r/slowtravel

Hey y’all - set to launch our slow travel this October. Looking at getting a credit card that doesn’t charge international transaction fees. Does anyone use the Capitol One Venture cards? How has your experience been? We noticed online that it may have restrictions on where you can use it fee free. Have any of you run into that? Is the 5% cash back on travel only on hotels, travel booked through their portal app? How is the app? Is the Venture X worth the $400 yearly fee for the free airport lounges and other perks? Sorry to be all Oprah and ask a million questions. Thanks in advance for your responses.

Does anyone else feel like planning travel is weirdly exhausting now?

I personally take almost 2 weeks to properly plan a trip.

Between flights, hotels, restaurants, TikToks, hidden gems, visa rules, budgeting, maps, and trying to build the “perfect itinerary,” it becomes a full-time project.

Then the funny part is… when I actually reach the destination, I end up discovering so many things I completely missed while planning.

Sometimes I ditch the itinerary completely and just go with the flow and those become the best moments.

But other times I stick to the itinerary and later regret not doing the spontaneous things I came across.

Feels like there’s always a gap between planning and the actual experience.

Curious:
- How long does it usually take you to create a concrete travel plan?
- What part of travel planning drains you the most?
- Do you follow your itinerary or end up changing plans during the trip?

Lately I’ve been noticing how fragmented trip planning feels.

Flights are in one app.
Hotels somewhere else.
Itinerary in Notes.
Recommendations buried in Instagram saves.
Random screenshots everywhere.
And then WhatsApp becomes the “master document.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this while researching travel habits and wanted to ask frequent travelers here:

What’s the single most frustrating or annoying part of planning a trip today?

Could be:

• discovering places
• budgeting
• coordinating with friends
• keeping bookings organized
• last-minute changes
• finding meaningful experiences
• anything else

Curious how other people currently manage their trips.

I’ve started noticing something on group trips that I can’t unsee now. At some point, someone always says: “I’ll just wait here," and everyone else continues. But the more I think about it, the more it feels like that person didn’t actually choose to sit out. The plan just didn’t work for them. Most trips are planned by one person (understandably).

But that also means:
– the pace matches *their* energy
– the itinerary matches *their* interest
– everyone else adjusts

And then it shows up in small ways: Someone skipping a stop, someone sitting outside while others go in or someone saying “you guys go ahead” a few too many times. I’m starting to think that’s not a personality thing, it’s a planning issue.

Curious, have you seen this happen on your trips? Or been that person?

Hi, everyone!

This is my first post and I'm a fairly newbie in the community. We're planning on "retiring" early next year and loving overseas while slow traveling (for example, 8 months in Thailand, 5 months in Vietnam, 1 year in Georgia, 6 months in Morocco, 4 months in Colombia, and so on). We're not planning on returning to the US unless there's an emergency such as death in the family.

We don't have a huge portfolio (less than $500k) and are currently working with EJ on a 3-bucket strategy to fund our FIRE dream. I've read through different threads and am still confused on the best way to approach handling our investments (which would include CDs, Mutual Funds, MM, EFTs, Stocks, and potentially annuities) logistics.

1. Option 1: EJ (and 2 other financial firms) are saying to keep the US address of a relative, use it for all financial institutions, let them know you're going to be traveling and follow "Don't ask/don't tell" rule and we'll be just fine as companies like Charles Schwab do not care on where we're logging in from.

2. Option 2: Some of the threads in this Sub and articles online (as well as Gemini convo) point that it's very risky and I shouldn't be "lying" about my residency and should work with a broker who targets international investments. I tried Creative Investments but their portfolio minimum for International is $500k-$1M.

I prefer to sleep well at night and not worry about the risks, even if it requires more paperwork as I'm a rule follower. However, I'm at the end road and confused on the best way to approach this topic and get clarity given our "unorthodox" plan. Has anyone here been slow traveling the world without returning back home and if so, how do you manage your finances?

Thank you very much in advance!

Hey,

planning a sabbatical for 2030 with my girlfriend and my son Vincenz, who'll be 6 at the time. Somewhere between 3 and 9 months. We're not looking for an extended holiday — we want a real temporary life somewhere, with people, not just next to them.

What we're looking for:

A community we can actually plug into. Ecovillage, farm community, surf spot with a grown-in expat scene — doesn't matter what, as long as there's genuine connection to other people

Kids for Vincenz to play with. Kindergarten or some kind of childcare structure would be ideal, but open to alternative setups — as long as it works for a 6-year-old

A different way of living. That's the core of it. We live very urban, very structured right now. We want to see how other people organize their lives — farm, ecovillage, cooperative, whatever

Strongly preferred but not a dealbreaker: surfing, kitesurfing, or climbing. Water or rock.

What we're NOT looking for:

Tourist bubble spots where everyone stays 2 weeks

Pure retreat centers without real community life

Places without kids around

Places already on my radar:

Nosara, Costa Rica — strong expat family community, surfing, kindergarten available, but no kiting and expensive

Jericoacoara/Tatajuba, Brazil — world-class kiting, affordable, but school structure unclear

Arco, Italy — solid climbing community, great infrastructure, but more conventional than alternative

What have you experienced or know that actually works for 3–9 months as a family? Especially curious about what the community experience was like for the kid.

Travelers who prefer hyper-local, intimate cultural experiences over commercial tour buses—how do you plan your itineraries in intense destinations?

ok. Moroccan guide. 40ish trips a year. gonna say the thing

the 5 day morocco trip report is always the same one and I'm tired. you know the one. Marrakech was overwhelmming the Sahara drive was long, Chefchaouen was .. pretty but touristy, .. you came home tired, you gave it a 6.

I'm not mad at you I m mad at whoever sold you that itinerary. because what you actually did was sit in a van. that's the trip. the trip was the van.

think about it. day one you land at 3, by 6 you're in jemaa el-fna which is genuinely one of the most chaotic public spaces on the planet, someone tries to hand you a monkey, welcome to Morocco. then it's 9 hours in a seat the next morning to merzouga (and yeah it's 9, not the 6 google told you, there's roadworks between tinghir and rissani that nobody updates). camel for an hour, tent, camel back, seven more hours the next day to fes. you get to fes and you're done. you're just done. you walk around the medina for an afternoon in a fog and fly home from casa.

that's not Morocco that's a bus tour of a map of Morocco.

give the country 10 days and it becomes a completely different place. two nights in marrakech instead of one, you can actually sit in a café and watch the square instead of being attacked by it. aït benhaddou with a stop in ouarzazate. two nights in the desert not one (the second night is the one, the first you're just recovering from the drive). a village in the atlas nobody's posted about. THEN fes, with energy, which fes requires or it eats you.

look I know nobody has PTO. I know. honestly if you've got 5 days go to andalusia, it's built for 5 days, morocco isn't. or do just marrakech and essaouira and skip the desert entirely, that's a real 5-day trip. the rushed loop is the one that ruins it.

anyone who did 10+ days here tell me I'm right. anyone who did 5 and loved it, genuinely what was the itinerary, I want to know.

Hi everyone,

I’m a solo founder from Paris and, over the past year, I’ve been building a self-guided food tour for travelers who, like myself, enjoy slower and more local ways of exploring cities.

The whole idea behind it was to create an alternative to classic group food tours: something more personal, to do at your own pace, to discover French cuisine and meet small independent artisans. It's more about quality and taking your time, rather than rushing from one bite to the next, eating as much as possible in 3 hours.

And, I’ve honestly poured my whole heart into this project, but I’m realizing that reaching the right people is harder than I expected. So instead of guessing, I thought I’d simply ask people who actually enjoy slow travel :)

When you plan a city trip, how do you usually discover:

• local restaurants?
• meaningful experiences?
• hidden gems? things that feel less touristy and more authentic?

Do you mostly use:

• blogs? which ones?
• Reddit?
• Instagram/TikTok/Facebook?
• guidebooks? which ones?
• newsletters?
• word of mouth?
• Get Your Guide/Viator?
• specific creators or websites you trust?

I’d genuinely love to hear as much as possible about your habits, references, frustrations, favorite platforms, or even accounts/websites you trust when traveling.

Thank you so much!

I love to travel, especially solo travel so much. But every time I tell myself to be more present, take it slow and just enjoy. Every time, I end up being stressed, pushing myself to see everything as much as possible.

I am at the start of my solo trip in Asia, I have 10 days behind me and 1 more month to go. I really want to slow down and just be present. But I am not sure how to do that. Sometimes I can achieve that by sitting in a cafe and sketching.

Do you guys have any advice on how to presently enjoy travel more?

I know that it's normal that not everyday is going to be amazing, and that there are times when things go wrong. But I feel that I could do better at enjoying the trip more. Any advice?

Looking for weekly/monthly stays. What have you had success with?

Hello! Wife and I are coming up on retirement in a few years and would like to slow travel.

We imagine this is going to consist of ending our lease (not looking to own a home right now), putting most of our stuff in a storage locker, and changing our mailing address to a close friend or family member. Is this pretty much how it went for you guys?

Also a few questions:
- How do you manage your money? Withdraw from your US investment accounts once a year and transfer to an international bank?
- How do you handle healthcare?
- How have you planned your trips bouncing from one location to another? Did you start with a bucket list? Do you do one place at a time and worry about the next one while you’re there or plan out upwards of a year ahead of time?

My husband and I are starting our slow travel in retirement experience and have a logistics question.

It’s a little convoluted so bear with me … we have an extra car that I am very attached to. It’s not “worth” a lot but would be expensive to replace nowadays (older convertible Miata 💙).

We are trying to figure out where/if we want to settle down. We currently rent in the east, own in the middle (it’s for sale), and are driving across country to rent for a year in the west.

Option 1 - store here, we love it and might be back

Option 2 - store 3 hours away near family who we might visit

Option 3 - store near our land where we will definitely visit during the year even if it sells

For those of you who are seasoned at this, what do you recommend?

I have this question because I had an argument with a friend: she believes that when she goes to any new place she has to be everywhere, visit any corner written on the guide or on internet. but I’m not like this . I’m sure that maybe I lose some ‘experiences’ but I still believe the best way to understand a place is just walk around, try to really SEE what surrounds you and not just take pictures.. so my reason is this: I think this is the best way to understand the place you visit. What is yours? And also, how do you find ‘slow travel’ experiences?

I have traveled internationally a lot and some routes are just painfully inefficient. Especially with the on going geopolitical complexities in the middle east.

Has anyone used private travel for routes with terrible connections or long overnight layover?

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