Nomadic Spirit is a weekly newsletter for travelers who care as much about the why as the where.
In this issue
In The Dispatch, the wealthiest travelers are spending fortunes to be alone, and the room to breathe they are paying for was never for sale. A Chosen Place makes the case for Syros, the Cycladic capital that the crowds skip, where a working Greek port gives you what Santorini does at a fraction of the cost. In The Journey, Colleen Mastony returns to Croagh Patrick, the holy Irish mountain her family has climbed for generations, this time with her teenage daughter. Further Afield gathers five worth knowing right now: where to eat on Syros, eight more Greek islands the crowds haven’t found, the families paying to vanish this summer, the case for shoulder season, and an argument for getting a little lost.
Dispatch
Where Travel and Life Intersect
The Catch in the $50,000 Vacation
The wealthiest travelers are spending fortunes to find room to breathe. What they’re really after costs far less.
This summer, some of the world’s wealthiest people are paying to be alone. Whole hotels are booked, so no other guests can check in. Private islands. Trips to Greenland and Antarctica, places that remain difficult and expensive enough to keep the crowds away. At the very top of the market, the thing money buys now is emptiness.
It is the story of the season. This week, The Wall Street Journal ran a piece called “The Luxury of a Europe Without Crowds,” about well-off travelers trading the beachfront hotel for a new generation of small ships from Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, and Aman, in good part to get away from the masses. Travel + Leisure and the big trend reports from Hilton and Virtuoso tell the same story. Crain Currency, which covers family offices, put it most plainly, quoting an advisor who called the most expensive thing in luxury travel right now the absence of intrusion. Trips booked at $50,000 and up are up by more than a third in a year.
Anyone who has stood shoulder to shoulder in a place that used to be quiet understands the urge to find a way out. There is nothing wrong with wanting room to breathe, and nothing wrong with paying for it if you can.
What they are really after
Not everyone is sold. The travel writer Daniel Scheffler has argued that a trip planned down to the minute strips out the surprises that make travel feel alive, and that there is something a little sad in the gilded version. I think he is half right. The people paying to vanish are also onto something, and it is worth saying what it is.
Look closely at what the money is buying. In the Journal’s piece, the traveler on the Ritz-Carlton ship had the lobster and the unlimited Champagne, and the moments she named as her favorites were the plain ones. Coffee on a quiet balcony. The long stretches when the ship felt nearly empty, even at full capacity. She paid a great deal for a feeling, and the feeling was room to breathe.
That is the oldest reason anyone ever traveled. A real place, met without the crush. They're right about one thing. They are paying a fortune for the thing travel was always meant to hand you.
You already know this trip
The part the price hides is good news. You can have almost all of it without anything close to fifty thousand dollars. Most of what they're paying for isn't hidden. It's when you go. The quiet is mostly about timing. What you spend has little to do with it.
And there is one thing the affordable way gives you that the grand version quietly takes back. The Journal’s own piece admits it. Book the ship, and your days are set months in advance, planned to the minute by a concierge, with little room to change your mind. It is lovely and sealed. What it seals out is the chance to be surprised, and that only happens when the day is still open.
The emptiness they are paying so much for has been there all along, and the best of it was never for sale. You go when no one else is going, and you stay long enough for the place to let you in.
A Chosen Place
Destinations worth traveling for — and understanding once you arrive
Santorini’s working sister, a fraction of the crowd, and a ferry away.
Syros, Greece
If you are going to Greece this summer and the crowds on Santorini give you pause, here is the trade Syros offers, and what you get for it.
You give up the postcard. There is no caldera, and none of the blue domes and white walls you pictured. What you get instead is a town that is still itself: a working Greek port, busy with its own life, where a visitor is treated as a guest. And it costs a fraction of what Santorini does.
Ermoupoli, the main town, looks nothing like that. It is pastel mansions and marble staircases climbing two hills above the harbor, more like an Italian port than a Greek island, built in the years when this was the country’s busiest harbor.
It is the capital of the Cyclades, which surprises people. Mykonos and Santorini have drawn the crowds for decades; Syros never did. It has its own industries and about twenty thousand people living here year-round, so it has never had to rely on tourism. National Geographic describes an island “preferring not to call attention to itself.”
What you get for less.
The things that make Santorini hard in July are not problems here. You can get a table at the best taverna the same night. A room costs about a third of the caldera price, and a taverna dinner runs a fraction of the same meal there. The food is better than the price suggests; chefs who trained in Europe’s best kitchens are cooking here now, and two Ermoupoli restaurants made the Michelin guide last year. You can park, swim off a quiet beach, and look at the harbor with no one behind you waiting for your spot. You can watch the sunset from a beach taverna on the west coast with a beer and hardly anyone around. The water stays warm, and the tavernas stay open well into October, so you are not locked into July and August.
What you came for.
You get treated like a person. The waiters and shopkeepers are not worn down by ten thousand visitors a day, so they have time for you.
The best part is the evening. When the heat drops, the whole town comes down to the marble square and walks it, the old couples and the kids and the families, the way they do every night. You sit with a coffee or an ouzo while it happens around you. In the morning, you buy your fish from the boats that brought it in.
That is what the Dispatch was about. What so many of us are after this summer, a place that still feels lived-in and unhurried, is right here for the price of a ferry from Athens. You can come over from Santorini on the day the crowds wear you down.
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]
My family has climbed this Irish mountain for generations.
This time, my daughter reached the summit first.
by Colleen Mastony
Rugged, windswept, and beautiful, Croagh Patrick has been considered a holy mountain in Ireland since pagan times. St. Patrick is said to have fasted at its summit in 441 AD, and pilgrims have been making the climb — some barefoot — ever since. My mother grew up in Ireland, and my family has been climbing this mountain for generations. I’ve been up and down more times than I can count, and I inevitably end up sucking wind. But still, I come back.
There’s something especially meaningful about returning to a place that tests you. The mountain doesn’t change. It is the same jagged, green-gray rocks underfoot, the same steep pitch in the final few hundred yards, the same wind that comes off Clew Bay and cuts straight through you. What changes is you — the distance you’ve traveled and the person you’ve become since the last time you climbed, step by step, toward the summit.
My chest was tight, my breathing labored. I questioned, as I always do, why I was making the climb. Up ahead, my husband paused to let me catch up. My teenage daughter and niece had bounded up the trail and were already out of sight.
The climbs before this one.
I remember my first ascent, when I was about 12, feeling dizzy and too afraid to look down as I scrambled up the notoriously steep section near the top. It was the first real physical challenge I had attempted, and I wasn’t sure I would make it. At the peak, the view was spectacular — the brilliant blue waters of the bay stretched out below. I felt as if I had reached the top of the world.
Twenty years later, when my husband and I were dating, I brought him to the mountain. I wanted him to understand something about me that I couldn’t quite put into words — where my mother came from and why it mattered. He made it to the top ahead of me and was waiting when I arrived, slightly out of breath, grinning. He understood.
And now, fifteen years into our marriage, we were climbing again — this time with our teenage daughter.
He and I talked as we climbed, the way you can only talk when you’re moving. He stayed just ahead, pausing often, never rushing me. At one point, he reached back and offered his hand over a difficult stretch of rock, and I took it, and we didn’t say anything.
At the summit.
Heavy clouds hung over the mountain. As we reached the summit, we entered a mist so wet and thick it felt like walking into a rainstorm that had somehow been suspended in time — the air itself seemed to be holding its breath.
And then, my daughter appeared. She was perched on a rock near the small white chapel at the summit, her cheeks flushed, her hair wild from the wind. She looked entirely at home.
“There you are, Mom! What took you so long?”
She was happy and strong — much stronger than I was at her age, and stronger than I was now. I had carried so many worries up the mountain: whether she was ready, whether she would be afraid, whether this place would mean to her what it had always meant to me.
I looked at her, then at my husband, then out at the bay and islands below us, slowly emerging as the mist shifted and broke. The same view. The same mountain. People I love, standing here now, who would be different on the next climb.
Colleen Mastony lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, their daughter, and their two small dogs, Dorothy and Oz. This week, she and her mother leave for Ireland. They haven’t finalized their itinerary — but they will be climbing Croagh Patrick.
Further Afield
Reading worth your time.
The queen of the Aegean.
National Geographic
More on this week’s island. From last September, Joanna Kalafatis on why Syros never chased tourists, the Italianate streets of Ermoupoli, and a food scene that has quietly become one of the best in Greece.
Eight more islands the crowds haven’t found.
The Independent
For anyone who wants a longer list. Ted Thornhill’s 2026 roundup of lesser-known Greek islands, from a foodie haven that produced one of the country’s great chefs to a car-free escape ninety minutes from Athens.
Paying to vanish.
Crain Currency
The view from the family-office world. Marcus Baram’s June piece on how the very wealthy are spending more than ever to disappear this summer, and the advisor who calls the most expensive thing in luxury travel right now the absence of intrusion.
The quiet is about timing.
NerdWallet
Sally French lays out the case with the numbers: shift a trip a few weeks off peak and the same places cost far less and empty out. It is the Dispatch’s point with the airfare data attached.
The case for getting a little lost.
Without Maps (Substack)
The travel writer we quote in the Dispatch, Daniel Scheffler, on why the most interesting travelers have stopped chasing the famous icons and gone looking for the unexpected. His essay “Alternative travels” is a good place to start.
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
— Henry Miller
