Caravaner's Companion: Slow Travel Summer
new travel guides + a gift for free subscribers!
Welcome to the summer 2024 edition of the Caravaner’s Companion, a series of travel guides brimming with tales & recs from your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, slightly over-caffeinated sherpa. This season, I’m taking you to Norway, Greece, and Cyprus.
In the post-pandemic tourism boom, the phrase “slow travel” has become a bit of cliché, a catchall that’s assigned all sorts of meanings. To some, slow travel is about staying in one destination for longer and connecting deeply with the local culture, rather than bouncing around from place to place. To others, it’s about sustainability, consuming less, and supporting local economies.
These are all great things, a much-needed rebalance in how we wanderers approach tourism and our place in the world. But to me, the idea of slow travel is even simpler. It’s exactly what it sounds like: it’s about going somewhere without packing your to-do list or feeling obligated to visit all the sites. It’s about doing whatever moves you, and not worrying about reservations or checking your watch. It’s about being rather than seeing.
This summer’s batch of Caravaner’s Companion guides focuses on destinations that are perfect for slowing down. For quiet enjoyment of natural beauty. For sea breezes and wildflowers over crowded museums and bustling shopping districts.
I’m taking you to Athens, where you can ferry around the Mediterranean as you please, and the car-free Saronic island of Hydra; to Cyprus, an unconventional choice that makes for a perfect free-wheeling roadtrip; and Norway, where the biggest attractions are the forest hikes and the breathtaking fjords.
As with all Caravaner’s Companions, these three posts include my best spots to stay (digs!), eat (nosh!), and shop (retail therapy!). They are a good mix of bargains and splurges, of hidden gems and well-loved local haunts, of the traditional and the offbeat.
This season, I have a special gift for free subscribers. My guide to Athens and Hydra is open to all! Click the link below to check it out:
Athens and Hydra
Every once in awhile, on days where the air feels steamy and stagnant, I find myself browsing real estate listings on tiny Greek islands. I close my eyes and picture myself in a whitewashed villa with blue shutters that I could throw open, letting a salty breeze sweep over the tile floors and ruffle the legs of my white linen pants...
The Cyprus and Norway guides will be paywalled as usual, and will be rolled out over the next couple days. If you enjoy my guide to Athens and Hydra, upgrade here for forever access to these and all future travel guides. (And to earn complimentary access to these paid guides, refer a friend and get a free month’s subscription!)
A paid subscription also gets you access to my full library of travel guides, including:
Have a blissfully slow summer, my friends, and I’ll see you next week for the most charming interview with
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Hi Samantha - wow - loved this and it is so timely for me. As a chronically-traveling "slow traveler" I feel like I am committed to staying in one place longer, connecting to that place and people and also suppporting the local economy respectfully. Currently I am in Paris for 2 months, for the very first time and I'm battling with feeling like I need to "do all the things" while also just wanting to live life, even if it just means going for a walk in my local park most days. Good problems to have. Can't wait to dig into your guides. Merci!