February, 2025
From November 2024 through January 2025, my husband and I were on a pan-European adventure, a trip you’ve heard me refer to as our 65-30-65 project
For most of the places we went, this is considered low season. Here one thing I can tell you for sure – I don’t think I’ll ever travel in the high season again.
Summer travel often is what you can do if you are in school, or the kids are in school, but sometimes it just becomes the default when it doesn’t need to be anymore.
Everything you have read about high season travel in Europe is true – crowds beyond imagination, hot weather, higher prices.
Low season has a lot to recommend it, but everything you had heard about it may or may not be true.
Here’s a few things that are true –
- The weather won’t be perfect, but it’s not perfect in Paris or Florence in the middle of summer either, and Ireland in November still beats Chicago weather. In fact, we decided that 50-65 degrees is just about right for really enjoying most activities
- The crowds will be smaller, but they won’t be small everywhere. The Louvre on a Monday morning in January still feels like the busiest train station you’ve ever seen, and that’s after you stand outside for about 20-30 minutes waiting to get in with your timed ticket.
- Prices will be lower, except for the two weeks around Christmas, and especially for vacation rentals outside hotels
- VRBO and AirBnB hosts don’t always update their rates for the low season, so send an inquiry before you book or decide someplace is too expensive
- Holiday season concerts, shows, parades, and light displays are everywhere. They are magical, and often free.
By the way, the photo is from the Powerscourt Gardens in County Wicklow, Ireland in November.
February, 2025
Sometimes I try too hard to find the meaning in random things that happen, and sometimes the meaning just reaches out to me.
That’s what happened recently when we wound up with a hummingbird in the house.
Don’t worry, the hummingbird came out of the situation just fine and is back in the yard with all of his or her friends. And I might be just a bit wiser.
January, 2025
This month I went in search of awe. For me, awe opens a mental and emotional door to the state of mind, or mindlessness, I try to get to when I meditate. Since I was in Paris, there was no shortage of world famous, awe inspiring places to choose from, both sacred and secular. The Louvre, Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, the Musee D’Orsay, even Chartres Cathedral a short train ride away.
And what did I find? I found that I don’t have the focus to find awe among massive entry lines, security checks and crowds that feel and behave more like a train station at rush hour than a museum. That was the Louvre for me, even early on a weekday morning in January, and I felt an immediate urge to leave.
Next up, Notre Dame. It felt important to see it again, and the work that has been done was remarkable. The shoulder to shoulder crowd taking selfies and other photos while mass was going on seemed to agree. Am I glad I went? Yes. Was it impressive? Yes. But and awesome experience, in that portal-opening, time disappearing kind of way? No, not for me.
Sainte-Chapelle has always been one of my favorites – you see it pictured here. The long wait out in the cold, heavily armed guards and intense security check notwithstanding, I felt a glimmer. Maybe it was the smaller crowd – the narrow, winding staircase to the second floor does moderate the traffic. There was a bit of the hush of the sacred that was missing for me in the first two stops.
And then things started looking up.
Chartres Cathedral was freezing cold and almost empty the day we visited. Though it was physically uncomfortable, without the lines and the guns and the crowds it was much more, well, awesome. My breath slowed, my mind quieted.
So did that mean that awe required the absence of other people?
Happily, not. Or at least not for me. The Musee D’Orsay was not without lines, not without security, not without crowds, but something about the very design of the place seemed to inspire better behavior, more attention to the moment, and just more space to have a personal experience.
Where is the lesson? Awe will find you, don’t give up the search.
December, 2024
This is the Duomo in Milan, Italy. Like so many world-renowned landmarks, it is awesome in detail and in scale.
Whether you aspire to prayer, contemplation, or meditation and whatever your spiritual tradition, spaces like this seem like they should be ideal places to get still.
But we humans can always find distraction more easily than stillness, can’t we? Even if you were there all alone, the visual senses are overwhelmed. But of course, you are never there alone, there are cameras clicking, there are whispered conversations and explanations in so many languages that you can’t understand but can’t entirely ignore either.
And yet, I always try to take a moment, or two, or five or ten to get quiet in places like this full of history and human artistry. Here’s what I found out this time – it’s way easier to make this work in November than in high-season summer. I mean, spiritual discipline can only take you so far.
