Travel Time Management 101
/We posted a couple of days ago on Facebook about a violin maker we met in our travels years ago. [ You can read that post HERE. ] It was a random and fun meeting - his wife is an artist, and they make their own wine.
But there is a deeper and broader point inherent in the story, I think: The importance of leaving room in your traveling schedule to just relax, hang out, and experience the place and the people. You’re then able to talk to folks and discover shared interests and meaningful connections. Doing this has led us to so many memorable experiences - a dinner at the house of a woman who worked for decades at a trattoria in Tuscany; a walk around and inside an over-one-hundred-year-old Irish lighthouse with a (less-than-100-year-old) third-generation light-keeper; an impromptu personal tour of a parmigiano cheese factory, which is now a “perk" for our clients who visit Emilia-Romagna.
It also allows for a long conversation with an Italian artisanal beer-maker whom you didn't expect to meet; or a diversion to answer the question "See the castle icon on this roadside map? What is that?" Or just an afternoon of people-watching at a street-side patio bar.
The possibilities are endless. Our years of travel has taught us that these unique experiences pop up all the time if you let them; and we find them to be much more satisfying and memorable than rushing from one checklist location to the next. It's just a different mind-set, a different concept of how and why to travel.
