One year ago I made a deliberate decision to travel slowly rather than to take normal tourist trips. I wanted to find out what actually happens when you commit to staying somewhere long enough to know it rather than long enough to photograph it. The marketing for slow travel promised substantial things. The actual demands of slow travel suggested those promises might be exaggerated.
I tracked everything for the year. Where I went, what I spent, who I met, what changed in how I travel and how I think about travel. Now the year is done and I have actual data instead of just impressions.
The result is more complicated than either slow-travel enthusiasts or guidebook traditionalists typically suggest.
What I expected
Going in I expected:
Travel would cost less per week than tourist travel. The marketing implied this through "you save by not eating tourist meals."
I would see less in absolute terms. Fewer destinations. Slower pace.
I would learn more about specific places. The depth-versus-breadth tradeoff was the entire premise.
I would feel less like a tourist and more like a temporary resident.
Some satisfaction from "doing travel right" relative to typical tourist patterns.
Most expectations were partially correct but in different ways than I anticipated.
What actually happened with cost
The cost story is more complicated than expected.
Some things genuinely cost less. Apartment rentals for a month are dramatically cheaper than hotels for a month. Cooking some meals at home cuts food costs substantially. Public transit instead of taxis reduces transport spending.
Some things cost the same. Activities and entry fees don't scale with length of stay. A museum costs the same whether you're visiting for two days or two months.
Specific costs increased. Long stays mean accumulating things. Local produce shopping requires trips. Settling in produces costs that pure-tourist travel doesn't generate.
My total weekly spending decreased by approximately 32% across the year compared with tourist-travel benchmarks. Substantial but not as dramatic as marketing suggested.
The cost decrease produced specific quality improvements I value. The math was reasonable for me. Different financial situations would produce different conclusions.
What actually happened with what I saw
The seeing experience was different from expected:
I visited fewer destinations in absolute terms — five extended stays rather than fifteen tourist trips.
The places I visited I knew substantially better. I could name streets, recognize patterns, identify specific people who became part of my year.
The famous tourist sights I sometimes skipped entirely. After three weeks somewhere, the museum I never went to felt fine to skip.
I saw different things. Daily life patterns, neighborhood evolution across weeks, the way specific cafes filled and emptied across times of day.
For my actual interest in places, the seeing experience was net positive despite smaller absolute number of destinations.
What actually happened with feeling like a tourist
This was the biggest unexpected element:
I did stop feeling like a tourist after the first three weeks somewhere. The transition was specific and identifiable.
I started feeling like a temporary resident — neither tourist nor local, a specific in-between status with its own dynamics.
The locals I encountered repeatedly came to recognize me. Some of them became actual relationships rather than transactions.
I developed routines. Specific cafes for specific times. Specific markets for specific items. The routines made the place feel more like home than guidebook destinations had.
Some loneliness emerged that pure tourism didn't produce. The temporary-resident status doesn't produce the deep relationships of actual residence.
The temporary-resident experience is its own thing. Not better or worse than tourist travel — different.
What actually happened with depth of knowledge
The depth experience was substantial:
I know the cities I lived in much better than the cities I've toured.
I know specific neighborhoods at multiple times of day, multiple days of the week, multiple weeks of seasonal change.
I know food patterns — what produce is in season, which restaurants are good on which nights, where locals eat versus where tourists eat.
I know cultural rhythms — when shops close, when streets fill, when public transit runs.
I know specific people — the cafe owner who started recognizing my order, the neighbor who asked about my day in passing, the bookshop owner who started saving books for me.
The depth is genuine. Tourist travel can't produce this knowledge regardless of how thoughtfully it's done.
The five extended stays
Across the year I had five extended stays:
Madrid (3 months). The starting point. I rented an apartment in Lavapiés. The neighborhood became my home. I now know it intimately.
Mexico City (3 months). Roma Norte for the first month, La Condesa for the next two. The shift between them taught me about within-city neighborhood dynamics.
Buenos Aires (2 months). Palermo Soho for the first three weeks, then Recoleta. The food culture in Buenos Aires deserves its own post (I wrote one).
Lisbon (2 months). Bairro Alto initially, then Alfama. The shift across the city produced different experiences of the same place.
Granada (2 months). The Albaicín. The slowest, smallest stay. The one I'm most likely to return to.
Each stay had its own dynamics. The pattern of arrive-settle-explore-go-deeper-leave repeated itself with variations. The repetition itself was educational.
What surprised me about the food
The food experience was substantial:
Cooking at home produced better experiences than I expected. Local markets, local recipes, occasional dinner parties with people I met.
Restaurant meals were better when I knew the city. I learned which places were genuinely good versus which were tourist-targeted.
Specific small local restaurants became favorites in ways that Yelp-recommended tourist restaurants never could.
I stopped eating at "the famous restaurants" and ate at "the good restaurants the neighborhood actually goes to" instead.
Food is one of the strongest cases for slow travel. The depth of food experience improves dramatically with stay length.
What surprised me about the language
I'm a native Spanish speaker, which made language an asset rather than a barrier across most of the year.
What I learned anyway:
Local accents and idioms differ substantially across Spanish-speaking countries. The Madrid Spanish I started with is not the same as Mexico City Spanish or Buenos Aires Spanish.
Adapting linguistically was part of integrating in each place.
Even with full language fluency, cultural codes embedded in language take time to absorb.
Lisbon was different. Portuguese is close enough to Spanish that I could mostly function. The proximity sometimes obscured specific Portuguese cultural patterns I missed.
For non-native speakers, language acquisition would be a substantial part of the slow travel experience. Native fluency simplified my year but limited that specific learning.
What I got wrong
Things I planned that didn't work:
Switching neighborhoods within cities sometimes created less continuity than I expected. The settling process restarts; the established routines reset.
Two months sometimes felt too short to fully settle and too long for surface tourism. Specific stays felt awkwardly between the two modes.
Some specific places didn't fit the slow-travel model well. Smaller cities I tried briefly didn't produce the depth that the bigger cities did.
I underestimated how much logistics consume time during slow travel. The visa runs, apartment turnovers, transitions between cities consumed days that I'd expected to use for exploration.
The "I'll learn local cooking" plan was less successful than expected. Three months isn't enough to genuinely master a regional cuisine; just to start tasting it.
What worked better than expected
Things I didn't plan that worked well:
Specific friendships formed across the year. Not many, but real. They have continued past the year ending.
The reading I did across the year was substantial. Long evenings at home, slow afternoons in cafes, time on long flights.
The journaling habit I developed produced material I now value enormously.
The exposure to multiple Spanish-speaking cultures changed how I think about identity in ways I'm still processing.
The slow pace produced creative work. I wrote substantially more during the year than I do at home.
What this experience changed
Looking back across the year, what's changed in me:
I have less interest in tourist trips now. The compressed rushing through places has lost its appeal.
I have more interest in repeated stays. Returning to places I've started knowing has emerged as the model that interests me.
I think differently about cost-quality tradeoffs in travel. The expensive options often produce shallower experiences than slower cheaper options.
I think more about specific neighborhoods and less about cities. Cities are too big to know; neighborhoods can be known specifically.
I have a different relationship to home. Spending substantial time elsewhere clarified what specifically about home matters to me.
Should other people do this
Whether slow travel works for someone depends on:
Financial situation. Slow travel still requires funding even if it's less expensive than rapid tourism.
Work flexibility. The remote-work compatibility matters enormously.
Psychological compatibility with the temporary-resident status. Some people would find this lonely or frustrating.
Specific destinations matter. Slow travel works in some places much better than others.
Personal patterns. People who prefer routine over novelty may benefit more than people who thrive on change.
For me it was the right experiment. For others it would be a different experience.
What I'd tell someone considering slow travel
If you're considering doing this:
Plan for stays of one month minimum. Anything shorter doesn't produce the depth that justifies the slower pace.
Pick neighborhoods specifically rather than just cities. The neighborhood matters as much as the city for daily-life experience.
Build in real settling time. The first week is logistical; the second week is orientation; depth starts in week three.
Bring routine-building habits with you. Daily walks, regular cafes, journaling practices help establish home-feeling faster.
Allow loneliness. Some homesickness and isolation will happen. Working through it is part of the experience.
Don't over-plan. Slow travel benefits from openness to what each place offers rather than predetermined itineraries.
What's next for me
The year is over but the changes from it persist.
I'm back in Madrid for an extended period now. The base feels different than it did before the year of travel.
I plan more slow travel ahead. Probably shorter stays — one month at a time — but multiple of them across the next year.
The five extended stays from my year all want to be returned to. Granada particularly. I will be back in the Albaicín next spring.
The model that emerged for me isn't pure slow travel or pure normal life. It's a hybrid where I'm based somewhere but go elsewhere for substantial periods regularly.
That's what one year of experiment produced. Worth it. I'd recommend the experiment to anyone in a position to try it.
