The Unhurried Itinerary: How to actually rest on holiday

"Feeling truly rested and restored comes from within." 

Some holidays are designed to be action packed. Others are the opposite. Not for idleness, nor just for sleep necessarily, but the simple, underrated experience of a mind with nothing to chase.

That kind of rest used to be what happened in the spaces between activities. A well-earned siesta between a day of museums and dinner perhaps. Increasingly though, rest is the activity. The entire reason for going somewhere extraordinary, and fully embracing the rare permission to do nothing once you arrive.

And yet, for many of us, that feeling remains just out of reach, because the busyness of ordinary life rarely stays behind when we travel.

It is this gap, between the life we are living and the rest we actually need, that psychologist and broadcaster Claudia Hammond has spent years trying to understand. The author of Overwhelmed: ways to take the pressure off and The Art of Rest, Hammond has made it her life's work to unpick why rest eludes us, and what happens when we finally let it in.

Her research surveyed 18,000 people across the world, and what it revealed runs against most of our instincts: the activities people find most restorative are rarely passive. "A truly restful activity should be absorbing, even stimulating," Hammond says. "It's a change from the demands of life, something we want to do, rather than have to do."

This is a distinction worth holding onto. Rest, in Hammond's telling, is not the absence of experience but the presence of the right one. "The key to resting well is to do something you like that allows you to slow your mind down. If you think resting is boring," she says, "you haven't yet found your restful thing. It could be a brisk walk or learning a difficult piece on the piano. It doesn't have to be lying in a hammock."

It might be spent in an afternoon absorbed in front of Da Vinci’s Last Supper in Milan, dissecting every detail with a private guide arranged through The Carlton. Or a walking tour of Rome’s bohemian Trastevere neighbourhood, moments from Hotel de Russie, winding through its labyrinthian streets.

Hammond herself admits she is not naturally inclined toward stillness. "I am one of those people who like to be busy on holiday," she says, "and certainly one day lazing on a beach is more than enough for me." What changed, she explains, was learning to distinguish between busyness that depletes and absorption that restores. The difference, she found, was not in the activity itself but in the quality of attention it demanded. 

In her latest book, Overwhelmed, she describes this as flow, a state of complete absorption in which the mind is fully occupied but entirely at ease. "It’s often associated with artistic endeavours or peak experiences, but true rest is also a form of flow," she says. "It stops the constant chatter in our brains." 

At Hotel Savoy in Florence, this might be a private painting session with local artist Mario Minarini — working in a city that raised Botticelli and Michelangelo. Or it might mean creating a signature scent with Aquaflor, who revive the ancient Renaissance and Medici-era fragrance traditions. Both keep the mind and hands flowing with creativity. 

The trap, Hammond is quick to point out, is turning rest into yet another thing to perfect. "You definitely don't want to turn rest into another thing you have to fit into your schedule or another aspect of your lifestyle," she says. "Relaxing shouldn't be a competitive sport, a thing at which you are somehow 'better' than someone else." It is a subversive thought, that the pursuit of the perfect restorative holiday might itself be a form of the restlessness we are trying to escape.

The antidote, she suggests, is not grand gestures but small ones. Her own research points to the underrated power of micro-breaks — a brief walk, a moment of deliberate stillness. "In modern life there's often more downtime than we think," she says, "but we're not good at seeing it as a chance to tune out or switch off." At Masseria Torre Maizza in Puglia, that could be a stroll through fragrant herb gardens, ending with an infusion made from the plants you have just harvested. At The Balmoral in Edinburgh, it might mean an hour with Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, one of Scotland's leading Gaelic poets, who will write a poem to mark your time in the city, a meaningful pause that also serves to record your experience. 

For Hammond, the answer is closer to home. "For me, it's gardening," she says. "It really helps me to destress, to clear my mind, and it makes me more creative and productive." Like at Verdura Resort, where guests can spend an hour in the organic kitchen garden, gathering what they'll later cook, before the only decision left is what recipe to follow. "A good life is one in which we have a balance between work and play, between social life and solitude. If you get the balance right," Hammond concludes, "time seems to expand." It's not a bad way to measure a holiday well spent.

Discover where to do nothing, beautifully with Rocco Forte Hotels.