maldives to South Africa's wine country. In fact, if I were a cartoon character who only ever wore one look, it would probably be this dress. So if you, too, have been searching for a dress you can live in this summer, congratulations: You've just found it!
With nearly 8,500 five-star ratings, the Misfay Spaghetti Strap Tank Dress is featured on Amazon's list of Best Sellers in Women's Swimwear Cover-ups. And that's precisely why I bought it; I was planning a trip to Rio Perdido, Costa Rica's only resort with a thermal river, and I knew I'd need something cute and comfy to throw on in between soaks.
It also won me over because it's a practical rayon and spandex blend. I wanted something I could easily wash (the thermal river has healing mud pots), on top of something that could stretch to accommodate any bloating. In addition to floating, I knew I would be doing a lot of eating!
Besides the fabric, I'm also a big fan of the fit and flow of this dress. Despite not being form-fitting, it's so flattering, I kept getting compliments, both in English and Spanish. And when I wore it on a dolphin sunset cruise at the luxurious InterContinental Maldives Maamunagau Resort, a few of my fellow passengers—all dressed to the nines in name-brand designer dresses—asked me where I got it.
The Misfay Spaghetti Strap Tank Dress is currently available in more than 35 colors and prints at Amazon. I first got it in the eye-catching rainbow tie-dye print. I usually wear it with my OluKai Ohana flip flops and my Sunday Afternoons Havana Hat on sunny afternoons. However, you can easily elevate it with a pair of heels, diamond studs, and a slicked-back updo (I'd recommend the darker shades and patterns for such an occasion). In addition to wearing this dress as a swimsuit cover-up and as a date night dress, I sleep in it, too. Even with the slight bulk of the pockets, it's as soft and comfy as a nightgown.
I also love that it's not clingy, and there's no need to iron it. This tank dress is 'easy to pack in a suitcase because it doesn't get a million wrinkles,' wrote one shopper who owns four different colors and patterns of this dress. It's also breathable—a must for sticky outdoor summer excursions. 'While everyone else around me is complaining about the heat, I am feeling cool as a breeze,' shared another five-star reviewer.
The only disclaimer about this dress that I have to share is this: You'll probably end up purchasing more than one. I certainly did, and judging by the dozens of five-star reviews I read, most shoppers were so satisfied with it that they became repeat purchasers, too.
Of course, if you want to shop around to make sure you find a travel-friendly summer dress that checks all of your boxes, that's understandable. Below are a few more great options from Amazon to consider, starting at $20.
Love a great deal? Sign up for our T+L Recommends newsletter and we'll send you our favorite travel products each week.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
I Asked Reddit for the Worst Days of the Week To Book a Hotel — Here's What It Said
The reality is that there's no 'worst day' to book a hotel. Just like there's no best day. But there are popular days when prices are high and less popular days when prices are typically lower. Discover More: Read Next: There are several factors to consider, and that's really what our Redditors had to say. The few threads I found specifically addressed which days of the week are 'best' and 'worst.' and conversations among travelers and hotel managers followed. Here's what I found. Worst Days of the Week To Book a Hotel: Friday and Saturday People on vacation, even short ones, tend to travel on weekends. As a result, you'll find prices are often steepest on Friday and Saturday nights. This also means hotels will be busiest, which means the accompanying amenities like pools, hot tubs, gyms, bars, and restaurants attached to the hotel will also be more crowded. As a result, you could make the argument that Friday and Saturday are the worst days of the week to book a hotel. Trending Now: At the same time, perhaps you like being in crowds, partying, swimming with other guests, and meeting new people. Also, features like dance clubs, cafes, and food trucks may only be open and on premises on the weekends — which would make weekends the best days to book a hotel, even if your costs increase. Best Days of the Week To Book a Hotel: Sunday to Wednesday Conversely, virtually everyone checks out of the hotel by Sunday morning, whether they're staying for a week or a weekend. This means the pool and gym will be calm on Sunday afternoon, the prices go down because demand goes down, and the weekly business people haven't arrived yet. You could have the entire hotel almost to yourself. Redditors agree that Sunday may be the best day, especially when it comes to price, to book a hotel. And thanks to those slow, low-demand days, you might even find interesting amenities like a karaoke night, a fun show or some other extra you can enjoy. Hotels, restaurants and bars will often add an attraction on a Sunday or a Monday to increase interest and attendance. It's important to realize that most people don't have the luxury of choosing specific weekdays for their vacation. They get off work on Friday and have to be back at the office two days later. So they book their travel for those days. As we see more people moving to remote work with more flexible hours, we will likely also see an increase in interest in this subject. For those of us who get to work from our laptops, it looks like the worst possible time to book a hotel would be Friday and Saturday night, unless you're looking for a wild and expensive ride. So it's safe to say you can book a nice, calm, relatively affordable vacation from Sunday to Wednesday, according to Reddit. More From GOBankingRates These Cars May Seem Expensive, but They Rarely Need Repairs This article originally appeared on I Asked Reddit for the Worst Days of the Week To Book a Hotel — Here's What It Said
Business Insider
44 minutes ago
- Business Insider
I'm the CEO of Twitch. My day starts with a 5-mile run and often ends with playing country songs on a late-night livestream.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dan Clancy, the 61-year-old CEO of Amazon-owned Twitch, who lives outside of Portland, Oregon. It's been edited for length and clarity. When I was an undergrad at Duke, I double-majored in computer science and theater — an unusual combination that often raised eyebrows. Most people couldn't see how the two fit together. Fast-forward a few decades, and my path led me deep into tech: earning a Ph.D. in AI and computer science and working at places like NASA, Google, YouTube, and Nextdoor. By the time I arrived at Twitch, I was seen primarily as a tech executive. But at my core, I've always been a creative. Being CEO of Twitch gives me the rare opportunity to bring both sides of myself — technologist and creative — into a single role. Here's what a typical day looks like for me. BI's Power Hours series gives readers an inside look at how powerful leaders in business structure their workday. See more stories from the series here, or reach out to the editor Lauryn Haas to share your daily routine. I wake up at 7 a.m. and run five miles I usually wake up naturally. I don't worry about an alarm clock. I try to exercise in the morning unless I have a super early meeting. If my meeting starts at 9 a.m., I'll wake up at 7 a.m. or so, and then I'll try to be out running by 7:30 a.m., and I'll run four or five miles. I will get back about 8:30 a.m. In 2017, I started running regularly. In the past, I'd run for three months and then I'd stop. This time I gamified it and it stuck. Then I started biking, I started swimming, and then I did two Ironmans. I did a number of half-Ironmans. I did a half-Ironman last year. I use a Garmin. I'm not training right now, but when I am training, I'll try to exercise twice a day. Aside from bike riding or swimming, I like to white-water kayak. Usually, I am at my home in Washington working remotely, so I don't need to worry about commuting. I try not to look at my phone. It's always tempting to start swiping in some random app, but in general, I very much try to avoid. If I'm swiping for five minutes, it's probably Instagram. I drink Coca-Cola, not coffee I'm not a coffee drinker and I'm not much of a breakfast eater. At one point, when I was trying to lose weight, I did intermittent fasting, and now I'm not intermittent fasting, but I still often don't eat in the morning. My bad habit is I drink Coca-Cola now. I try to keep it to one, and I don't need it in the morning, but I do get caffeine. I always go through these cycles of saying, "I need to stop drinking Coke." And then I stop for a while and I feel good about it, and then I start drinking it. Ever since I was young, I'll keep flopping back and forth, and the family is constantly encouraging me to give up the habit. My day is back-to-back meetings I spend most of the time meeting with people. It might be a product review or a go-to-market review. I have one-on-ones with various folks. Some days we have an off-site with our leadership team. Slack is the primary channel. I still check my email regularly, but to be honest, my email now is dominated by messages I don't need to pay attention to. I have a 30-minute meeting later to sync on a personnel project. Then I have a two-hour quarterly business review. This is Amazon culture for managing what's going on. Once a quarter, we'll have a QBR for all of our business units. This one is for community health, which is the team that works on our moderation tools. Lunch is usually some form of a sandwich. I'm not a fine-dining person. I just think, why should I spend 30 bucks on a lunch? I can afford 30 bucks on a lunch, but it seems like I don't need it. My generative hours are around midnight There's also times when I need to be generative. I find it hard to be generative in the same space and in the middle of a day. Often, my modus operandi is that I'll get going at 10 or 11 at night, and then I'll just write till one in the morning. This probably was conditioned in me when my kids were young. I was working at NASA at the time, and then Google for some of it. Google is a good example. Folks were staying late at Google in 2005, but I'd still try to get home at 6 or 6:30. I'd spend time with the kids, do dinner, run around outside. Half the time I'd fall asleep while putting them to bed. Then I'd wake up at 11:00 p.m., start catching up on email and writing stuff. People always joked that they would get these notes from me at 3:00 a.m. I hang out and sing on livestream Today my work day ends at 3 p.m. because I'm streaming tonight. I'm doing my first full charity stream with an organization GCX for St. Jude's. The beauty of streaming is very little goes into prepping it. I streamed Tuesday night and the prep work that went into the stream was: I showed up in the room where we have a piano, I turned on the computer, I made sure my OBS configuration was right, and I hit "Go live." On that stream, I talked with the community some, but then I played probably a handful of songs. Sometimes I like to drop in on other streamers and hang out with them. On that stream, I knocked on T Pain's stream and we hung out for like 45 minutes chatting. Then I did an hour more of songs and signed off. The other day I was mostly playing Tyler Childers' songs. I'm a big fan of Zach Bryan, so I do a lot of his songs. Sturgill Simpson, Gregory Alan Isakov, and this guy Jeffrey Martin, who I think is amazing. Everybody knows "Let It Be" or "Take Me Home, Country Road" or "Piano Man," but those aren't the ones I usually choose. I consider myself a mediocre piano player, but as I'm improvising, it sounds like I know what I'm doing. I read and spend time with my kids after work If I'm at home, I'll do something with the kids at night. My son's 23, my daughter's 27. My daughter has an 11-month-old now. We all live close to each other. I'm the one who often did the cooking, but that's just because I'm a functional cook. I pick some form of protein, a tri-tip, steak, salmon, chicken. I pick something to do with potatoes, and then they're like five vegetables that are my go-to. It's fairly repetitive. I mostly cook at home. I can't remember the last time I had a non-work dinner where we made a reservation. I'll watch TV shows, but I don't watch many movies anymore. I just watched "Paradise." I liked "Your Friends and Neighbors" and "The Penguin." A little bit of drama, but not a horror thing. When it's time to wind down around 10:30 to 11 p.m., I'll lie down and read. I just finished reading "Long Island" by Colm Tóibín. I like novels, but I'm not really a Tom Clancy novel reader. I'm much more of a literary novel reader, something that has emotional connection. One of my favorite authors is Cormac McCarthy and his book "The Road." I've read it a few times. I fall asleep fairly quickly once I've started reading. Ten minutes and I'm getting sleepy.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
I left the US after being laid off from Amazon. Living in the Netherlands is more affordable, and my small business is thriving.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Denise Segler, 54, who moved from Seattle to Haarlem, a city in North Holland, the Netherlands, in 2024. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. I fell in love with Europe at 18 during a school trip and promised to live abroad someday. I didn't know when or where, but I would make it happen. Later in life, I found myself divorced, with grown children, and recently laid off from my job. I'm a project manager in Information Technology (IT), and I used to work for Amazon. In January 2023, the company laid off my entire team. After that, I asked myself: What do I want to do with my life? I also questioned what was keeping me in the US. A lot of different things were pulling me toward Europe. I wanted to be my own boss and work as a freelancer. But health insurance in the US is incredibly expensive, and that's not the case in much of Europe. I also think Europeans have a better quality of life and work-life balance. In addition, the political climate in the US added a sense of urgency. Europe was calling my name When 2024 came around, I knew it was finally a good time to take a chance abroad. I had earned higher-level project management credentials and started actively promoting my own business as an IT project manager. I had also taken a trip to Ireland. I spent three weeks there — two on my own, and then my 27-year-old joined me for the last week. During that trip, I realized: OK, I can do this. I can go somewhere unfamiliar and be just fine. I researched different European visas and discovered the Dutch American Friendship Treaty (DAFT) visa. It allows Americans to live in the Netherlands as independent business owners. They just need to maintain a minimum of €4,500 ($5,278) in a business bank account. The visa was attractive to me. I also found out that the Netherlands had more affordable health insurance. Then I looked around, and other things were cheaper: cellphone and internet services. I thought, "Why not give that a try?" While you can do it yourself, I used a Dutch legal professional to file my visa paperwork. The legal office submitted my visa application and documents to the Dutch government on my behalf in August 2024 and let me know the visa was approved in September. I landed in Amsterdam on November 5. The Netherlands is the perfect place for me Before I moved to the Netherlands, I had never visited. But I received a lot of advice from people who had. Everyone had wonderful things to say — it was beautiful, and the people were fantastic. I live just south of Haarlem, the capital of North Holland, in a really cute neighborhood with shops, restaurants, and cafés. I feel very lucky, there's a train station just an eight-minute walk away from my apartment, and I'm right near a shopping area with all kinds of grocery stores. In some ways, the area reminds me of parts of Seattle, like the South Lake Union neighborhood. Before moving to the area, I hired a makelaar, a real estate agent, who helped me find a place to live. There's a housing shortage in the Netherlands, so you have to be either very flexible about where you live or be prepared to spend a lot of money. I was very lucky and ended up getting the first apartment I looked at. I had to pay six months' rent in advance because, as someone new to the country, I didn't have any local rental history. My apartment has a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small second room that I use as an office. There's also a combined living and dining area that leads past the kitchen. I spend more on housing but less on everything else I am self-employed, and I am withdrawing from my retirement account for now, which I do not recommend. So budgeting is important. I am paying more for housing in the Netherlands, about €1,735 ($2,041) for my apartment, but all my other bills are significantly cheaper than in the US. I pay €38 ($45) a month for internet and TV, whereas in the US, I paid over $100. My health insurance is also much cheaper here. Legally, you must have health insurance in the Netherlands, and there are a variety of insurance companies to choose from. In the US, I was on COBRA, which cost over $800 a month. Here, I pay €190 ($224) a month. It could be cheaper, but I added dental coverage and extra benefits for chiropractic care. Since I've been here, I've had my teeth cleaned once by a dentist, and that was about €150 ($176). The insurance paid half, and I paid the other half. I worried that food would be more expensive in the Netherlands, but it's not that bad. Produce is pretty cheap. For example, eggs usually come in packs of 10, costing between $3 and $4, depending on the type. The produce here is fantastic. There are farmers markets all over. I go to one every Wednesday, and I have to be careful because I always come back with all kinds of potatoes and cheeses. I think the bread is better here, too; many stores have in-house bakeries. There are pros and cons to living here English isn't an official language of the Netherlands, though most people speak it fluently. French is also commonly spoken, which works well for me. While I wasn't fully immersed in French, I practiced it five days a week for over a decade, starting when I was about nine years old. The locals are generally welcoming. I have seen someone shouting at people speaking a language other than Dutch or English, but only once or twice in the several months that I've been here. No one has been angry with me for speaking English. I think they take me as a tourist and are glad that I have a few words of Dutch. The people here are kind of direct, but I don't mind that much. Once, I went to get my hair cut, and the hairdresser commented, "Oh, you have to color your gray." I said, "No, I like my gray."' It can be hard to make friends, but there are meetup groups and Tinder, if you want to date. I do miss my chosen friends and family, and I have standing phone calls with them every Sunday night. Moving to the Netherlands was the right decision for me My life is more relaxed in the Netherlands because, honestly, I feel safer here. There aren't nearly as many guns, and I'm living in a safer neighborhood than I was in the US. I'm also not worried that a medical emergency is going to bankrupt me. I'm paying significantly less in bills, and the money I am saving every month on health insurance is going toward my savings and my business. My business is also about ready to take off. I joined two networking organizations of business owners, one based in the Netherlands and one based in the UK. I am working with a business coach, and I will be hiring a branding expert next month. My visa expires in July next year. I can request an extension, which I believe would grant me an additional three years. At that point, I would have been here five years, and I can apply for permanent residency, or, after taking Dutch classes, citizenship. I don't know if I want to become a citizen of the Netherlands, but for now, I'm just happy to be here because I can support myself.
