How Travel Shapes the Stories We Carry Home – Drink In Life

Beyond the Bucket List: Embracing Slow Travel that Lingers

“Slow travel is being in a place long enough to experience it without having a strict itinerary. It isn’t about seeing everything but experiencing the soul of a place.” -Bhavana Gesota — The Art of Slow Travel

Ages ago, okay maybe back in the 1990’s, before the internet promised us the world at our hand through glowing screens and prior to Instagram’s curated sunsets or Pinterest collected our longings into tidy squares, the lure of travel reached us in slower, more tangible ways.

The allure of travel arrived in novels that dared us to imagine a world beyond our own borders and in travel guides that felt like clandestine handbooks. That itch to explore also came to us in films that widened the aperture of our imagination, and in magazines where the photographs magically presented whole continents onto a single page. Go back in time to before Tik Tok turorials and there was Rick Steves with his backpack and gently enthusiasm encouraging us to “Keep on traveling”.

I remember a time when my dream locations shimmered not on a tablet but from pages ripped from National Geographic and Condé Nast Traveler, taped to my bedroom wall. It reflected a colorful patchwork window into so many far off destinations.

Mostly, though, it was literature that always led my fascination with travel, the words on the page working like alchemy on my need-to-wander soul. Reading The Moveable Feast, set in Paris had me feeling as if Hemingway himself had just pulled out a chair for me at a café, his cigarette smoke curling into the air while he spoke of courage and champagne.

I devoured every book I could find that spoke of exotic and mysterious places; not only to visualize the landscapes and streets, but to imagine the people who lived there, the clothes they wore, the meals they cooked, and the secret rituals they guarded.

When I was younger, my world always felt incredibly small, but books unlocked a multitude of doors for me, widening my narrow corner into something vast. That habit of reading, learning and dreaming grew sturdier with age. Both literature and the history surrounding a place became the scaffolding of my travel dreams.

These days, discovery unfolds differently. What once required patience and imagination now arrives almost entirely digital and streamlined. Type, tap, swipe, scroll, and the secrets of a place spill into your palm. Yet even with so much easily revealed, what draws me in when searching for a new place is the unspoken voice of history, a voice that pixels or ink can never fully capture.

I have found that travel, when mixed with history, makes the journey feel less like a vacation and more like a conversation stretched across centuries. Which is why my wandering so often carries what I tend to call histourical threads, a weaving together of sights, sounds, and tastes with the echoes of those who came before.

These threads for me are what separate a journey from a check the box destination list. A snapshot of a cathedral is always beautiful, but learning the stories carved into its stones expands the memories of that place. A vineyard visit is always a pleasure, still, walking the rows with the tale of it’s history, the wars fought nearby, the families who tended the vines for centuries, makes it unforgettable. To travel slowly, “histourically” is to let history and touring move together, each giving the other depth, a kind of slow travel that lingers instead of rushing on.

It’s allowing yourself to pause long enough to ask what happened here, who shaped this place, what traditions still ripple through its streets, its kitchens, its holidays and celebrations. That is the essence of traveling histourically, not only seeing the sights but weaving them into a clearer picture of their past, so that what you remember of being there lasts longer and settles deeper.

I’ve stumbled upon this again and again in my own sojourns. In Lisbon, a simple food tour wound its way past tiled facades and small cafés, yet what stayed with me was not just the cod fritters and not so pleasant cherry liqueur. Our guide paused by a quiet building to point out tiles as she shared the story of a Portuguese consul in France during the Second World War, a man who defied orders to issue visas that saved thousands of Jews.

No history book had ever given me that story. Yet, hearing it on a city street transformed the walking tour into a histourical lesson I never knew I needed.

I felt it again in southern France, when a last-minute stop at a winery left me with something altogether different to carry home. The tour was entirely in French, a language I do not speak, yet somehow the history came alive through a costume reenactment of the family’s past.

Note: I kept my camera tucked away during the reenactment, figuring it was best enjoyed like theater, in the moment.

At the end we were ushered into a grand old room where the matriarch of the family dozed in an armchair, entirely unbothered by the visitors parading through her home. There are no photos of her either. I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her quiet dignity but, that image rests in my mind more vividly than anything in a guidebook.

With each unique adventure, when I revisit my photographs or my notes later, they hold more than the surface of a moment. They remind me of the longer narrative behind it, the years and centuries that shaped what I saw, tasted, and observed. True travel is never just present tense. It is stitched into our lives in layers, carried forward into the stories we tell.

Here on Drink In Life Blog, as I write about future journeys, I want the histourical aspect to move to the foreground, because travel matters most to me when the past stands directly beside the present. That is the direction I intend to lean into. I long for the narratives that give a place its heft, the details that allow a memory to deepen long after you’ve returned home. My hope is that these stories invite you to step beyond the tyranny of Instagram angles and the restless tug of FOMO. My wish is instead to encourage you to choose wanderings that lasts and roaming’s that leaves you with reflections to revisit, to savor, to carry.

I will still share ideas for where to stay, sip, and taste, but only as starting points, recommendations to spark your own curiosity, not prescriptions to be followed step for step. Travel should never be about recreating someone else’s highlight reel.

Too often we see the photo framed around the traveler in the center, as if their story is the one that matters most. That may be their snapshot souvenir, but it doesn’t need to be yours.

So, the next time you are globetrotting, don’t worry about recreating someone else’s perfect photo. Ask what happened there before you. Slow down and let the history breathe into your memory, because after all isn’t that what you are building? Memories. Those are the most important parts you should be carrying home.

Memory moment carried home: Take this photo of me in Cinque Terre, taken by my husband: the only thing I want it to express is how lovely it felt to sip wine with him by my side.

So, what does this mean moving forward? Over the years I’ve learned as much about writing here on this blog as I have about exploring the world. This space has been a kind of open notebook, a place where I can write without rules or restrictions, and where I’ve slowly found my own voice.

That is why change feels right. In the months ahead you’ll notice more of this slow travel and histourical perspective woven into what I write. Not every article will carry all of it, but most will. Because, just as traversing evolves, so does the way we tell its stories.

I know Drink In Life has felt a little lifeless lately, with fewer posts than usual. That pause has been for good reason, much of my time has been spent shaping a novel, gathering inspiration through journeys, and now preparing for an upcoming family wedding. All of it has pulled me temporarily away from the blog, but none of it has pulled me away from writing.

In the months ahead you’ll see this space wake up with new energy. I’ll be sharing stories from my latest wanderings in Italy’s Roero hills with Sip and Savor and Consorzio tutela del Roero, along with personal travel to Rome, Milan, and Sorrento. Places where history doesn’t hide in museums but rises up in the vineyards, piazzas, and local artesian foods. France will follow, with returns to Paris and Reims, the chalky cellars of Champagne, and Bordeaux, where my research for two upcoming novels promises to leave as many ink stains as wine rings in my notebook. Closer to home, there’s a return to the Willamette Valley for a girls’ weekend, equal parts wine, laughter, and reconnaissance, revisiting old favorites and chasing new ones.

Also, I can never resist adding a few more threads, so there will be pieces I’ve been shaping on visits to Japan, Lake Garda and Trento, as well as notes on Prague, Vienna and Portugal. I encourage you to think of these articles less as a guidebook and more as an invitation: my recommendations will be there, of course, but always with the hope that you’ll follow your own path and write your own version of the story.

That is where I’m headed, toward stories that lean more into the marrow of travel, the parts that last long after the passport has been tucked back into the safe at home. I’ll still share the places to call your home base, favorite beverages, and food experiences that leave you wanting more, but only as a way of nudging you toward your own discoveries.

My hope is that what you read here sparks more than wanderlust, that it stirs curiosity for the histories beneath the cobblestones and the voices that still echo in certain rooms.

Now I want to turn it over to you. What kinds of stories would you most like to read? Which places feel cloaked in a mystery you’re drawn to? Which histourical sites wait on your dream list, ready to step off the page and into your own explorations?

Most importantly, how do you want your journeys to shape you?

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” -Miriam Beard

Thanks, as always, for reading Drink in Life Blog. Your time here means more than you know. I’ll be wandering for a few weeks—call it ‘field research‘ with a suitcase, (perhaps with one or two bottles tucked into my check in luggage, all in the name of ‘study‘) —so things will be quiet until mid to late October, when new articles and novel updates return.

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