Most of us are chronically over-scheduled. Our days are dictated by our calendars and our to-do lists; we rush from appointment to appointment, desperate for a few minutes to squeeze in our errands, our lunches, our lives.
All too often, we allow these habits to perpetuate while we travel. We study guidebooks and the internet for the top sights and/or activities at our destination, and then we craft comprehensive itineraries from this research. We stack our vacation days with a nearly unbelievable amount of activities: Today, we’ll see the Empire State Building, Central Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tomorrow, we’ll tour the Village, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Brooklyn Bridge.
The urge is understandable: not only has this sense of time famine become so ingrained in our modern existence that rushing around at break-neck speed seems normal, but, when we have such precious little time for travel, we want to ensure that we are maximizing every moment spent on vacation.
But does this quest to squeeze every last drop of sight-seeing out of our vacations take away from the enjoyment of travel itself? In adhering to tight, check-the-box itineraries are we sacrificing quality for quantity? Can we really appreciate van Gogh’s The Starry Night when we have only allotted ourselves two hours at the Museum of Modern Art before we must rush on to see the sun set from Brooklyn Bridge Park? Might we not be better served by spending more time at either the museum or the park, and being able to more fully immerse ourselves in the experience?
I’m issuing a challenge: Try some slow(er) travel. When planning your next vacation, resist the urge to create an itinerary encompassing every “must-see” sight. Resist the urge to create an itinerary at all. Give yourself the time to linger in museums or public spaces, sit at a sidewalk cafe and watch the world go by, watch a street performance, or just get lost. You might not see everything that the guidebooks dictate, but you are guaranteed to have a more conscious, enriching experience.