I know you’ve seen them. Those breathless questions all over travel forums—queries about how to see Rome, Venice, Cinque Terre, and “Chianti” in a week. Or alternatively, “Can I do Rome in 24 hours?” I read those questions and I practically have to put my head between my legs, my hand to my heart on behalf of Rome, a city that would take a year to begin to see the detail behind the broad brushstrokes. And what does “doing” Rome even mean? It sounds vaguely predatory and a little embarrassing.

When I regain my upright posture I send up yet another note of regret for the demise of the Slow Trav forum. Some of you are familiar with Slow Trav, in fact, it’s how we met. Slow Trav was a website where you could post questions about destinations like any other travel website, but the forum was filled with people who appreciated how slow travel deepens an experience. Visitors to the forum didn’t just want to figure out how to get advance tickets to the Uffizzi, they wanted recommendations for walking paths around Lyon and where to go to linger over Venetian cicchetti.

The Slow Trav site is no longer, unfortunately. And there seems to be a dearth of slow travelers on Trip Advisor. Rather, the site appears filled with people who, no matter how gently they are reminded that four destinations in six days translates to unpacking/packing/checking in/getting lost on the way to the hotel four times—leaving a bare handful of waking hours in any destination— irritably shake off the advice to slow down. “This is how I travel,” they insist, squaring their virtual shoulders.

The part of me that believes there is more than one way to eat, more than one way to pray, and more than one way to learn wants to believe them.

But I’ll be honest with you.

I can’t.

I can’t believe them.

I can’t believe that four destinations in six days will leave a traveler with the kind of satisfaction that comes when your heart cleaves to a place and her people. Yes, they’ll see “more”. But you could see even more by flipping through a calendar of Italian sites and I don't see anyone arguing for that.

Fast travel is check-the-box travel. It’s shoving people out of the way to peep over their shoulder at Michelangelo’s masterpiece of pause and power to nod distractedly on their way to catch a glimpse of the Duomo before their dinner reservation at a time no Italian would ever imagine reasonable (fast travelers rarely seem interested in adapting their rhythms to the local culture and so are more likely to eat in empty restaurants, all the while wondering where all the people are).

That, that right there, that fast travel, it is my personal nightmare.

Saharan sand gilds the sky in Lauterbrunnen, Berner Oberland, Switzerland

Slow travel, though, slow travel is my haven.

Slow travel means time for surprises—the Swiss sky blurred with Sahara sand or a parade of cows mooing as they make their way down the village’s main street; ancient drawings etched into caves beside the crashing Mediterranean sea; discovering a seasonal treat at the corner bakery that wasn’t there the day before; stumbling out of a restaurant, filled and happy, only to stall at the sight of the full moon reflecting off the rippling Rhine.

Slow travel means not attaching to the culture of “bests” that besets quick travel where one must be DOING SOMETHING IMPORTANT EVERY MOMENT.

Slowing down means spending less time combing TripAdvisor for the perfect Parisian restaurant (as if such a state of perfection exists, it doesn’t, it’s a fool’s illusion), and more time out on the street, hand in hand with your partner as you stop in a shop selling gorgeous rounds of cheese displayed on slate or pause to read a sign announcing an upcoming celebration. A celebration you’ll be here for because (gasp!) you aren’t hopping on yet another train in the morning, just when things are getting good.

Slow travel is figure-out-how-things-fit-together travel. By settling in one spot for a week or more, you have time for knowledge to click in your mind. You understand with a frisson of clarity how public transportation connects Swiss villages. While sitting on that train with your bag of groceries, you have space to reflect on the dance of culture and history and foodways. You have time to reflect, period. To integrate your experience with what you know and all you don’t know.

Walking over the bamboo bridge in Luang Prabang

Slow travel is mindful travel—watching villagers rebuild a bamboo bridge that washed away when the Mekong last flooded, and understanding with a start how village life is tied to this river. Pausing to ask the guy who runs the museum about his connection to the space and learning about how his best friend grew up in Matera’s slums and suddenly seeing the Sassi with wider eyes. Slowing to note details, breathing in the scents of hay and apples that are just as much part of the Swiss landscape as the dizzying alps.

Time your slow travel right, and you’ll witness the stirring of seasonal change. In our month in Lauterbrunnen, we went from admiring icicles as long as trees dangling from the cliffside, to shivering at the echoing boom through the valley as those same icicles fell and shattered, to admiring tender wildflowers push their way through the leaf litter. Real life isn’t constant. Quick travel gives only an artificial snapshot of a place, but watch that place change and you’ll begin to understand it. You’ll allow it to change you.

And isn’t that why we travel? It isn’t just to see. It’s to stretch our comfort zone so we discover more about this life we’re lucky enough to live. It’s to adopt fresh eyes so that we never look at a stalk of asparagus the same way again.

Luang Prabang, a different kind of market experience

Strolling a market in Laos and noticing villagers pilfer the grubs on display changes the way we look at our own lives. Once you slurp a bowl of pho while perched on a tiny stool just steps away from a veritable freeway of racing bicycles, it’s impossible to not remember that hot sticky afternoon when you eat pho again in the air-conditioned cool of your local Vietnamese restaurant. You bring it with you. Those experiences nudge your soul into a different shape, one embracing of the wonders around every corner.

Yes, all travel allows for seeing new things. But travel slowly and you’ll exchange a series of transitions for an experience of actual life. And in that living your life on new soil, you’ll see past the obvious things like the curious fish-scale siding on Swiss buildings and the goats placidly munching grass, impervious to your clasped-hand wonder. Stay longer and you’ll notice the suggestion of an alley that takes you above the town for a view that takes your breath away. You’ll notice the pattern of seeing the same beverage everywhere you go and it will be how you discover Rivella— Switzerland’s favorite native soft drink, made with whey that tastes like apples. You’ll stop in surprise at a cut through you never noticed before, or a sign that leads you to the runderweg, the flat route, a pleasure to stroll while drinking in the valley below.

I suppose part of my fervor for slow travel comes from living in Italy…the advantages of time to figure out where people are going with those plastic bags are real, and now I need those details, that deducing about life in new place, to make travel feel whole. But you don’t need to live in a place to get that. I got that from welcoming the farm dog to our lunch table in Normandy every day. I got that from figuring out how to hire a guy with a boat to take us snorkeling in Thailand. I got that from stretching after pausa to head back out into the Parisian streets to lift my nose until I found a crepe stand and an auspiciously placed accordion player.

Something else I’ve realized about slow travel that may just be particular to me—my anxiety makes me slow to warm—to people, to place. Not that I don’t appreciate them, I just hold myself back.

Cooking is a great example. My first night cooking dinner in a new place, I always make something super basic, so I get a handle of the stove, the ingredients, the knives. Then I build up. So it takes me at least a few days before I’m ready to hold up a celery root in the store and wonder what I can do with it, before I’m ready to start looking at local recipes or researching local cooking classes. Before, in short, I can cook local. Which is an important aspects of my travel, because once I can cook local food, then I have a way to remember my travels, my adventures, my purpose, in a way that’s richer than flipping through photographs. When I make bun cha in Charlottesville, the scent of the marinated pork grilling seems to call neighbors like a siren song, and it also opens pockets of my memory until that trip comes flooding back.

Cooking isn’t the only area I notice how increasing comfort leads to increasing joy in travel. My first week in Switzerland, I walked the same road every day. Yes, the road was gorgeous and it seemed like I spotted something new each time, but the longer I walked it, the more I felt emboldened to try a side route, even though I didn’t know where it would go. I paused at a gondola station long enough to prod myself into figuring out how much a ticket would be to get me to the top of the cliff where I could find new walking trails. With time, I started reading and understanding the trail signs until I understood that 36 walking trails surrounded Wengen, and 6 francs could take me to them. Every day, my legs grew stronger and more nimble until I could dance across a creek no problem, and I felt sure of myself even as I started a walk I could only vaguely sketch out in my mind. I needed that time to gain confidence to strike out on new paths, for new adventures.

My daily trip to the vending machine in Switzerland for alpine cheeses and meats

Also, I need time to be me in a new place, to no longer feel like an interloper. When I arrive at a destination, I feel like a guest at a stranger’s table. I won’t ask for seconds, I hesitate to begin eating until I’m sure everyone else has started, I am watchful rather than participatory and you can bet I’ll say almost nothing, and what I do say is right boring.

Partway through our month in Switzerland I started remarking to myself that the Swiss sure seemed more friendly with the advent of Spring. Then I realized it wasn’t them, it was me. For the first week or two, I averted my eyes when I approached someone, I spoke in a mumble. Who can interact with that? Once I had my sea legs, I greeted all and sundry with a big wave and a hearty, “Guten tag!”. In return, people started waving and smiling with brighter eyes and a few friendly words. I told Keith I was convinced one farmer wanted to invite me to his house for fondue. Keith assured me I was categorically wrong, and maybe that’s accurate, but when I thanked the farmer for the joy of using his vending machine, he thanked me in return with an appreciation that felt a lot like an invitation. A welcome.

Not everyone is anxious, not everyone experiences their anxiety as resistance… but I would say that if you orient at all like I do, slow travel is particularly important.

Anxious or not, slow travel is vital for language learning. In today’s English-centric climate, it’s true that you rarely need to learn a local language (especially in the kind of tourist centered places popular with fast travelers). Pointing and nodding go pretty far, even when English fails. But there’s a kind of beauty in communicating with native people in their native language. Even the simple completed transaction of ordering another bottle of water and having a waitress nod, “subito” can make you feel a sense of belonging, of acceptance, that you deny yourself if you pantomime loudly while pointing at the English menu.

Daily feeding of the monks in Luang Prabang

Slow travel…to me it’s real travel. It’s affords us the gifts that we seek by traveling in the first place.

I feel like I’d be a better person if I could shrug off other people’s “checklist travel”, if I could just remind myself, “to each his own.”

But I’ve allowed place to become a part of me, I’ve felt the resonance that comes from beginning to pick out words I hear at the butcher shop or getting the hang of how to order at a tapas bar, both which offer me the luxury of leaning into place. That leaning into place, it allows that place to wrap its arms around me, to surround my senses, to become a part of me.

Memories created quickly blur and fall away. But when you travel slowly, you tie those memories to you with golden threads. Those memories, those places, they become a part of you, and you carry them in your bones.

You carry them with you, always.