On Traveling Slowly
There’s a version of travel where you wake up at 6am, hit four museums, take a food tour, watch the sunset from some famous viewpoint, and collapse into bed exhausted. I’ve done that trip. It’s fine. You see a lot. You remember surprisingly little.
The trips I actually remember — the ones that changed how I think about a place — are the ones where I did less.
Stay Longer, Do Less
The best travel advice I ever got was dead simple: pick one neighborhood, stay a week, and pretend you live there.
Go to the same coffee shop in the morning. Buy groceries from the corner store. Learn which streets are good for walking in the afternoon. Find the bar where nobody’s speaking English. Eat dinner late.
You won’t see the top ten attractions. You’ll see something better — what it actually feels like to live somewhere that isn’t home.
The Case Against Itineraries
I’m not saying don’t plan at all. Book your accommodation. Know how to get from the airport. Have a loose sense of what neighborhoods you want to explore.
But leave the days open. Some of the best experiences I’ve had while traveling were completely unplanned:
- A tiny ramen shop in Tokyo that I only found because I got lost
- An afternoon in Lisbon spent in a bookshop I wandered into to escape the rain
- A conversation with a stranger in a Oaxacan mezcaleria that turned into a three-hour dinner
You can’t schedule serendipity. You can only leave room for it.
One City at a Time
If you have two weeks, don’t visit four cities. Visit one, maybe two. The time you spend in transit — packing, checking out, navigating new train stations, finding your hotel — is time you’re not actually experiencing the place.
Every time you move, you reset. You lose the rhythm you’d started to build. You go back to being a tourist instead of a temporary local.
Travel slowly. Do less. Pay attention. That’s the whole philosophy, and it fits in a carry-on.