Nomadic Spirit is a weekly newsletter for travelers who care as much about the why as the where.
In this issue
This week, The Dispatch asks what your last trip smelled like, and what it takes to come home able to answer. A Chosen Place goes to Seville for the three weeks each spring when the city smells as good as it looks. In The Journey, reader Sherri Bradley takes her first solo trip in over fifty years, and the first day is a disaster. And Further Afield has five worth your time, including the Seville most visitors never cross the river to find.
Dispatch
Where Travel and Life Intersect
On your next trip, come home and tell everyone what it smelled like.
If you want to see a place, you have to smell it and hear it.
A friend of Andy Isaacson's used to ask him the same question every time he came home from a trip. What did it smell like?
Isaacson is a writer and photographer who has reported for The New York Times from every continent on earth. He has been to the South Pole and spent a month on Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited island in the world. For years he fumbled the question every time it was asked.
Travel teaches us to rely on our eyes. We go sightseeing. We come home and prove the trip happened by sharing photographs. Isaacson had a camera and a career built on seeing things, and he could not say what any of it smelled like.
I heard him tell this story in May on The Daily, the New York Times podcast. I was walking the dog when it started, and somewhere in the first few minutes I stopped, found a park bench, and sat down so I could listen without distraction.
Marigolds on the Road to Agra
Isaacson booked a trip to India with Traveleyes, a British company founded in 2004 by Amar Latif, who lost his sight at eighteen and could not find a tour operator willing to take him without a caregiver. So he built one. Traveleyes groups are a mix of blind and sighted travelers who are paired off and swap partners daily, and the sighted pay their own way at a discount. In exchange, they describe what they see.
On the drive to Agra he was paired with Candie, who works in taxpayer advocacy for the Internal Revenue Service in Seattle. She told him the sights did not thrill her and asked to hear about people. Tell me what they are doing, she said, even if it is someone lying on a bench. So he looked out the bus window and described the barbers who had hung mirrors on fences and were shaving customers on low stools, the flower vendors threading marigold garlands, the lane lines everyone ignored, the snack packets strung across the front of the stands like strands of beads. The ordinary things you would walk past. Saying them out loud sharpened what he saw, he wrote. Somebody was waiting to hear it.
At the Taj Mahal, one of the blind travelers told him about the sound of the chamber. Out of all the people talking at once there is a single low pitch, close to an om. The man told Isaacson that sighted tourists would probably never hear it, because they are busy taking photographs.
Fabuloso at the Airport
Ask me what San Miguel de Allende smells like, and I can tell you. We have had a home there for nearly thirty years.
The plane touches down at León, and we close our eyes and breathe in. Fabuloso first, the purple floor cleaner they mop every terminal in Mexico with, and we look forward to it. Then the drive, and the mesquite fire somebody has going by late afternoon, tortillas coming off the press, the spice stalls in the market. The sounds do as much. Children in the public square, a mariachi group serenading a young couple, fireworks going off at all hours for reasons nobody ever explains.
Our shoulders come down before we have found the car keys, and none of it has anything to do with what the place looks like.
The Garbageman at Six
Decades of arrivals built that. The road to Agra took Isaacson one afternoon, because he had the two things that do the work. He was moving slowly, and Candie was asking.
Moving slowly is the one that comes with age, since nobody is making me be at the train station by six anymore. The other one I have to ask for.
Sit somewhere for twenty minutes on your next trip and ask whoever is with you what they smell, then tell them what you hear. Diane and I have been doing this, and it works, mostly because we notice different things.
Some mornings in San Miguel we do not have to ask. Fireworks at six that we have never understood. The garbageman striking a piece of metal to tell the street to bring the trash out. Then the fires getting going in neighboring homes as people start cooking. And all of this happens before we have even opened our eyes.
by Paul M. Rand, Founder and editor of Nomadic Spirit
A Chosen Place
Destinations worth traveling for — and understanding once you arrive
Where the smells are as big a draw as the sights.
Seville, Spain
Seville gives you plenty to see. The Giralda, the cathedral beside it, the tilework of the Real Alcázar, the narrow lanes of the Santa Cruz quarter. Plenty of people come for that alone.
For a few weeks every year there is as much to smell as there is to see. Step outside on a morning in late February and the air is full of azahar, the blossom of the bitter orange tree. The word comes from the Arabic for flower, and the same root gave Spanish its word for luck. It is sweet and a little bitter, and it is everywhere.
It comes from the trees. Seville has more orange trees than any city on earth, upwards of thirty thousand of them. They line the streets, fill the plazas, and stand in the patios of houses and churches. There is a courtyard of them inside the cathedral walls, the Patio de los Naranjos, and more fill the Parque de María Luisa. Most of the year they are just street trees.
Santa Cruz is where you feel it most. The old Jewish quarter was built with its lanes deliberately narrow, for shade and cool air, and the same tight streets hold the scent close. Sit in the Plaza de Doña Elvira, a small square with a fountain and tiled benches under the orange trees. Or take a table on Calle Mateos Gago, where the terraces run under the trees with the Giralda straight ahead.
The Moors brought the tree from Asia and planted it across the city in the ninth century, and it has been here ever since. The fruit is no good to eat. Seville oranges are bitter, and most of the crop goes to Britain for marmalade. The trees were kept for shade and for the blossom, and the people who live here get both every spring.
When the city prunes the trees, the cut branches send the scent back into streets that already carry it.
If the blossom is what you want, come from late February into March. It peaks in March and fades by April. This is also Semana Santa, and a few weeks later the Feria de Abril, so book early.
Then give it time. Walk in the morning before the streets are busy, and find a bench in one of the smaller squares.
We want to hear from you
Two ways to be in Nomadic Spirit
Sherri’s piece this week (below) is a reader submission. The Journey is open to readers who want to write about a trip that mattered. Personal, specific, in your own voice. Length is flexible. We edit lightly and leave your voice intact.
Fork First: One dish, one place, one reason to go. 200 to 300 words. The test: would you go back for this dish? Would you tell everyone heading to that city to find it? If yes, write it up.
If you are interested in sharing your story with our 10,000+ readers, please write us at [email protected] and we’ll send along submission guidelines.
We read everything that comes in.
The Journey — Voices of the Nomadic Spirit
Stories from travelers who have been changed by where they went. If you have one to share, please reach out to [email protected]
Photo of the Sagrada Familia by Sherri Bradley
My first solo trip in fifty years began with fainting and the wrong suitcase.
By New Year’s Eve I was dancing.
On December 23rd, I did something I hadn't done in over fifty years. I left for a solo trip. Not a short visit. Not something familiar. A cruise to three countries out of Barcelona. Alone.
I was terrified. The kind of fear that doesn’t stop you, but sits quietly beside you asking, What if this changes everything? I said my goodbyes the day before, and by Christmas Eve I was at Gate 56, waiting. It felt less like a vacation and more like stepping into a new life.
The Wrong Suitcase
Barcelona did not welcome me gently. After landing, I stood in a long customs line when I suddenly felt faint. Within moments, I was on the ground, aware but shaken. A stranger handed me water, and a police officer helped me forward, carrying my bags.
Disoriented, I made a bigger mistake. I grabbed the wrong suitcase and didn’t realize it until I reached the port. That meant turning around, going back to the airport, and starting over. Exhausted, overwhelmed, and wondering if this was a sign of things to come. But there were kindnesses too. A patient driver. A reassuring voice. Small moments that steadied me.
By the time I reached my cabin, which was beautiful, with champagne and chocolates waiting, I felt more relief than excitement. Still, I told myself: maybe the worst was over.
The first days at sea were rough, with waves rocking the ship through the night. I kept things simple: walking, listening to music, showing up to small activities. Slowly, I began to settle in. Then, something shifted.
Laughing Like Teenagers
In Rome, I met Lida, a widow and writer who had lived a full, adventurous life. We shared dinner and easy conversation.
In Genoa, Lida stayed on the bus at one of the stops. A man who wasn’t with our tour got on, then went out, whipped it out, and peed. She said it was the first penis she’d seen in seventy years. We laughed like teenagers.
In Marseille, I met Leora and Emily. Different lives, different stories, but connection came easily over coffee and conversation. Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling alone. By New Year’s Eve in Alicante, I was dancing. Laughing with people I had only just met days before. It surprised me, how quickly fear gave way to joy. Valencia was quieter. Markets, churches, cappuccino at an outdoor café. No rush. Just being present.
At My Own Pace
When the cruise ended, I stayed in Barcelona a few more days. I walked everywhere. Got lost. Found my way again. I visited the Picasso Museum, climbed slowly to Park Güell, and stood in awe inside La Sagrada Familia. I drank cava, ate tapas, and moved through the city at my own pace.
There was something powerful about navigating it all alone, not perfectly, but confidently enough. On my last day, I joined a tapas and wine tour. Four stops, good food, and easy conversation with strangers who, for a moment, felt like friends.
At the airport heading home, I met a man who shared his story, how he found his way back to love after 27 years. It felt like a quiet reminder that life still has more to give.
This trip didn’t just take me to Spain. It brought me back to myself. Yes, I was scared. Yes, things went wrong. But I handled it. I adapted. I kept going. And somewhere between the rocky seas, the wrong suitcase, and the unexpected friendships, I realized something: This was not the end of anything. It was a beginning. And it won’t be my last solo trip.
Sherri Bradley lives in Umatilla, Florida. She is 72. She and her husband were married for fifty years and always traveled, and she intends to keep going with the enthusiasm he had.
Further Afield
Reading worth your time.
A neighbourhood guide to Seville
National Geographic
Most visitors stay in the old center. This guide crosses the river into Triana and works through the quarters beyond it, where a local guide gestures at plain 1970s apartment blocks and notes that people arrive and say there is nothing to see.
Sites Unseen: What Travel Is Like for Those Who Can't See
The New York Times
Andy Isaacson spent ten days in northern India on a Traveleyes tour, paired each day with a different blind traveler. The written version carries material the podcast does not, including Candie, who has an ocular prosthesis and told him the whole sights thing did not thrill her, then asked to hear about people instead.
Aflame: Learning from Silence
Pico Iyer, Riverhead Books
Iyer appears near the top of Isaacson's piece, telling him that travel is a matter of perception rather than sightseeing. The book draws on more than a hundred retreats over three decades at a Benedictine hermitage above the sea in Big Sur, written across years when his house burned down, and a parent died.
Skip the gift shop, go to the grocery store
Quartz
One of this year's stranger travel trends has people wandering supermarket aisles instead of hunting souvenirs, treating food packaging and regional snacks as what they bring home. The Louvre raised admission 45 percent for non-European visitors in January and the queue still runs two hours, while a Monoprix three minutes away needs no reservation.
Where people who have been to every country want to go back
Euronews
Most Traveled People awards Grandmaster status to travelers who can prove visits to 25 of the hardest countries in the world plus 25 more chosen at random. Euronews surveyed them on their favorites. Italy took Europe easily, but the answers worth writing down were further down the list: the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia in their top five UNESCO sites, and Nan Madol in Micronesia in the top ten.
“And the book,” he said, “is often better than the film version.”
Amar Latif, founder of Traveleyes, on how blind travelers experience a place the way you read a novel, and sighted travelers the way you watch a film. Quoted in The New York Times, April 7, 2026.
