The “see the sites” version of Italy is mostly a queue to stand near something famous while exhausted strangers elbow you for the same photo. Venice is now charging an entry fee, which is basically the city admitting it’s become a museum of itself — a very beautiful, very expensive velvet rope that you have to pay to stand in front of before paying again to stand inside something else. And somewhere around day three of any trip, the guilt kicks in anyway. The nagging sense that I should be achieving something. Ticking boxes. Collecting proof of presence like it’s a deposition.

But the best travel memories I have are almost never the landmarks. They’re the specific light on a specific piazza at a specific hour with a perfect dopio espresso when nobody was performing anything for anybody

What I’ve been doing instead — Mantova, Lake Garda, now Zermatt actual rhythms of actual places — the culture people actually live in and love. The one that never shows up on anyone’s highlight reel because it’s just a good afternoon that happened to you. I spent an afternoon at an athletic club on the lake where nobody questioned whether I belonged there, which honestly I’m counting as a personal victory. Bikes. Books. Naps. Snacks. People I genuinely like. That’s not a vacation day — that’s a blueprint. The kind of day you describe to yourself later when you’re trying to remember what it felt like to be fully in your body and not managing seventeen timelines.

The people who did Venice this week waited in line and paid to feel like they’d done it right. I was just somewhere. Completely different thing.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about the haunting of fomo — because there is one, and it’s worth naming. It’s not really about what I’m missing. It’s about a story I was handed long before I ever booked the flight. The Colosseum, the canals — they’re cultural shorthand for having done Europe correctly. They’ve been in every movie, every guidebook, every “if you only do one thing in Italy and the Alps” list since before I was born. So there’s a version of this trip that lives in my head that predates the actual trip, and that version has a checklist and sensible walking shoe recommendation.

The haunting isn’t wanderlust. It’s old programming running in the background, telling me something familiar — which feels exactly like truth but isn’t.

The Colosseum will be there. It has famously survived a lot — entire empires, centuries of weather, and an absolutely staggering number of tourists in matching Rick Steves money belts. I could go on a random Tuesday in March with fewer people and actually feel something standing inside it rather than just confirming it exists. What won’t replicate is these people I call my friends, this particular ease, the afternoon with no agenda, the train that got canceled and sent me somewhere I didn’t plan on going but taught me I could probably navigate well if I got dropped in the middle of The Amazing Race sometime. That’s not the consolation version of the trip. That’s the rare version.

What I’m getting at — there’s no wrong way to do this, travel, life. We all have preferences, ideals, and whatever the moon is doing that particular week. Sometimes you want the timetable and the landmarks and the efficient march through a carefully curated bucket list. That has its place. I’ve done it. I went through the southern coast of Iceland in under 20 hours because I had a plane to catch, and saw enough Raphael and Botacelli to last me a spiritually reasonable amount of time.

But I have my grandfather’s blood. I’m an explorer at heart. I probably would have been a privateer back in the day — or burned at the stake. I’m honestly not sure there’s a meaningful difference. So somewhere along the way I made myself a rule: one big thing a day. It sounds modest until you realize what it actually buys you — flow, rest, flexibility, the ability to absorb a canceled train as a plot twist instead of a small personal tragedy.

Slow travel isn’t laziness. It’s absorbing the moments. Some would argue I’m doing Europe wrong. I would counter that I’m doing my life right.

And right now that looks like a regional train from Domodossola instead of the fancy AF Bernina train overhyped by influencers, with no snacks and a bathroom I’ve decided not to think about. Perfectly on brand.