Hi Sonia, can you tell us a little about yourself and your background? Where are you from and where do you call home right now?
I am a Portuguese travel-content creator, now living in the South of France, and I’m very happy to be able to do precisely what I love the most for a living: travelling around beautiful places, exploring them at my own pace, discovering beautiful hotels and villas, and just enjoying the best that each country and region has to offer. My journey in content creation and social media started a long time ago when I was creating content and managing social media accounts for a few different clients. For the past year or so, I have been slowly transitioning into focusing more and more on Simply Slow Traveler and I am now gladly working on this project full time.
How did you find your way into content creation and the travel industry?
Creating content is something that I have loved all my life, even before social media. I have always enjoyed capturing beautiful family moments or nice places that we visited. It is something that just developed naturally, first on blogs, then on social media. Some of these were my own projects and others were professional endeavours for other companies and clients. Travelling has been a passion of mine since I was a kid. I’ve always loved visiting and exploring new places, so it was only natural that I would make content everywhere I went. Initially, it was for my own records and personal memories, but then revisiting the videos and photos I felt I could share some of those experiences with more people, hence I started Simply Slow Traveler. I never expected my work to reach so many people.
Where have your most recent travels taken you and what was it like shooting there?
In the past year I’ve been mostly exploring France and Italy. I always like countryside landscapes, and small villages especially. I like the slow pace of life in these more rural settings, as well as the magnitude of the mountains, but I also love finding moments of tranquillity in the little corners and details of small villages. I’ve also visited beautiful places along the southern French coast – the ocean is always something that is fascinating to me and draws my attention, having grown up close to the sea.
What does slow travel mean to you and why is it important?
Slow travel is really about allowing oneself to have the luxury of time, to not be constrained by too many places to see in too little time, to be able to go deep down into the essence of each place and let it sink in. In this way I might not get to visit as many landmarks, monuments or landscapes in a week or so, but it allows me on the other hand to feel fully satisfied with the experience, both while I’m there as well as after coming back. This way I keep more memories, not only the visual memories but also the smells, sounds and all those visceral things that help to engrave a more detailed and long-lasting “picture” in my memory.
Where would you recommend everyone should go to at least once in their lifetime?
The Dolomites are really something else! They can make for such a replenishing trip and at the same time overload you (in the good sense) with so many extraordinary views and landscapes. They are also magnificent no matter what season you visit.
What’s the typical day like when you’re on location?
If I’m in a city or mid-sized village, I’ll probably wake a bit earlier to see the sun rising, to be early in the city and see it start to come alive as the morning progresses. If I’m in the countryside, I wake at a more natural pace, then go on a hike or wander around different small villages. I don’t really have a “typical” day, to be honest, it so much depends on where I am. I generally draft a loose plan for the day but I don’t let myself get too constrained by what or where I want to visit.
What destinations on your bucket-list are you yet to explore?
My mind right now is set on exploring more of the Alps, southern Italy and plenty of islands around the Mediterranean. Not as immediate, but still on my list, I really want to travel to Japan, Australia and New Zealand. These will be more demanding, as they’re much more distant than my usual trips, so I’ll have to do a bit more planning and give myself a good time allowance to travel them slowly.
As a seasoned traveller, do you have any tips to make the experience better?
Well, everyone wants to live like a local ideally, but it’s not realistic if you are only staying somewhere for a week or two. So don’t jam too many things into your day – allowing yourself time to roam around without an agenda is important. Feeling that sort of anxiety during a trip is really contrary to the reason why most people travel, but still they end up falling into that trap.
What essentials can you not travel without?
I have just a handful of things I bring with me to create content so I travel pretty light. It’s really important for me to feel comfortable but also well presented for my videos – especially when going to some special dining experiences – so I take some time deciding what to pack clothes-wise.
Follow Sonia’s travels at @simplyslowtraveler on Instagram, and head to simply-slow-traveler.com to explore her collection of guides to Europe’s chicest destinations
