How to Travel Slower and Taste More
- Shannon Bard
- Oct 28
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 30
Outside, Marrakech rushes — but in here, the world exhales.
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I am sitting alone in a restaurant above the markets of Marrakech, watching the rhythm of the city through a pane of glass. The Moroccan flag flutters so close I could almost touch it, though the moment itself and the planed glass asks me not to. Below, vendors call out prices I don’t understand; above, the sky begins to bruise with sunset. There’s no wine here. Too near the mosque for such things. But the night doesn’t need it. The air is already intoxicating.
It’s the kind of pause travel rarely gives us. No checklist, no camera raised. Just me, the scent of cumin, the flute of the snake charmer, and the soft scrape of silverware on porcelain. This is what I’ve come to understand: you don’t discover a place by moving faster; you discover it by moving with it.
To travel slower isn’t to see less. It’s to see deeper.
When the World Speeds Up, Slow Down
We are trained to chase. Chase flights, itineraries, moments we can prove. But the truth of a place hides in its pauses.
In Provence, I learned that afternoons have their own silence. The markets close, the air thickens with heat, and time itself becomes something you can almost taste. Lavender dries in the sun. Bread cools on windowsills. Life exhales.
In Tokyo, I watched a sushi chef’s hands, steady, deliberate, unhurried, slicing fish as if the knife were an extension of breath. In those movements was a lesson: mastery requires stillness, not speed.
Slowing down doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means being fully in what’s already happening.
Flavor Lives In Stillness
In Kyoto, a geisha passed me on a narrow street, the sound of her wooden sandals barely breaking the quiet. Her grace wasn’t performance; it was patience. Every step deliberate, every motion complete.
In Istanbul, I skipped the famous stalls of the Spice Bazaar and slipped into a café just behind it. Locals played backgammon under strings of colored bulbs. Someone refilled my tea before I could finish it, a wordless invitation to stay longer. From that small wooden table, I watched life unfold, slow, imperfect, perfectly real.
In Vietnam, I sat on a plastic stool so close to the ground I could feel the heat rising from it. The broth steaming in front of me was a kind of meditation. Each slurp slower than the last until I realized the entire street had fallen into the same rhythm.
Stillness has its own flavor. One that never appears on a menu.
What Slowness Teaches Us
The more I travel, the more I see that pace shapes perception. Rush, and everything blurs; linger, and the world sharpens.
In San Sebastián, after a long night in the kitchen, I ate standing beside the sink. Salt still on my hands, sea air pushing through the open window. That bite, simple and unadorned, tasted like arrival.
Slowness teaches patience. In cooking, in travel, in living. It shows you that flavor isn’t born in intensity but in attention. Every culture knows this: the long simmer of broth in Japan, the patient proofing of bread in France, the hours it takes for Moroccan tagine to surrender to tenderness.
To move slowly is to show respect. Respect to food, to people, to yourself.
Living The Art of Slow
When I design journeys now, I build time into them. Space to breathe, wander, notice. I tell guests: leave room for what you didn’t plan. That’s where the story always hides.
In Marrakech, that story lives in candle wax and call to prayer. In Provence, it’s the weight of heat at noon. In Istanbul, it’s the swirl of tea, poured high and slow. Everywhere, it’s the same invitation: pause, taste, feel.
A sip taken slowly, wine, tea, broth, teaches that flavor has nothing to do with strength and everything to do with surrender.
The Aftertaste
The more I rush, the less I remember. The more I pause, the more life lingers.
I think back to that evening in Marrakech, candelabras dripping, the market’s hum below, my glass empty but my senses full. The desert air pressed against the window, carrying dust and silence in equal measure. I realized then that slow isn’t the absence of motion, it’s motion with meaning.
So, wherever you go next, let yourself arrive completely. Taste the tea before it cools, watch the light before it fades, listen before you speak.
The world doesn’t need you to move faster. It needs you to notice.
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