When you spend two weeks in a country whose vowels don’t behave and whose written language might as well be hieroglyphics, you start to think about words.

We use them to buy train tickets and assemble Smart TVs. But their real work is something else entirely.

Connection.

Long time followers are probably tired of my oft-repeated phrase (lifted wholesale from EM Forester’s Howards End) “Only connect!”

The trips that stay with me are the ones where something clicks—between me and a place, or a person, or even just a version of myself. The ones that fall flat? I can’t really ever blame the destination. Rather, it’s the absence of that click.

I’ve had what I described as “fine” places—food and landscape good enough, but without je ne sais quoi—take on a different glow after a single conversation with a waiter.

Language training helps, of course. In Italy, I can fumble my way into something resembling a real exchange. In Japan, I could not. And so I went looking for the smallest possible bridge.

Not “hello.” Not “thank you” (though, yes, I learned those, too).

A better word.

Delicious.

Think about it—mmm might be one of the first things we ever say. It’s right up there with mama. Appreciation is a kind of language, a meditation on our shared humanity.

And it works.

In France, years ago, I ate a duck so good I had to close my eyes between bites. When the waiter came, I offered up a hopeful c’est magnifique, plus a few universal “wow”s. He lit up. “I’ll tell the chef,” he said. When the bill came, the duck—just the duck—had been discounted. Connection acknowledged.

In Modena, I told a waiter (deploying the subjunctive with all the pride of someone who had suffered to learn it) that his ricotta was the best in Italy. He rocked back on his heels, grinned, and sent over walnut liqueur.

So in Japan, I arrived armed with one word: oishii.

I used it constantly. At breakfast, lunch, dinner. The reaction was immediate, every time—surprise, then delight. A little moment, passed back and forth.

At a ramen shop in Tokyo, the waiter asked, “Oishii?” I put down my chopsticks. “Hai! Oishii!” He beamed, then took my phone and snapped our photo, as if to mark the exchange.

At a cooking class in Kanazawa, it became a call and response between me and the instructor. “Oishii?” “Hai! Oishii!” Head nod, smile, repeat. We understood each other perfectly.

Your word might be different. Maybe it’s not food. Maybe it’s music, or sport, or art.

But if you can find the thing that delights you—and learn how to say so, even badly—you’ll find your way in.

And that, more than any itinerary, is what makes a place linger, long after the photographs have faded.

I’ve always loved traveling.

Which is, honestly, a bit surprising, given how much anxiety I used to carry everywhere.

What if I miss my connection?
What if I booked the wrong dates?
What if I get sick?

Believe me, I’ve worried about it all.

These days, not much rattles me when I travel. I like to think it’s because I’ve built a sense of safety that comes with me—a kind of internal carry-on, tucked neatly alongside my passport.

Some of that is practice. I’ve missed enough connections, made enough mistakes, gotten sick in enough inconvenient places to know that future me is…capable. Annoyed, perhaps. But capable.

But lately, as I’ve been preparing for our local Tom Tom Festival talk on courage and travel (April 23rd at 5:30—come if you can!), I’ve been thinking about what shifted before all that practice.

Because not everyone gets years of trial runs.

So here’s something you can use right now.

It starts with goats.

Stay with me.

Goats—and bears.

Imagine you’re walking home at dusk. The light is low, the street quiet. Ahead of you, something moves.

A bear.

Your body reacts instantly—heart racing, breath shallow, danger everywhere.

Then the clouds shift. The moon comes out.

Not a bear.

A goat.

Of course it’s a goat. The odds were always better. Still odd, sure—but not bear odd.

You exhale. Maybe laugh. You give the goat a wide berth as it snacks on your neighbor’s zinnias and continue on your way.

Here’s the thing:

Some people see a shadow and think bear.
Some people see a shadow and think goat.

The goat people aren’t just calmer—they’re usually right.

And that matters when you travel.

Out of the hundred times I’ve worried about missing a connection, it’s happened…twice. Maybe. Two bears. Ninety-eight goats.

And even those bears? Manageable. A hotel room. A surprise train ride. An anecdote I now whip out at cocktail parties.

The trick isn’t to eliminate uncertainty. It’s to stop promoting every shadow to a crisis.

These days, I don’t let something become a bear until it actually is one. And even then, it’s usually less “life-threatening predator” and more “this is deeply inconvenient, but here we are.”

So if you want to carry safety with you on your travels, start here:

Look for goats.

Notice when your mind leaps to bear, and gently question it. More often than not, you’re dealing with something far more ordinary—and far more manageable. Even if your brain is sending hazard signals to your heart.

There is something powerful in the act of naming. Yes, it feels like a bear, but it’s really a goat. With practice, there’s a clickover, a nervous system shift. At a deeper level you’ll begin believing in goats. You’ll start to find them everywhere.

And if it does turn out to be a bear?

Well. Those make the best stories anyway.

We’ll be talking more about this—along with a few of my favorite travel “bears”—at Tom Tom. I’d love to see you there.

In the meantime, I’m curious:

What are your secrets to carry a sense of safety alongside your Handi Wipes and Dramamine?

Next time you’re scared of a travel mishap, you can also think of it as a cat in a tutu…

I return home from Japan filled with sensations.

So many sensations that as I move through the world, I feel like I’m trailing the scent of yuzu and the colors of Kanazawa’s Kutani ceramics behind me.

One thought I can pluck from the tempest is simple:

How do Japanese travelers experience the rest of the world?

If my introduction to the land of the rising sun spurred this much disorientation, how do people who grow up with rice in 50,000 forms—from sake to seaweed-wrapped rice balls to chewy sweets drizzled with sweetened miso—see other countries?

To be honest, I keep coming back to one place in particular.

Italy.

Perhaps because it’s where I’ve spent the most time as an outsider.

The first time the thought struck me was on the shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagano, a bare few hours after landing.

I’d finished my glorious bento box (and texted my kids the $7 price tag, to which my eldest replied: “You can’t get a Snickers for $7 on Amtrak”), wiped my hands, taken the last glug of bottled green tea, and headed to the bathroom.

I’ve been on plenty of trains. I consider myself well acquainted with train bathrooms.

And yet I stood in that doorway for a full minute before nodding to myself.

I can do this.

I’d heard about Japanese toilets. I’d even watched Perfect Days (stop reading and go watch it immediately), so I knew they could be…elevated.

I just didn’t expect to encounter one like this on a bullet train.

What struck me first wasn’t the bells and whistles.

It was the cleanliness. The kind of clean my bathroom achieves for roughly one hour after a heroic effort.

I wondered—when was the last time I used a bathroom on public transportation that didn’t involve mysterious droplets of what I hope is water, rogue toilet paper clinging to the floor, and a seat of indeterminate origin?

This was spotless.

Then came the features.

I literally gasped when I sat down and the seat was…warm.

It made me realize how accustomed I am to flinching.

In Japan, no flinching. Ever.

Then the buttons.

So many buttons.

Thankfully with helpful little icons so I could identify birdsong “privacy” music, spray direction, and dry—yes, DRY—and, most importantly, stop. I learned the Japanese character for “stop” entirely through toileting.

I floated back to my seat, clean as a cherub, mind whirring like a demon.

What in the world must Japanese travelers think of Italian toilets?

To be fair, Italy has improved. Many establishments now have toilets, which is a marked step up from the not-so-distant past of holes in the ground with helpful grooves that—let’s just say—do not account for female geometry.

But squat toilets still exist. In public places, older restaurants, even my children’s school. My kids became experts at “holding it.”

And when there is a toilet…

The seat is often missing.

Italy, it seems, spends exactly zero minutes considering the toileting experience.

Which is fine. America isn’t exactly a sanctuary either (though we do usually provide a seat).

But still.

If you’re used to privacy music and lids that rise to meet you and spotless floors and warm water at the touch of a button…

What do you make of a literal hole in the ground?

The next time my curiosity welled was the next morning at breakfast.

Before traveling, I’d read that traditional Japanese breakfasts often include fish, rice, and miso soup. I wasn’t entirely convinced—global cereal creep is real—but in the ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn), that’s exactly what we ate.

Picture this:

You arrive in a yukata (a casual, cotton kimono) and are shown into a tatami room. Soft music floats somewhere unseen.

Before you: grilled fish, rice (every grain a pearl), warming miso soup, pickles, tofu on a small burner, a rolled omelet, vegetables with sesame, yogurt with local jam, and a pot of green tea.

Now compare that to an Italian bar.

A thimble of espresso. A cornetto. A heated debate about the weather.

I love them both. I do. But if you grow up with soup and fish for breakfast, what do you make of knocking back a tablespoon of coffee and a pastry?

(For the record: the Japanese breakfast held my husband through a full morning of skiing better than pancakes ever have.)

Also—this surprised me— it is shockingly easy to get used to fish for breakfast.

The third difference: lines.

In Japan, they exist.

In Italy, they do not.

At a tollbooth in Italy, the scene resembles bumper cars at the buzzer. Angles. Horns. Chaos.

In Japan: Order. Restraint. Even elegance.

At the Tokyo airport, we initially rushed to the “empty” side of the escalator—until I realized the line was on the left (driving and walking are on the left in Japan). Snaking. Patient.

I yanked my husband back and pointed.

We joined the back.

Crosswalks follow the same logic.

No cars in sight? You still wait for the light to turn. Your reward? A little jaunty tune when you cross the street. I perpetually felt like I was living in a video game.

I loved this.

It gives you a moment to look around, to breathe, to study posters and see if you can now recognize any characters other than “stop” or “dry” (short answer: no) rather than attempting to evaluate how fast an oncoming vehicle is approaching.

Why rush it?

My husband and children found waiting at barren corners infuriating. Up there with the lack of trash receptacles in Japan (which I found weirdly winsome—why not take your trash home with you? It seems to work, I didn’t see a wrapper or cigarette butt anywhere).

I offered that the rule means one less decision to make. Rather than resorting to some physics calculation to figure out if you can cross the street before cars arrive, you wait. Simple. Clean.

My husband insisted it wasn’t one less decision, because he still had to decide whether or not to follow the rule. (He followed it every time.)

Imagine this contrast.

Tokyo: A wide, but quiet road. No cars. People gather and wait. When the light changes, they cross in a smooth ribbon, unspooling across the intersection.

Naples: Same setup. Same red man on the signal ticking down until safe crossing. No cars. People foment on the corner, heads craned to the left to spy a handful of oncoming scooters down the block. Even though the light clearly shows pedestrian crossing in just a few seconds, pedestrians will not wait and fling themselves across the street. Others surge with them. Scooters arrive, stop. Cars pile in behind them. The hordes of pedestrians swarm around the stalled scooters and cars.

The pedestrian light now shows a green person walking and so I step off the curb.

Alone.

I keep coming back to this.

Not which place does it better, but how differently they answer the same questions.

What is comfort?

What is enough?

What is worth waiting for?

Japan made me aware of every small friction I’d stopped noticing.

Italy reminds me that life doesn’t have to be optimized to be lived.

Somewhere between a heated seat and a missing one is probably the right balance.

Until then, I’ll keep wondering:

What must Japanese travelers think of Italian toilets?

If you’ve spent time in both Japan and Italy, I’d love to know—what differences stay with you?

The Dolomiti feel both entirely Italian and not Italian at all—part Austrian, part Bavarian, part something that exists only here. We spent a week on Plose mountain, alternating between thrills and stillness: racing downhill on mountain carts, then pausing to admire alpine flowers. We ate strudel instead of tiramisù, speck instead of prosciutto. And each night, we fell asleep to the soft clanging of cowbells drifting in from the pastures.

The Heart of It All: An Agriturismo

Our agriturismo became the center of the trip—cowbells as lullabies, yogurt from that morning’s milk, jam made from red currants.

One morning, we ordered the full breakfast basket and woke to a spread so beautiful it felt staged: fresh breads, local cheeses, butter, preserves, herbal infusions. It was our first real introduction to the foodways of the Dolomiti—and it set the tone for everything that followed.

(You can learn about how to find your own agriturismo here.)

Thrills and Stillness

The Dolomiti play a clever game of contrast.

One moment, you’re strapping on a helmet and hurling yourself downhill on a mountain cart, brakes squealing, heart pounding. The next, you’re alone on a trail, leaning in to examine alpine daisies or milk-white rock jasmine.

After my art trip to the Pyrenees, I thought I was prepared for mountain blossoms. I wasn’t. Every meadow here felt like a living bouquet, the air sharp with pine and wild herbs.

And everywhere: cowbells.

They became our soundtrack—on gondolas, along trails, from our balcony. After a while, we began to read them like signals: cowbells meant a pasture nearby, or that evening was upon us and thus time to break out the chilled white wine, or simply that the landscape was alive in its own undeniable rhythm.

Our adult children rediscovered something childlike here. On a farm tour, they melted over feeding bunnies. And when they spotted what they called “variety packs of cows”—each one a different pattern, like a sampler box arranged just for us—their delight was immediate and contagious.

The Gift of the Gondola

A surprise bonus of staying on a ski mountain in summer: gondolas.

I am someone who can walk all day but finds grueling uphill climbs… unnecessary. So this felt like a gift. Each morning, we rode up to a peak, then walked to another, hiked down, or flew down on those mountain carts.

It was the best of both worlds: effort and ease, exhilaration and rest.

A Table Set by History

Eating in the Dolomiti bears little resemblance to eating in the rest of Italy.

That’s the reality of a country unified relatively recently—regional identities run deep. In the Dolomiti, about half the population speaks German, forty percent Italian, and the rest Ladino. The food reflects that blend.

Speck instead of prosciutto. Canederli—bread dumplings—often served in broth. Mountain cheeses. Strudel. Berries we couldn’t always identify: lingonberry? red currant? cranberry?

And then there was the moment that crystallized it all.

On our first hike, Gabe noticed the bright green tips on evergreen branches and remembered from a childhood spent at Quaker camp that spruce tips were edible. Skeptical, I tasted one—and immediately recognized the flavor. It was the same herbal, lemony note from the drink in our breakfast basket.

Back at the agriturismo, we checked the jars for sale.

Spruce tip syrup.

It became an organizing obsession—drizzled into water, spooned over yogurt. Naturally, we bought several jars to bring home.

Less successful was the spruce-tip liquor we picked up later. Replacing our nightly armagnac ritual, it quickly became a source of hilarity. Five adults, tiny egg cups, and a collective effort to convince ourselves it tasted good. Keith insists it did. I maintain it was the company.

Bressanone: Choosing Depth Over Hype

When planning the trip, I kept seeing Val Gardena and Ortisei recommended. But I couldn’t find an agriturismo there—only resorts. So we booked above Bressanone (Brixen), slightly off the main tourist path.

I worried we might regret it.

We didn’t.

Bressanone is the oldest town in Tyrol, with over a thousand years of history. Baroque architecture, vineyard-covered hills, a rhythm untouched by heavy tourism. It felt lived-in rather than a display.

We wandered piazzas, lingered over coffee, and visited Novacella Abbey, where frescoes, wine, and centuries of intellectual life coexist. Sitting there, sipping wine, I had the fleeting thought that being a monk—at least here—might not have been so bad.

Traveling with Our Adult Children

The most extraordinary part of the trip wasn’t the mountains or the food.

It was being there together.

Traveling with adult children feels like a kind of grace. We shared gondola rides, laughed over terrible liquor, cooked meals together while cows wandered nearby, and built a new layer of family memory.

I don’t know how many more trips like this we’ll have.

But I know I’ll carry this one with me—the landscapes, the flavors, the sound of cowbells, and the quiet joy of being together.

PS: A tip from me to you: Make a shared photo album. Everyone contributes, no one duplicates, and you get to see what each person found worth capturing.

Have you ever discovered a region’s culture through its food in a way that surprised you? I’d love to hear your story!

In my first post, I wrote about wanting this space to hold longer attention—writing that lingers with place rather than racing toward a takeaway.

This piece came out of a few solo days in Bari. It began, as so many things do for me, at a fish market—and became something else entirely.

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