The Places That Hold a Piece of Us
What we really leave behind in the places that provoke and stir us
Senatorių Pasažas in Old Town Vilnius
Travel’s pull on us is never stronger than when on rare and special occasion, we feel the privilege that is the pang of parting. That pierce can only come from those places that have truly provoked and stirred us. These places are meant to play a central role in our stories of becoming. They are brilliant and adaptive method actors. Each doing its part to advance the script and induce a most transfixing character arc for their protagonist – us.
Some bestow a great gift. They brighten us with the residue they leave behind, cloaking us in layers of inspiration. We return from these places feeling like we’ve brought back a spectacular collection – an anthology of motivation, passion and wonder.
Others elicit a great edit and discarding. They coax us to let go of outgrown mindsets and ambitions. They lift heavy burdens off our shoulders and broken hearts by inspiring us to do what once felt impossible – surrender, forgive and move on.
But the ones that evoke a chronic ache as the wheels lift up, those are the places that pull off the perfect heist without our ever knowing. They seduce us into leaving an essential piece of ourselves behind all but ensuring we come back to claim and tend to the mysterious unfinished business we have there.
When we return home, these places will slide into our dreams, our somedays and our sense of self. They will ask more of us, so that we might in turn demand more of who we are meant to be. They aren’t just another fabulous getaway, they are a watershed moment in our entire becoming.
After I compile the list of places where I am certain I left something behind, I zoom out. The places staring back at me, calling me back with unwavering intensity have each claimed a piece of me – and I of them. As a strict believer in the rule of threes, the fact that four rise up annoys but reassures me. In this case, three simply won’t do.
The places I have been drawn to where the longing cannot be numbed are Seville, Florence, Vilnius and New Zealand’s Waiheke Island. There are of course dozens of other places I would love to return to – Norway, Scotland, Tallinn, Kyoto and Argentina, but these four have held a piece of me since I left. Going back for more here would be different, like a homecoming and a reconstitution of self and purpose.
It would take fifteen years for me to finally answer Seville’s persistent, mysterious calls. My first trip there in 2018 was mesmerizing but far too rushed. I left wanting more. I almost missed a chance to go back in 2025. And how different I would be today if I had.
I got cold travel feet last year and midway through my Spanish travels, I cut Seville among other places out of my itinerary so I could go home early. But then the tastes of Granada, Spain rallied and resuscitated me just in time.
Seven years later, I had finally returned to the city so determined to hold me.
Being there this time, I felt an inexplicable sense of equanimity and calm. I don’t think it was a coincidence that Seville was the city that met those cold, anxious feet. In looking back, it was perhaps the only place that could have kept them in industrious, inspired motion. While I give San Sebastián credit for disrupting the inertia that had slowed my finding a purpose-driven calling and career, it was Seville days before that had picked me up and set me upright.
If Seville felt like a patient, slow embrace, Florence hit me like a lightning bolt. Florence grabbed instant and infinite hold of me the second I fell under the spell of their famous “Shoemaker of Dreams,” Salvatore Ferragamo. There was something, once more inexplicable, about how I felt taking in his rags to riches story from the museum under Ferragamo’s flagship store. Flamboyant creativity met impeccable vision here and a most perfect spark of purpose and potential had been lit right in front of me.
For the first time in my life, a sudden calling to create had overtaken me from a city that was itself already overflowing with craft, beauty and art. In every direction I looked I saw creativity manifest in Florence’s taste, charming store fronts, epic architecture and museums and artisanal farmers’ market stalls. Florence helped me see what I couldn’t yet see in myself – I was a creator and it was time to finally create.
From the moment I arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, I felt unusually comfortable and composed even though this quaint, beautiful storybook town had wholly and utterly swept me away. My first impression of Vilnius is as clear today as it was that autumn morning. The sun was shining, school had just let out and the cobblestone streets were alive with school kids darting about in starchy blue plaid uniforms.
As I explored one artisan shop after another, I could feel myself softening under Vilnius’ soothing rhythm. There was an endearing, virtuous whimsy in the air. The more I basked in it, the more Vilnius felt like the kind of place one could go to think and to write and to be inspired doing both. And this was all before I found “it.”
It = Senatorių Pasažas.
It’s completely possible that not a day has passed since I first walked through this farm- to-table themed courtyard and complex that I haven’t thought about it. Senatorių Pasažas spreads out in a restored 400-year-old building housing two incredible restaurants, 14 Horses and Nineteen18, specialty shops including a gourmet market and a bakery and an organic wine bar. It is truly like no other place I have ever come across in all my travels.
But amazingly, what I hadn’t done, at least not until now, is read more about it. And that’s all I needed to do to understand why this place – which was closed and/or booked during my Sunday-Monday 48-hour stay in Vilnius – has never left me.
The first sentence of its About section reads: Senatorių Pasažas stands in the heart of Vilnius Old Town as a living testament to the enduring power of place.
Some places don’t just touch us once.
They find us again when we are ready and the time is right and ripe.
As with Seville, my love affair with Waiheke Island began before I ever set foot there. The more I read about New Zealand’s Island of Wine, the more I knew it would be an oasis, a place where I could slow down and find clarity, where I could write and create, where I could just… be. I was excited to get a chance to do what I love, around what I love. Once I got there, I was smitten.
I woke up before sunrise, wrote, took long lunches, and wrote some more. I tasted and sipped and took in the passion and purpose on display all around me – the winemakers, the shopkeepers, and to my delight the chefs. I would go on to have during my stay on Waiheke, the best meal I have everhad at Te Motu’s The Shed.
Over the next four days, Waiheke was supposed to be a place of easy, joyful simplicity. And for the most part it was. But falling in love more and more each day with what it felt like to move there, had triggered a crisis.
I thought I had built out my entire life around a new sense of purpose and direction but I hadn’t ever tried or thought to harness the power of my surroundings. I hadn’t ever thought to tap the influence and current of the place I call home.
Waiheke made it impossible to unsee what I saw there. Potential. My potential. Who I could become, if only I was plugged into the right energy source.
***
These four places didn’t take a piece of me so that I might feel incomplete. They took a piece of me so that I might sit up and see what was always meant to flourish in their place.
Those chronic aches, these pangs of parting?
They are growing pains.
Proof of my becoming.
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