The best trip I took last year, I did almost nothing. No landmarks, no “10 things you can’t miss,” no 5am alarm for the famous viewpoint before the crowds. I read on a balcony. I walked the same loop each morning and bought the same pastry. By the standards of travel content, I was doing it completely wrong.
It was also the only trip in years I came home rested.
The optimisation treadmill
Somewhere along the way, trips became projects. Bucket lists to clear, days to maximise, an unspoken pressure to extract the full value from every expensive hour. We plan holidays the way we plan sprints, then wonder why we come back needing a holiday from the holiday.
A packed itinerary feels productive. It rarely feels good. You spend the trip managing the trip — queuing, rushing, checking the next reservation — and the actual experience happens to someone too busy to notice it.
Boring as a small rebellion
Choosing a boring trip is a quiet refusal to let productivity culture colonise the one week a year that’s supposed to be yours. No agenda is not a waste of a destination. It might be the point of one.
What nothing actually gives you
Rest, obviously. But also presence — the thing every travel brand promises and few itineraries allow. When there’s nothing to rush to, you start noticing: the light at six, the rhythm of a town that isn’t staged for you, your own thoughts finally catching up. You don’t owe anyone an impressive trip. The photos that prove you “did” a place are not the same as having been there.
Sometimes the most radical itinerary is no itinerary: a quiet place, an open week, and nothing to prove. If the opposite has been wearing you down, you’ll recognise it in why some destinations feel exhausting now and the pressure to enjoy every trip.
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John Morrison is the founder and lead travel writer at Packzup. Over the past decade he has explored destinations across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania — always self-funded, never on a press trip.