What is a real vacation (and how to feel it)

Sometimes it feels like your vacation starts when you close your laptop. Or when the plane takes off. Or when your room key dangles from your palm.

But in reality, vacation begins deeper. Not in the date or the ticket. But in the moment when you stop holding on. To tasks. To control. To the habit of answering right away.

A real vacation is not just a change of location. It is a change of internal rhythm.

This is the morning when you wake up not from an alarm clock, but from light.

This is a breakfast that lasts longer than it should.

It is the silence within, even if there is the noise of waves, children or a market all around.

Vacation is not always a trip

Sometimes it happens at home, when you suddenly allow yourself to lie down on the floor and stare at the ceiling. Sometimes it happens on a train without Wi-Fi. Or in a cafe where they serve tea in transparent glasses and no one is in a hurry.

Vacation is when you don't have to . But you can. You can be silent. You can listen. You can just be.

How to feel real rest?

• Reduce speed. Even if the city is running, you can go slowly.

• Stop when it's beautiful. Not for the sake of a photo, but for yourself.

• Leave the day without a plan. Let it become itself.

• Slow down your gaze. Look not "at", but "in".

• Breathe not deeper, but softer. Without effort. Just be in the body.

Vacation is not always the ideal place. It is a state where you are allowed. Where you do not have to impress, achieve, catch up. It is a state where you hear… yourself.

And the island is just a mirror. It gives no peace. It returns to the simple. To the wind. To the light. To the breath. To yourself.

With love, Lilia from Aegean Notebooks

Let your vacation begin not with a ticket, but with the moment you are there.