It was only when I was sitting in my “clay sketching” class on the third floor of a converted church in Copenhagen that I felt it. A big exhale that I've held in my entire adult life, perhaps. A release. A feeling like I'm in this space just for myself; I'm I am not making this trip for anyone..
If my hair had been in a clipI would have removed that clip and shaken my hair out to let it fall. But since it had already fallen out, I took a sip of my delicious tea and continued to create my nude sculpture based on Barry, the older naked man resting gently on his side with his eyes closed in front of me.
That's itI thought. It's a sweet adventure.
What exactly is soft adventure?
By definitionSoft adventure is “adventure tourism that requires little or no experience and presents little risk.” So if you’ve ever wanted to go on vacation and try something that challenges you (i.e., if you’ve ever thought, “I don’t want to climb Machu Picchu, but I want to hike in a forest in another country”), you’re definitely doing it. want a sweet adventure.
The idea here is to step a toe out of your comfort zone, but not so much that you feel your heart racing. Think more après-ski than downhill skiing, but maybe you’ve walked briskly to the ski lodge and tried to speak to someone in a foreign language. And now that I’ve tried my hand at gentle adventure on a recent trip to Copenhagen, I can tell you that it’s the perfect way for a mom to travel—especially this single mom of four boys who had no idea how to travel alone.
Here are my top tips for trying this travel trend yourself.
Treat yourself to a good bed.
After deciding that it was incredibly brave of me to go to Copenhagen alone, I decided to stay in a lovely hotel as a thank you. I chose Villa Copenhagena beautiful old post office converted into a comfortable and elegant hotel. The bed was deep and comfortable, as were all the chairs and sofas I sat on in Copenhagen, the house of hygge.
So my first suggestion when venturing out on a soft adventure is to make sure that wherever you retreat to at the end of your low-altitude day is an experience in itself. You know, mix in a little sleep tourism Join us on your sweet adventure to become the coolest traveling mom of 2024. Bonus: My hotel had a heated rooftop pool so I could float alone to relax and unwind.
It’s also a good idea to choose a hotel or resort that’s centrally located, so that you can get to your destination as easily as possible or find clean and safe public transportation. Again, soft adventure is all about low risk and high reward.
Sometimes eating alone and meeting the locals is quite courageous.
The trick to having a sweet little adventure as a solo traveler is finding a local who wants to help you. I took a slow walking tour of architecture from Copenhagen, getting my bearings and getting all the gossip about the events in the capital of Denmark just as the sun was setting. I ended up at POPL, where I settled into the legendary NOMA burger instead of going to NOMA, a real fancy restaurant, all by myself. Sweet adventure is all about choice, and I always choose a perfect burger.*
I made my short visit to meet the locals, which I thought was courageous in its own way. I ate a communal meal dinner at Kanalhuset (a house on the canal) and I took the bus to go CopenHot to do the hot/cold bath thing alongside large groups of screaming Danish youths. I drank coffee and ate cardamom buns at Rugg Bakery as often as I could. Brave, I know.
And then, of course, there was my clay modeling class in Absalona community centre in the Carlsberg neighbourhood, where I thought I might make a cup or an ashtray. Instead, I found that I would be recreating Barry’s nude poses, shoulder to shoulder with about fifteen young Danish women… all together, silently, shaping and reshaping Barry’s reclining body as the instructor reminded us, “Don’t worry about the result. Just be here now.” I breathed easier as Barry, I assumed, napped.
Don't stress about TO DO; just focus on being.
This is the heart of the soft adventure. Don’t worry about the photos or the stories you think you’ll want to tell when you get home. Yes, you can book an expensive trip just for yourself, without visiting all the top tourist attractions. Just let yourself enjoy a little bit instead of forcing yourself to do a lot.
