Travel Slow, Stay Long: Why Moving Less Means Experiencing More

"Thirty countries before turning thirty!" I remember a co-worker in the military saying this was her travel goal. At the time, I thought that was a pretty cool sentiment, but after two years of long-term travel, I find myself questioning her endeavour. She would visit three, four, even five countries in a ten-day trip. How could she really experience these countries and their cultures if she spent less than two or three days in each one? That was barely enough time to visit a single city, let alone an entire country.

But that is the way many (I would say the vast majority) of people view travel. They want to check off as many countries and experiences as possible, even if that means failing to enjoy them beneath the surface. Travel has become more about collecting experiences than enjoying our destination. Tour companies build fast-paced itineraries, families try to see everything that everyone on the trip wants to see, and students on summer holiday zip through Europe on their sixty-day backpacking trip as they try to visit every country in the Schengen Area.

Moving fast like this is great for Instagram, TikTok, and sharing stories at work, but it misses the point of travel: to see and experience cultures, countries, and customs different from our own. By moving fast and staying only a day or two in a single place, we miss out on the entire point of travelling in the first place.

Jack taking a break from the rain in London. Rain showers are a great forcing function to slow down in your travels and enjoy local cafes.

The Problem with Fast Travel

There is far too much to see in any one city than can be absorbed in a single trip, but that doesn't mean we won't give it our best effort anyway. We've all been there, from the newest backpacker to the most seasoned adventurer. New destinations are exciting, we never know when we will have the opportunity to return again, and you've got ten more of these exact situations lined up in rapid succession during your short-lived holiday from work. It is a perfectly understandable feeling, but this sentiment can rob us of a truly excellent experience.

The truth is it is impossible to fully experience a new destination in just one or two days. Even the sleepiest of towns have more to offer in the way of exploring and atmosphere than just a couple of days' stay will provide. When we rush through new places in the name of "doing" the city or country, we often miss out on "experiencing" the city. Instead of truly visiting new places, we are really collecting them in Instagram posts and stories for back home. Every traveller is guilty of this at some time or another. My first time in Bilbao, I only had a day and a half to take it in before flying home. By the time I boarded the plane, my feet were screaming in pain, I was exhausted, and I really couldn't remember what I saw and did without referencing my photos. My second time, a few years later, I stayed for a week, explored the city in smaller segments each day, and enjoyed the sights and sounds that I missed when I rushed through.

Worse, flying through a new destination turns travel into a commodity to be consumed instead of an experience to be treasured. I've met many "country collectors" who visit four or five countries in a two-week period during their European vacation and couldn't understand why I would spend three months in Spain and only visit eleven cities. To me, if I didn't spend longer in each place, I never would have "done" them; I would have only added them as a notch on my travel belt without the benefit of the rich cultural experiences I had there.

The Case for Slow and Long

Travelling slow and long isn't a redundantly repetitive notion. I spent a week visiting Albacete, but I still feel like I rushed through the place. Meanwhile, I spent just three days in Zaragoza, and I really feel like I experienced it to the fullest even though I know I missed out on a few things. When I say to travel long, I mean to extend the length of your stay so you can slow down and enjoy your new destination by travelling slow. By travelling slow, I mean to mentally and physically slow down. Spend an entire day at the Hospital Invalides in Paris, spend three hours at a bullfight in Madrid, and take a full-day diving trip to see the Lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt. Skip a few individual things to improve your overall travel experience.

Travelling long has allowed me to find hidden gems all across the world. Trieste, Italy, for example, was somewhere I went simply because my friend had a flight out of Venice and we needed somewhere to go while we waited for her to head home. I have talked more about Trieste than any other place in Italy in the following years, even more than Rome or Florence, and the only reason I found it was because I had to hang around for a few days. By travelling long, we can add more to our lives and vacations than the top-line tourist attractions, while also allowing time to enjoy the sobremesa in Sevilla or pints in Belfast.

Travelling slow is a learned skill where you force yourself not to rush from place to place and attraction to attraction. Even if you only have two days in a place, you can travel slow. Enjoy a morning coffee, walk aimlessly around town before lunch, go to a museum in the afternoon, and finish the day in a large public park. Sure, this layout means you will miss a thing or two, but you will take in so much more as you immerse yourself in the atmosphere of it all. You will also avoid travel exhaustion, which can rob you of your joy when travelling long-term. When you slow down, you allow yourself to observe and examine local customs and cultures in the context of your own.

What Staying Long Teaches You

Staying long in a city or country teaches us more than rapid-fire travel could ever offer. By staying long, we become more than country collectors with carefully curated Instagram pages; we become true travellers and citizens of the world. When we move fast, we are the stars of our own stories, and the local scene and people serve as a backdrop and supporting actors. When we slow down, we become a part of the natural story of our destination, removing ourselves as the stars of the show and fading into the background as our present location leads us on a wonderful, new journey.

Staying long teaches us more than local culture; it forces us to be bored in a city of millions who experience such boredom every day, to find our local spot to sip our morning coffee and get to know the waiters who serve us daily, and how to sit with ourselves in foreign environments. Life in other places continues on regardless of the fact that tourists saturate major squares and historical sites, and staying long integrates us into that life.

Staying long also transforms us from tourists to travellers. The routine boredom that comes from remaining in one place will naturally push you out of your tourist comfort zone, and you will find yourself wandering into new environments and experiences normal tourists wouldn't find. More than once, I've wandered a city for no other reason than I was bored after breakfast, and in doing so I saw things I wouldn't have otherwise, from children walking to school to soldiers out for their morning physical training. When was the last time I saw seven-year-old children walking through town to school or organized groups of public servants out for a run together? It may be foreign to me, but it is normal in many countries across the world, something I never would have learned had I zipped through every place I visited.

Practical Advice on Slowing it Down

While staying long is a matter of logistics, finance, and vacation days, slowing down is a shift in mindset. You don't have to stay long to slow down; all you have to do is shift your focus from cramming in a bunch of surface-level experiences to fully immersing yourself in a few enriching ones. Naturally, that's easier said than done when the question "when will I ever be back here again?" enters your mind.

The number one thing I can say to help you slow down is to follow Rick Steves' advice: cut down the number of places you want to see on your trip. When I take a short trip (say, ten days), I will only travel to two or three cities. A perfect example is when Layne visited Jo and me in Italy. She was only there for ten days, so we spent time in Florence, Venice, and Trieste. She totally skipped Naples, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast, and as a result, we were in no rush to cram in every possible site in just one day. Conversely, Jo and I spent just two days in Paris (less, really, when you throw in arrival and departure), and we walked more than fourteen kilometres to check off all the "must-see" places on the first day, destroying our feet and exhausting ourselves before the bulk of our travel started.

Staying longer in one place is also easier on the budget. The most expensive part of travel by far is transportation. The more you move, the more money you will spend on taxis, buses, trains, and airfare. Oftentimes, if you stay longer in a hostel, hotel, or short-term rental, your rate will be cheaper. For the budget-conscious traveller, visiting just two cities in a ten-day trip is a great way to immerse yourself in the local scene while saving money—ultimately making for a rewarding, less-expensive experience.

Focusing on regional experiences is also a great way to stay long while visiting multiple places. Visiting the Spanish Basque Country will provide an overarching Basque cultural experience even if you change between cities; that's something you don't get if you travel from Barcelona to Madrid to Bilbao, where the cultures are vastly different. The same is true of Vietnam, where the north and south are radically different. While jetting between the two gives you a general, overall picture of Vietnam, spending your time in one area or the other really immerses you in an overall culture even as you change cities.

You Can't Always Stay Long, But You Can Always Travel Slow

While some have the fortunate ability to travel for extended periods of time, that is a luxury for most—especially in the United States. For those working every day for companies and causes they love, vacation time is limited, especially if working for an employer with boundary issues or in an environment where you must maintain contact with home base even while on vacation. Add in the time at the beginning of the trip to decompress from it all before you can truly enjoy your trip, and the amount of time you have to enjoy yourself shortens even more. I've lived this reality in the military and at my former security firm, so I get it.

Nonetheless, we can all travel long and slow down if we keep the basic principles of such travel in mind when planning our trip. There is no shame in taking an entire week to enjoy surfing in Tamraght, Morocco, before visiting Marrakech, the Atlas Mountains, and/or the Sahara. Taking a siesta in the middle of the day in Spain is a great way to relax and recharge. Reading a chapter or two of a new book at a street-side café in any country allows you to observe everyday life while having a travel experience you don't get back home (at least in the United States, where our street-side cafés are beside major roads). As long as you focus on quality over quantity and resist the urge to country collect, you can stay long and travel slow even on just a weekend trip.

At the end of the day, it's about your mindset and priorities. By staying longer in one place and not filling the entire itinerary from dawn until dusk, anyone can connect more deeply to wherever they find themselves. It's not about "thirty by thirty." It's about enjoying every experience on a deeper, personal level.