Il Dolce Far Niente: Reclaiming the Sweet Art of Nothing

My childhood summers were spent with my grandparents in a small Italian town where time stood still. Every afternoon after lunch, my grandfather would grab his wooden chair, place it under an olive tree, and sit, becoming one with the stillness of the hot summer landscape and the clicking chorus of cicadas.

I waited for him to do something. He just sat there, looking at nothing in particular. "Nonno, ma che fai?" I finally asked. Granddad, what are you doing? He turned to me and answered, "Sitting."

At the time I figured he didn't understand the question. I didn't understand what he was doing. Not then. Not for years.

In 2019, my eight-year-old daughter and I discovered a café in Saint-Germain near the apartment we were staying at. We would go early in the morning for breakfast before starting our day in La Ville Lumière. Annalise, our server, found my daughter's obsession with pain au chocolat amusing and by day 3 she already had one warm and waiting as we walked through the door. We sat by the window and watched the city wake up, the flower vendor arranging roses, the man who always stopped to let his dog drink from the water bowl outside. On our last morning, Annalise hugged us both, pressed a parting pain au chocolat into my little girl's hands, and said she hoped to see us again soon. My daughter unexpectedly threw her arms around the young server, hugging her as if she were leaving someone she had known her whole life rather than just a week.

This wasn't how I'd planned our Paris trip. It became something better.

The New Luxury: Time

There's a word for what my grandfather did under his tree: il dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. In our age of FOMO travel, we collect destinations like stamps in a passport-sized achievement book. Paris: check. Istanbul: check. Machu Picchu: check. We have every day planned out, itineraries mapped out, cooking classes scheduled, reservations booked months in advance to all those restaurants that keep popping up on our Instagram feed, oh, and don't forget the three different beaches you absolutely cannot miss according to every travel blogger who's ever existed. We are very efficient at seeing places. Terrible at actually being in them. You're exhausted. In paradise.

By the time you collapse into your airplane seat for the flight home, you need a vacation from your vacation. You spend the first three days back recuperating from what was supposed to restore you, scrolling through hundreds of photos to pick the ones that will be perfect for that reel you are going to post to let everyone see how good a time you had. But did you actually enjoy any of those meticulously planned experiences?

Then it's back to the routine, work, obligations, the mechanical rhythm of daily life, and all the while you plan your next escape from where you just escaped from.

But something is shifting. Travellers are beginning to reject the crammed must-see bucket list in favor of what some now call the joy of missing out travel, though my grandfather would have simply called it living.

It's harder than it sounds. We're programmed for productivity, even in paradise. That voice in your head listing all the things you should be seeing, doing, experiencing. The guilt of flying halfway around the world to sit in a café you could find in your own city.

But here's what I've learned: You can spend a week in Paris and see everything while experiencing nothing. Or you can know one café, one park, one street so well that a piece of your heart stays there.

The New Luxury: Time

When I work with clients planning trips, I try to build in what I call "free time." Entire afternoons with nothing scheduled. No reservations, just go out and discover or literally do nothing. Without fail, these spontaneous moments become their most vivid and treasured memories: the restaurant they stumbled upon, the conversation with locals at a neighborhood bar, the afternoon walking through cobblestone streets without a map.

Even the travel world is catching on. Hotels are reimagining luxury as time rather than activities, slow cruises where the journey matters more than checking off ports, train routes through Tuscany where you watch landscapes change gradually with wine in hand, spa retreats where "sleep programs" make doing nothing the entire point. You're not observing local life through a bus window; you're temporarily invited to be part of a community.

This pushes against everything we normally do when we travel. It asks us to be present in a new place rather than productive in it. The real test of travel isn't how many sights you've seen, but whether the place changed how you see. My grandfather, sitting under his olive tree every afternoon, understood something we've forgotten in our rush to experience everything: Presence is the ultimate luxury, whether you're in Paris or your own backyard.

Creating your own Dolce Far Niente

Don't get me wrong. This isn't about throwing your schedule out the window and wandering aimlessly. It's about creating space for the sweetness of life even while travelling. It's about stopping to enjoy those little moments where you lean into your chair, coffee cupped between your hands, and sit with the moment.

Instead of accumulating experiences like trading cards, let's lean into what feels good, not what looks good on Instagram. Spend a week in Tuscany picking olives and having dinner with a family at the end of the day on a farm. Choose a neighborhood and learn its rhythms. Have your morning coffee at the same café. These small routines create connection and transform you from tourist to temporary resident. Walk instead of taking taxis. The in-between moments often hold the most magic.

We may not always have the luxury of long stays at our destination, but even then, we can find a pocket of presence. One unhurried morning, or a meal without checking the time.

But here's the real question: What happens when we return home? As we settle into fall routines, school drop-offs, work deadlines, soccer practice, parent-teacher conferences. Can we maintain this practice of presence?

The answer lies not in overhauling our schedules but in finding our own versions of my grandfather's tree. It's finding those pockets of stillness. Maybe it's five minutes with your morning coffee standing outside to enjoy the silent stillness of a city still

asleep before checking emails. Perhaps it's sitting in your car for a moment before heading into the office, or simply standing at your kitchen window, watching the leaves change colour.

Since Paris, my daughter now asks for "pain au chocolat mornings" at home, our code for unhurried weekend breakfasts.

I never got a chance to tell my grandfather I finally understood what he was doing under that tree. But sometimes, when I manage to sit still long enough to hear my own breathing, to notice the light through the window, to feel the weight of the mug in my hands, I can almost see him there. Still sitting. Still teaching me, decades later, that the sweetness isn't in doing nothing.

It's in being present enough to taste it.

il dolce fare niente.

Angela Marotta, CEO and founder of Marotta Travel, is a travel designer with three decades of experience in the travel industry, having spent most of her career living and working in Italy and Mexico. Her mission today is to provide uniquely tailored travel experiences with purpose.