When the café amb llet de civada (coffee with oat milk), my regular order, was already waiting for me as I approached the small counter at Xiloteca, Xavi the barista smiling broadly in welcome, I was warmed by the sense of belonging … or perhaps it was simply the summer heat. Just a week into a month-long sojourn in Barcelona and I had made a minor inroad as part of the El Born neighborhood. This was the third summer in a row that my daughter Violet and I had taken an extended residence in Europe — first in Paris, then Amsterdam and now in the lively Catalan capital — and our mission to more deeply experience our temporary home was off to a great start.

There is an understandable impulse when traveling to pack one’s itinerary full of the infinite adventures that this world has to offer. But, while your eyes may behold vast wonders, the impressions tend to fuzz into a blur of monuments and museums and hikes. Rather than completing a checklist, travel can be an opportunity to gain meaningful perspective; a new and less harried daily routine; and bonds of new friendship that are difficult to achieve when flitting rapidly from place to place. This requires a commitment to remain in one locale for long enough to get a true sense of the area, to begin to embody its ethos.

Photos courtesy of T.J. Vobori

To see a city in its various guises and over time — in the first light of dawn, during the bustling night, in a deluge, during local holidays — is to begin to glimpse its essential character and that of its denizens. Wandering through Paris during La Fête de la Musique with new friends we met at the climbing gym — on a solstice day when the streets were packed with musicians of every genre — was an unforgettable experience. It offered a chance to see my favorite city through a totally different lens than during a morning run, a relaxing evening at a café or hurried ride home on our Dance e-bikes to escape a torrential downpour.

There are practical and wellness benefits derived from staying put. Having an Airbnb for two months is not only much more affordable, but also provides a steady home base for those days when you don’t want to do much other than the laundry and some reading and cooking, perhaps a slow stroll to say hello to the butcher always ready with a tasty morsel of something special. Instead of a rotating series of unpredictable hotel beds, you can get deep rest in what becomes your own bed, with all of the accoutrements of home at your disposal. Fortunately, because you are not running from car to train to bus to plane, you are perhaps less in need of sleep — the typical week of travel amongst multiple cities can be completely exhausting.

Those aforementioned Dance e-bikes, along with Swapfiets in Amsterdam and Panot in Barcelona, have proved invaluable as reliable and cheap modes of transportation. Available only as monthly subscriptions, they allow you to have your own bike ready at your leisure, all maintenance and insurance included. There is perhaps no better way to really see and intuit the essence of a city than while navigating on a bike, especially in Amsterdam, where bikes are part of the fabric of the culture. It is an adventure in and of itself to blast around city streets — watching Violet have the confidence to navigate the Place de la Concorde during rush hour was a mixture of pride and terror — and gaining an understanding of the mores and codes of each city’s traffic quirks takes time.

Immersed in a neighborhood, you can observe the daily rhythms as the city awakens and goes about its days and nights, a flow that you will begin to inhabit. You will soon know when to arrive to get the freshest bread, which days the market has those absurdly ripe strawberries, when your favorite bartender has her shifts. If you are patient and friendly, your neighbors will begin to open up to you, inviting you into their home or directing you to their favorite restaurant, the proprietor of which will then in turn send you to the establishments of his chef friends, in an upward spiral of gustatory delight. Soon enough, you can stop using Google Maps to find these places and can just follow your memory through the streets that you trod each day.

Although you are still transitory, at least until you eventually decide to move to Paris, you are less so in a way that allows for actual connections to form, whether it be with a cycling team or running club or with the witty kooks that run the art gallery underneath your apartment. In this way you will come to understand that your people are everywhere and in unlikely places, whether it be on the dock by the lake in Nkhata Bay or in a hair salon in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu neighborhood.

The purpose of travel being to transport and therefore transform, resist the temptation to go everywhere and just stay a while somewhere. The ensuing epiphany will be that being a local is irrelevant when we are all just citizens of the world.

T.J. Vobori
Attorney, Mediator, Writer
alpenglowlaw.com

Originally published in the winter + spring 2025-26 issue of Well.