The train pulled away from Milan just as the afternoon light began to soften the city’s hard edges. She sat by the window, fingers wrapped around a small paper cup of espresso gone cold, watching her reflection flicker over the blur of olive trees and ochre villas.

She was traveling alone. For the first time in years.

The choice had felt quiet but certain. A slow rising from within. Not a dramatic escape, not a reinvention—just a soft instinct to go somewhere beautiful and let the stillness catch up with her.

She arrived in Périgord under a pale afternoon sky, the kind that made the stone villages glow as if lit from within. The taxi wound through fields of sunflowers and rows of lavender, each bend in the road feeling like an exhale. She hadn’t known exactly why she came—only that something within her had stirred in recent months. A soft tug. A need to shift, to shed, to listen.

She’d signed up for a month-long artist’s retreat at the edge of a small village, a quiet cluster of shutters and slate roofs perched above the Dordogne. Her room overlooked a garden filled with rosemary, thyme, and soft yellow roses. Mornings were for tea and journaling beneath the fig tree. Afternoons were spent in a stone barn-turned-studio, where others painted or wrote or wandered in thoughtful silence.

She arrived in Paris on a drizzly Wednesday, her suitcase wheels clicking over the wet cobblestones like a heartbeat. She had rented a small apartment in Montmartre, just above a florist’s shop where the scent of eucalyptus and garden roses drifted up to her window each morning. It had been forty years since she first walked these streets as a wide-eyed college student with a sketchbook in her satchel and dreams blooming like spring.

Now, at 59, she had returned—older, quieter, carrying a longing she couldn’t quite name. A soft pull toward beauty. Toward remembering.

There’s something alchemic about stepping into a new country, breathing in unfamiliar air, and letting your senses guide your creativity. My art workshops in Portugal and Paris weren’t just about making beautiful travel journals—they were about becoming more fully ourselves through the act of creating in places steeped in history, charm, and inspiration.

Layers of Light, History, and Ink

Paris greeted us with soft gray skies and the shimmer of morning on the Seine. From the first breath of croissant-laced air, we knew we had stepped into a dream. Each arrondissement had its own rhythm, its own palette—and we chased them all with hungry eyes and open hearts.

Setúbal wraps around you slowly, like linen in a breeze. Mornings began with a walk to the waterfront, past fishing boats bobbing lazily in the harbor and market stalls bursting with color—plump oranges, wildflowers, hand-painted tiles. The air was laced with salt and sunshine, and the pace of life invited us to breathe a little deeper, move a little slower.

Want to know what art supplies I take along with me when I travel? It’s all in this video and you’ll be shocked how compact it packs down.