Leave Room for a Place to Speak Back to You

A travel note for the over-planners.

Porquerolles, France

My Take

Planning can help you experience a place deeply, but it can also leave very little room for the place itself to speak back.

I say this as someone who does a lot of research before I travel. I like to understand where I'm going, get to know the area before I arrive, and have a sense of what I want to experience while I'm there.

But a good friend once asked me: When you travel, do you leave room for the unknown?

Not traveling completely unplanned, but leaving room for the things you couldn't have known to plan for. The recommendation that only comes once you're there. The place someone tells you about in conversation. The thing you stumble upon along the way.

That question stayed with me.

It doesn't mean I've stopped planning. I've just started thinking differently about what needs to be planned.

What I do know is how I want a place to feel.

In the South of France, I knew exactly how I wanted my mornings to feel, and being right on the water was intentional.

I wanted to wake up for the sunrise.

The balcony door partly opened so I could feel the breeze coming off the water. The fan still on beside me. The curtain peeled back just enough for the morning light to reach into the room.

And then I would watch.

The sunrise came in phases. First, just a little light. Then these beautiful brushes of color stretching across the sky and reflecting over the water, changing almost every time I looked away and looked back. I loved watching it happen slowly.

Watching the sunrise became almost like eating dessert slowly. You don't rush through something that good. You savor each phase, watching the colors change, knowing there is still more to come.

Only after that did the rest of my morning begin.

Sunscreen. Hair thrown up. Swimsuit on. Downstairs to grab a beach chair, then straight to the water for a swim.

That was my rhythm. Sunrise. Water. Repeat.

I knew how I wanted my time there to feel. I didn't need to know everything that would fill the days around it.

Those were the things worth planning for.

The rest, I was learning to leave open.

Open enough to listen when someone suggested something I hadn't found in my own research. Open enough to let a place or a conversation change what I thought the trip might look like.

Porquerolles came from exactly that kind of openness.

I didn't know about the island when I first started planning this part of France. It came onto my radar because I was engaging with people locally, talking about where I was going and what I was looking for. Someone told me about Porquerolles and described it to me as basically their Caribbean: blue water, beautiful beaches, and great wine.

Okay. I'm listening.

I added it to the trip.

And what I thought might simply be a nice day trip turned into one of my favorite days in the South of France.

A Solo Day on Porquerolles

During my nearly two weeks traveling solo through the South of France, I gave Porquerolles a full day of its own.

The night before, I got everything together: my cooler, umbrella, snacks, swimsuit, a change of clothes and whatever else I thought I might need. I didn't really know what would be available once I got onto the island, so naturally, I prepared.

The next morning, I grabbed everything I had packed the night before and took the bus to the ferry port in Hyères.

Getting to Porquerolles was much easier than I expected.

I took the bus to the port and hopped on the ferry, which I remember being maybe 15 minutes, possibly not even that long. And then you're there.

You step off the boat right into the little village area of the island.

One of the first things I noticed was that I had probably overprepared a little bit. There were several shops right near where the ferry lets you off with bread, sandwiches, fruit, drinks and other things you could grab for the beach.

So, fellow planners: you can arrive without an entire day's worth of provisions. You'll survive.

From there, I rented a bike.

You can walk Porquerolles, but getting around on foot takes significantly longer. There were both regular bikes and e-bikes available. I went with a bike, locked my things in, figured out where I was headed and started toward my first beach.

First Stop: Plage Notre-Dame

The bike ride to Plage Notre-Dame was probably my first real introduction to the island.

I was riding through these beautiful paths surrounded by greenery, taking everything in, and at one point biked right past a vineyard.

That detail became even better later.

I made it to Notre-Dame around 9:30 or 10:00, parked and locked my bike, grabbed my things and started making my way down the steps toward the beach.

That's when you really see it.

As you come down, the beach opens up below you almost like a cove. Pine trees and Mediterranean vegetation frame the shoreline, and then right in the middle of all that green is this incredibly clear, calm blue water.

The contrast was remarkable.

It felt like arriving at a little tropical paradise, except the landscape around it was distinctly Mediterranean. The pine trees, the dense greenery, the blue of the water. Everything seemed to frame the beach.

After biking there in the heat, I didn't need much convincing to get in.

I spent about an hour and a half there, but I wouldn't say I spent an hour and a half on the beach. I spent most of it swimming.

The shoreline wasn't really the soft sand I usually picture when I think of a beach. There was this textured layer of dried seagrass across parts of it, almost leaf-like under you. It made the beach feel more natural, but it also wasn't the kind of shoreline where I wanted to spread out and lie there for hours.

The water, on the other hand, was perfect.

Clear, blue and calm. The kind of water where you could actually see through it.

So I stayed in it.

I swam, floated and let myself be there for a while. No real agenda. Nothing I needed to be doing other than enjoying where I was.

Eventually, I got out, dried off enough to throw my shirt back on, packed everything into my backpack, walked back up to my bike and kept going.

Biking Across the Island

My next beach, Plage d'Argent was on another part of the island, which meant getting back on the bike and riding across Porquerolles.

This was a workout.

It was incredibly hot that day. The bike made getting around much easier than walking would have been, but I was definitely feeling the ride.

At the same time, I loved it.

There was something about physically moving through the island that made me feel like I was actually experiencing it rather than being transported from one attraction to another. I could see the landscape around me, pass little things I hadn't planned to see and stop whenever I wanted.

Which is exactly how I found the fruit stand.

Right before I reached the next beach, I passed this little stand selling fruit and drinks.

So I stopped.

I grabbed some cherries, a few other pieces of fruit and something cold to drink and put everything together to bring down to the beach with me.

It was such a small moment, but it's one of those details I remember so clearly.

Then I parked my bike again, made my way down and got right back into the water.

I spent another hour and a half there—again, mostly swimming.

No real agenda. No need to rush off to the next thing.

Just enough awareness of the time to realize that eventually I needed to eat.

Lunch Before Everything Closed

By the time I left the second beach, it was somewhere around 1:30 or approaching 2:00.

And in France, that matters.

A lot of restaurants close between lunch and dinner, and I knew I was getting dangerously close to the point where my leisurely beach morning could turn into me wandering around hungry.

So I found a restaurant that was still serving and sat down.

Shrimp pasta.

A glass of Porquerolles rosé.

Perfect.

The rosé was honestly one of my favorite things I had that day. It was so crisp and refreshing, especially after spending the morning outside in the heat.

And then I remembered: I had literally biked past the vineyards earlier that morning.

There's something different about drinking wine in the place where it comes from, especially when you've spent the morning actually moving through that landscape.

I think I even brought a bottle back with me because I liked it so much.

I didn't drink too much at lunch. It was hot, I had already been biking, and I still had more biking and exploring to do. So I had my glass of rosé, ate, hydrated, charged my phone and let lunch become a little reset before getting back on my bike.

Because after spending the first half of the day in a swimsuit, I was headed to an art museum.

From the Beach to Barefoot Art

A family friend had suggested Fondation Carmignac, the art museum on Porquerolles, and its Sea, Pop and Sun exhibition. I'd made a mental note that if I could fit one more thing into the day, I wanted it to be that.

So after lunch, I changed out of my beach things. You obviously can't just walk into a museum in a bathing suit. I got back on my bike and headed over.

And this was such a treat.

I ended up spending close to two hours there. The art itself was stunning, but what I loved even more was that the museum didn't feel separate from the experience of being on the island. Even inside, Porquerolles was still very much present.

You experience the exhibition barefoot.

There was something about that detail I loved. I had spent my morning barefoot at the water, biking around in the heat, eating cherries on the beach, and now, hours later, I was walking barefoot through an art exhibition.

It felt so perfectly Porquerolles.

And maybe that's what I loved most about the day.

Somehow, without really planning it, so many of the things that feel most like me had found their way into a single day: the sea, movement, a vineyard, a long lunch, art.

Nothing felt forced. Nothing felt like I was moving through a checklist of things to see.

It all just belonged there.

And for that day, so did I.

Rosé by the Water

When I left the museum, I wasn't trying to fit anything else major into the day.

I had already done so much, and I wanted to enjoy the last stretch of time before heading back to the ferry.

So I biked toward the water again and found a little restaurant where I could sit outside.

I ordered a small appetizer and had a couple glasses of rosé.

And I just sat.

I ended up talking with some of the waiters and having a genuinely good conversation with them. There was no rush. I didn't have another reservation to make or another place to explore before leaving.

I could just be there.

Before heading toward the boat, I stopped and grabbed a cup of sorbet.

A very appropriate ending to an extremely hot day.

The Ferry Home

I am open to spontaneity.

I am not spontaneous enough to risk the last ferry off an island.

Some things about me remain unchanged.

I caught the ferry back around 5:00, took the bus from the port, and by early evening I was back at my hotel.

When I think about Porquerolles now, I don't remember it as a checklist of things I saw. I remember how the day felt.

A sunrise. A bike. The sea. Cherries on the beach. A vineyard. A long lunch and a cold glass of rosé. Art, barefoot. Sorbet before the ferry home.

A day full of things I love, somehow all finding me without much of a plan.

That was Porquerolles for me.

Leave Some of It Unwritten

The funny thing is, I don't think this experience has made me any less of a planner.

I still research. I still want to understand a place before I arrive. I still know that certain details can completely change how I experience a trip.

What I'm learning is to distinguish between planning the things that matter to me and planning away every possibility of surprise.

I can choose the hotel room where I'll wake up with the sunrise.

I don't have to know what I'll discover after breakfast.

I can know that I want to spend time near beautiful water.

I don't have to know every beach before I arrive.

I can have a few restaurants saved.

I can also listen when someone tells me about an island I've never heard of.

That space matters.

It's where a local recommendation can change the course of a day.

Where you stop for cherries because you spot them on the side of the road.

Where a friend sends you to a museum you might otherwise have missed.

Where you stay in the water a little longer because it feels too good to leave.

That's the space you leave for a place to speak back to you.

Porquerolles wasn't part of my original plan for France.

But somehow, it gave me a day filled with so many of the things I had gone to the South of France looking for in the first place.

Maybe that's the beauty of leaving some of it unwritten.