Discovering the Joy of Slow Travel: Unraveling the Magic of Living Like a Local
Our first destination as full-time travelers was to Italy. We’d visited a few cities there previously, but we knew we wanted to explore at least Napoli and Sicily for our maiden month-long trip. My birth family is from a Avellino, a small town near Napoli, so it seemed logical that we’d spend a little time there. And then we wanted to (re)visit Rome en route to the Puglia region for a visit to Bari, Lecce, and Monopoli. Since we wanted to get back to the US to spend Christmas with family, we couldn’t extend Italy beyond a month. Seven cities seemed ambitious but doable because Italy has a great train system. If we spent four days in each city (give or take), we could make it work. But as we started sharing our itinerary with someone who had spent significant time in Italy, they mentioned that two months in Sicily might not be enough to do it justice, so how could four days possibly work?
Traveling from city to city may be exciting and fun, but we quickly realized we no longer have the luxury of a year to plan for a trip. Now planning our next destination happens while we’re in the current one.
If we kept our original plan, our four days in a city now would become three because planning and coordinating transportation, accommodations, and sights we wanted to see all take time to research and book. We’d also lose time moving from place. Commuting by bus or train means we don’t have to arrive as early as when we are flying, but we still need to factor in the commute to get to the bus stop or train station. In some places buses don’t run on time or schedule changes aren’t communicated well. Trains and planes have delays and strikes. Dropping off luggage before you can go exploring is an additional delay. Another half day can be gone in a blink. Is visiting this city for two days still worthwhile given all of the effort and expense to get there? And are you sure that neither of those two days is a local holiday when everything might be closed—as we just discovered in Genova?
And this is how we began to learn about slow travel. We still wanted to see at least Napoli and Sicily, but instead of seven cities, we decided to slow down and focus on only two. It wouldn’t be nearly enough time in either place, but it would give us a deeper appreciation than if we zipped in and out. We wouldn’t have to rush quite as much from place to place and we’d have a bit more time to explore in an unhurried way.
We consider slow travel to be moving at a pace that allows you to become more fully immersed in the place you are in, integrating with a destination’s culture, people, and rhythm lasting several weeks or months.
Avoiding burnout
Travel brings us so much joy and we didn’t want that to change when we pivoted to full-time travel. We’d been warned that it’s easy to get burned out, and we wanted to take steps from the very beginning to protect ourselves. But it’s easy to see how a desire to visit all the cool places we want to see as quickly as possible can go sideways. When we vacationed, we’d plan ahead for six months or an entire year for a single trip and we’d jam everything into ten days or two weeks and, “sleep when we’re dead,” as the saying goes. We’d come home exhausted but inspired, get back to our routines, regroup, and in a few months, start the whole process over again.
But when home is the road, we’ve had to work very intentionally to ensure that we can create routines, build in time for the mundane, and relax and unwind. Going nonstop without breaks or rest days is exhausting and a great way for us to begin to hate traveling.
Slow travel is budget friendly
When we were planning our next destination—Athens, Greece—we discovered that Airbnbs give you a discount when you stay an entire month. In planning an upcoming trip to Bulgaria, we discovered that staying 26 days will cost $75 more than staying 30 days, so why not stay longer and pay less. Each train or plane to another city or country is an additional expense. We save money by cooking a good portion of our meals. Restaurants are great and an important part of our travel experience, but eating out all the time isn’t always healthy, can be a hassle, and is an easy way to blow our budget. If we’re staying somewhere for only a few days, the cost of butter or a bottle of olive oil or seasonings are large expenses when we break down their cost per day. When we buy those items for a month, we’ll have a chance to use up those quantities more easily. Shopping, cooking, and cleaning up are time consuming when you’re only staying a few days and cut into time exploring. But the cost of eating out in many countries adds up really quickly.
Live like a local
One of the joys of slow travel is integrating with the place where we are living. We choose accommodations near locals. Studio apartments or Airbnbs where there is a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom help us create some normalcy versus a bed and a desk in a hotel in a more commercial area. We build routines including finding our favorite walking route, discovering a charming coffee shop that we can visit every day, sample restaurants with local fare until we find waitstaff we connect with, and people begin to recognize us, and vice versa.
When we’re someplace for only a week or less, residents aren’t interested in becoming too attached. But as we start to become more of a fixture in their city, they begin to let their guard down and open up more. It’s where true connections can begin to form. Making time to explore the side streets and places off the beaten path allows us to get a sense for the rhythm of a place. A good example is when we were in the harbor town of Cagnes-sur-Mer in France and had a chance to see the Wednesday markets that we learned happened weekly. On one of those weekdays, we also participated in the Italian Festival, which was a special event. Beach lounge chairs were rarely used when we first arrived, but after a few weeks, we could see the tourist season slowly begin to creep into the area. Mornings had a few locals who preferred to bring their own beach blankets, but the people in the afternoon around 3pm were the predominant renters of the loungers. These small things gave us a sense of participating in the ebb and flow of the city.
In Broughty Ferry, Scotland, we had coffee and scones most mornings at one particular cafe. We got to know fellow regulars, and we’d bump into them again on our walks along the harbor. They’d say hello and their eyes would shine with recognition, not just random friendliness. We’d hear about store closings, neighbors who were moving, and health issues folks were dealing with because we were at the pulse of things. It can be lonely to be strangers everywhere you go. Forming connections with the people we meet in our travels brings light and joy to our days, and those are great feelings.
Downsides
So what are the downsides to slow travel? Because we’ve stayed somewhere for an appreciable amount of time, we’ve formed friendships and have had to say goodbye to new friends. Those aren’t always easy, even in this era of technology that can connect us when we’re not in person. Traveling for a month or more at a time means we explore fewer cities or countries in a year than if we moved more swiftly. It will take longer to see the world this way, but traveling more cheaply extends how long we can travel. Our age, health, and family situation also are considerations, which is why we are grateful we decided to travel now before all these unknown factors come into play.
In the end, whether we fast travel or slow travel, we just want to TRAVEL. We want to see and experience the world, make connections when we can, smell the flowers, drink and eat the regional cuisine, bask in the uniqueness of each place we visit, and most of all, celebrate that for all our differences, we share so much in common, regardless of how far flung across the globe we might venture.
