I wasn’t immediately infatuated with Merida. I liked it on first sight, but I wasn’t gripped by it in an inescapable way. But with each day, my affection for the city grew and grew until it was almost time to leave, and I realized I wasn’t ready to go.
Merida is a city to uncover in layers. It waits to see if you’ll find the best parts of it instead of presenting them all at once. It’s a city that you shouldn’t rush. (How many cities have I overlooked because I didn’t realize this in time?)
When I started planning my 5-month trip to Europe, I imagined I would be embracing the idea of slow-travel. The internet has a lot of different ideas for how to define slow travel (How slow does it have to be to count as “slow”?), but what it meant to me was taking the time to get to know each place I visited instead of rushing as quickly as possible between cities. I envisioned spending a week or two in each place, slow mornings writing in coffee shops, taking circus classes in Paris, and tango dancing in sweaty bars in Rome. (For the record, I failed to find a circus class in Paris that would allow me to drop in, though I did take one in Montreal! And I decided to forgo the tango dancing due to Covid risks. But I did do a lot of writing in cafes!) And while I would say that my intent never changed during my trip (the intent of trying to fully experience a destination rather than check a tourist attraction off a bucket list), I ended up moving much faster than I envisioned.
At first I thought my trip would be entirely in the Balkans and Turkey. Then I decided it only made sense to expand it to Central Europe. Then I decided I couldn’t visit Europe for so long and skip Italy. Then I decided I couldn’t miss the Christmas Markets. Then I decided I may as well squeeze in Scotland. And ultimately, I ended up propelled by such a desire to see as much as possible that I never stayed in one place for more than 4 nights in a row. (Except for when I got Covid. That was 6 nights.) But curiously, it didn’t feel too fast.
By some people’s standards, I WAS moving slowly in that I was devoting substantial time to certain countries and regions. I spent around two weeks each in Romania, Turkey, Greece, and Croatia and over three weeks cumulatively in Italy. I’d stay in a city for a few days then circle back to it and stay for a few more. I stayed in big cities and in smaller towns that most people only visit on day trips. For that trip, my pace felt right. I never felt burnt out, and my excitement never waned. I assumed slow travel would be my preferred way to travel, but maybe I’m a person who needs to move to stay energized? I knew I still needed to try it.
Merida was the test for me. Again, I felt like I wasn’t quite doing it right. I stayed in Merida for a couple of weeks, but during those weeks I changed accommodations three times. I took a week of evening Spanish classes, but I packed my days with day trips. I imagined having my own kitchen and saving money by cooking some of my own meals, but I stayed in hostels the entire time and never cooked a thing. Again, I started with a plan to stay still for much longer, then I had to shorten the duration of my time in Mexico because of my job, and I got greedy about cramming in as much as possible.
So though I am a big proponent of “slow travel,” I think perhaps I’m also a fraud. I think I’ve traveled slower than the average vacationer’s standards, but I don’t think I’ve really traveled slowly yet. (I have plans to try it again in the near-ish future.) BUT Merida was a good gateway for me to see if slowing down is my style.
Truthfully, I think it depends. I think it depends on my reason for selecting a certain destination or my goals for being there. In the case of Merida, I wanted desperately to stay longer. I considered changing my plans for the remainder of my time in Mexico to stay for an extra week. I was jealous of everyone I met who was taking additional weeks of the Spanish language class that I took just one week of.
I stayed in Merida for two weeks—longer than I’ve ever visited a city that wasn’t for a job. At first, the expanse of time felt unsettling. But Merida is a city that’s big enough to keep you occupied and small enough that it doesn’t feel intimidating. By the end of my first week, I knew only four people in the city by name, but I’d run into two of them unplanned on the sidewalk. It feels like everyone knows everyone in Merida. A hostel receptionist invited me to join her and her friends on a road trip to a neighboring town. A man I met randomly on the street invited me to eat at his restaurant and told me to introduce myself as his guest so I’d get free snacks. In the American South, we boast about our hospitality, but what I found in Merida far surpassed it.
When I plan hypothetical future travels, I envision renting an apartment for a month, working my regular hours, cooking meals, and getting a monthly pass at a gym. And then I spend too long looking at a map and thinking about all the places just a few hours away on a bus that I certainly can’t miss, and then things start to get out of hand.
I do not have a moral of this story or a lesson to impart. Except perhaps the lesson is that what’s right for one person isn’t necessarily what’s right for another. There are a lot of travelers on the internet who have VERY strong opinions about how people SHOULD travel, and many of them have platforms so large they can make their voices very loud. But maybe their style doesn’t work for you, or maybe every journey you take will look different than the ones before, and you don’t have to prescribe rules to them. And hopefully one day I will successfully travel more slowly and sit still for a while. But shut me up if I try to convince you that this is the “right” or “wrong” way to do it.
I recently had a friend ask me if spending just 24 hours in Paris would be worth it. He and his wife had a layover in Paris that they had the chance to extend to 24-hours, and neither of them had ever been. My response was, Is that even a real question? OF COURSE you should!! Slow travel is a luxury that most people don’t get to have, especially in the United States where the number of vacation days most companies offer is shameful. And I will always think that seeing a place very briefly is better than not seeing it at all.
That being said, I do think I learned a good lesson from staying longer in Merida. And if you have the opportunity to unclutter your itinerary and leave room for spontaneous road trips with new friends, writing in coffee shops, and going to the gelato place so many days in a row that the workers learn your order, I don’t think you’ll regret it.
