Why We Travel Beyond the Highlights

Our itinerary included a stop in Portofino, Italy, which was particularly exciting because it was an area we'd visited on our honeymoon. We decided to book an excursion to see the famous villages of Cinque Terre.

Little did we know what was ahead of us.

Our day started at 7:30 a.m. in the ship's large theater, waiting for our group to be called for the tender to shore.

Eventually we boarded the tender. Then we walked. Then we waited. Then we boarded a ferry.

And waited some more.

After sitting in the hot sun for more than an hour, the ferry finally left around 9:20 a.m. On the other side, we boarded a large tour bus and drove for about an hour to a train station.

Finally, at around 11:30 a.m. — four hours after our day began — we arrived in Monterosso, one of the villages of Cinque Terre.

We had one hour and forty minutes to explore.

Then it was time for a pesto tasting, followed by smaller vans to another village, where we had about another hour of free time.

Then another train.

Another bus.

Another ferry.

Another tender.

And more waiting.

At one point, eight busloads of people waited nearly an hour because four people had missed one of the many transportation connections.

We finally arrived back at the ship around 6:30 that evening.

We joked afterward that it should have been advertised as a transportation excursion - eight hours of travel for about three hours of sightseeing.

None of this had been clear in the excursion description. Had we known, we probably would have done something completely different — or simply planned the day ourselves.

Over dinner that night, we complained to each other about the time we'd wasted, the money we'd spent and how disappointed we were with the experience.

And then something hit us:

We had control over this.

Cruising can be a wonderful way to travel, and we understand why so many people love it. But we realized it wasn't giving us what we wanted from travel anymore.

We were getting the highlights of each port without enough time to really experience the places themselves.

There wasn't enough time to linger over local food. To meet people. To wander without knowing exactly where we were going. To discover something we hadn't planned.

And it certainly didn't give us much opportunity to hike and explore the outdoors.

That evening, we decided to change the way we traveled.

From then on, we became much more intentional about our itineraries.

We were still young(ish) and wanted to move, hike and explore, so we started building trips that gave us time to do exactly that.

Sometimes that meant staying in smaller towns. Other times it meant staying right in the heart of a big city but giving ourselves enough time to wander.

We built in time to meet people, to follow our curiosity and, most importantly, to experience a place on our own schedule

We started keeping lists of places we wanted to visit. We remembered ports we'd stopped at on previous trips where we'd wished we'd had more time and added them to the list.

Our bucket list kept growing.

And that's when our travels really took off — literally!

One thing we've added to nearly every trip is something that might surprise people: botanical gardens.

Steve and I both love them.

We seek them out at all times of year and in all parts of the world. We love wandering through them, talking with the people who care for the plants and learning about the local environment.

They're not always conveniently located in the center of town, either.

We've hiked to gardens. We've figured out public transportation to reach them. Sometimes we've even found local companies offering garden tours.

Plants tell you so much about the environment you're visiting. In their own way, they tell the story of a place.

And that's exactly what we're looking for when we travel.

Of course, there are iconic sights we still want to see.

If you're going to Bangkok for the first time, you're probably going to want to experience the Grand Palace, visit some of its sacred temples and maybe even take a ride in one of the city's famous tuk-tuks.

We still want the highlights. We just don't want our travels to end there.

We've learned that extending our time in a destination whenever possible gives us something incredibly valuable: room to wander.

Instead of exhausting ourselves trying to check every "must-see" attraction off a list, we decide what truly matters to us and leave space around it.

Bangkok is a perfect example.

We're fortunate to have dear friends who live in Thailand, and it was actually their wedding that first sparked our love for the country. Since then, we've returned many times.

While they work in the city, they live outside it, so when we visit we often spend weekends with them. That has given us opportunities to visit local markets, meet people and experience a little of what everyday Thai life looks like.

They sometimes laugh when we tell them where we've been exploring.

"We live here and we've never been there!"

Talat Noi was one of those places.

We spent days wandering the neighborhood, ducking down alleyways and opening nondescript doors that led to artists' studios, clothing designers, bakeries, hidden cafés and places we never would have discovered if we'd been rushing toward the next attraction.

Those have become some of our favorite travel days.

Somewhere along the way, we realized we'd developed our own way of traveling.

We wanted the summit, but we also wanted the streets.

We want the hike that takes us somewhere spectacular — and the neighborhood we didn't know we'd love.

The famous landmark — and the tiny café behind the unassuming door.

The destination we've dreamed about seeing — and the person we never expected to meet.

We still make plans. We still have bucket lists. And we still get excited about seeing the places we've read about for years.

But now we leave room for something else:

Curiosity.

We arrive with it, and we leave with stories we'll be telling for years.

That's why we created Summit & Streets.

To share the trails we hike, the streets we wander, the people we meet and all those unexpected moments that happen somewhere between the places we planned to visit.

Explore beyond the highlights. Live beyond the itinerary.