Pavement Pounding vs. Slowing it Down
A few months ago, I had the good fortune to explore the Iberian Peninsula with my dear friend from Argentina. It was her trip, I just latched myself on in a convenient manner. As such, I spent very little time researching and planning—the majority of this legwork and the logistics of our eight day trajectory had been done by her. With all the trips I take alone, I tend to do all the planning myself, so it was a relief to basically just show up for this one.
I’ve traveled with Antonela before in our 11 years of friendship, and I know what type of traveler (and person) she is. She’s a check-the-box on the tourist sites kind of gal. A bus tour, walking tour, any kind of tour gal. She is the type of traveler who sees four cities in eight days, ensuring she hits all the sites in each one. Her notebook is full of lists of monuments and museums, and she spends months prior to a trip finding the most well-reviewed locales for her destinations on TripAdvisor. I came prepared to pound the pavement.
It likely won’t shock you that this is not typically how I travel. I’m more of a one city in six days kind of gal. I love showing up knowing very little, and learning it all as I go. My favorite days are the ones where I don’t pull out the map but instead simply wander around a new place, stopping wherever strikes my fancy. If 10,000 people on TripAdvisor say something is great, it’s not that I don’t believe them, it’s just that I’d rather not waste half my vacation in lines with all the other tourists. To me, what makes my home city awesome is not the Top 10 list, it’s the little dive bar in my neighborhood that makes bomb jackfruit tacos and the funky park where people tango on Thursday evenings. To me, it logically follows that these are also the things that make other places in the world unique, interesting, and special to their inhabitants. To locate those things, I’ve found the best method to be wandering without time constraint or purpose.
Back to Portugal and Spain… like I said, this was not my trip. So we did not wander without purpose. In fact we did not wander at all. We walked very purposefully for approximately 10 miles a day, up and down and all around to check all the boxes on all the lists. In spite of the blistering pace, I enjoyed myself immensely. I saw things I’d probably never have looked for, and we covered each of our four cities extensively by foot. At my insistence we fueled all that walking by savoring long afternoon lunches accompanied by crisp vinho verde on classic European cafe patios. I most certainly tasted the best pastel de nata (a sinful Portuguese egg tart) in Lisbon, thanks to Antonela’s research. With my travel partner’s expert planning, we also avoided the line at arguably the most popular tourist destination in Europe, the Sagrada Familia of Barcelona. It was worth every second we spent inside. At the end of our epic eight days, I came home wide-eyed, very content, and utterly exhausted.
Sunlight filtering through the hand painted stained glass of the Sagrada Familia.
It’s good for me to pick up the pace sometimes. Perhaps a morning of waking up early and walking with purpose, followed by an afternoon of aimlessness. Or a day of touristing mixed in with the string of indulgent lunches and idle wandering. As for Antonela? She quite enjoyed our one unplanned day, despite only making one check mark on her list. But most importantly, we both agreed that the best part of it all was the time we spent together. It’s rare to have that kind of quality time with a friend in the midst of our busy, scheduled lives. In the end, it didn’t really matter what the backdrop of our conversations were. Though the cafes added ambiance, and the cathedrals awe, I savored our shared experience most of all.
If you and your travel partner can’t agree on pounding the pavement or slowing down, it doesn’t have to ruin a vacation. We can all compromise a little, recognizing that a trip shared with a friend is more about the later than the former. Just remember that not all pasteis de nata are created equal, and that walking a mile and a half uphill directly after eating one makes for quite the side cramp.