10 Things I Wish I Knew Before My First Solo Trip
10 Things I Wish I Knew Before My First Solo Trip
TRAVEL TIPS · JUNE 2025
THE ART OF
Slow Travel
Finding yourself, one unhurried city at a time.
BY AMIRA • JUNE 18, 2025 • 6 MIN READ • TRAVEL TIPS
We rush through airports, tick off landmarks, and come home more tired than when we left. But the best journeys aren’t measured in miles — they’re measured in moments. Here’s how slowing down changed the way I travel forever.
The first time I truly understood slow travel, I was sitting in a tiny café in Lisbon with no plan for the afternoon. No tour to catch, no list to finish. Just a strong coffee, a notebook, and the slow rhythm of a neighbourhood waking up around me. It was, quietly, one of the best days of my life.
For years I treated travel like a competition — how many countries, how many photos, how many things I could say I’d “done.” But somewhere along the way I realised I was collecting destinations, not memories. Slow travel asks for the opposite: fewer places, deeper roots, and the patience to let a city reveal itself on its own terms.
WHY SLOWER IS RICHER
the quiet luxury of staying put
When you stop racing, you start noticing. The baker who remembers your order by day three. The shortcut through the old town that only locals seem to use. The way light falls differently on the same square at sunrise and sunset. These are the details that turn a trip into a relationship with a place.
“You don’t see a place by passing through it. You see it by belonging to it, even for a week.”
— AMIRA, FOUNDER
On every Travel with Amira trip, we build in space to breathe. We trade the packed itinerary for long lunches, unplanned detours, and afternoons free to wander. It’s not about doing less — it’s about feeling more.
FIVE WAYS TO SLOW DOWN
- Stay longer in fewer places. Three nights minimum — one is never enough to feel a city’s pulse.
- Walk everywhere you can. The space between landmarks is where the real stories live.
- Eat where the locals eat. Skip the menu in five languages; follow the lunch-break queue.
- Leave room for nothing. Some of the best afternoons have no plan at all.
- Talk to one stranger a day. A conversation will teach you more than any guidebook.
Next time you plan a trip, resist the urge to fill every hour. Choose one city. Stay a while. Let it surprise you. You’ll come home not with a longer list, but with something far more valuable — a place that feels, in some small way, like yours.
#SlowTravel #Mindful #TravelTips
Written by
AMIRA
Founder of Travel with Amira. For over a decade she’s led small groups of women across the world — slowly, soulfully, and with a strong coffee always in hand.
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