The internet tells you to seek satisfaction in the number of countries you visited. You start admiring the travel pages that have the fancy ‘93/193’ caption on their bio listing the countries they’ve visited. But I am here to say that you don’t have to tell your travel stories in the same way.
I’ve been to Italy three times:
- Learned skiing in the Alps
- Relaxed in Lake Como
- Summer road trip across Amalfi Coast
Over the course of these three trips, I learned how to ski for the first time and hung out with people who have been skiing since they were five years old. We skied all morning, most of which I spent falling into and trying to get up from the snow, and danced to Italian Apres-Ski music all evening.
I got to drive my parents through the beautiful towns around Lake Como to the chaos of the Duomo in Milan. We relaxed on our Airbnb’s porch watching the sun set over the lake and walked to the nearby town to have local food.
I celebrated 10-years of friendship with my best friends driving through the North and Central Italy, marvelling at the historic cities of Florence, Naples, and Rome. We stayed at rustic vineyards in Tuscany getting tipsy on wine during every meal. We leisured through the small towns along the Amalfi coast, soaked in what every town had to offer. Quenched our summer thirst with Aperol Spritz at every corner. We took a boat ride to the Capri island and jumped into the Mediterranean Sea to swim in the crisp blue water.
Compressing all these beautiful moments into a single ‘checking Italy off my list’ downplays the unique experiences each place offered and the impact each trip had on me!
And that’s true for almost every country. The thriving city-that-never-sleeps of New York offers a very different experience than the vastness of Californian mountains and the deserts of Nevada.
So the next time you feel like you don’t have any travel experience because you didn’t visit an X number of countries, keep in mind that each small town has a micro-culture that is waiting to be explored. Remember that each trip has a story waiting to unfold and you can be the author of it!
