It wasn’t until I sat in a “croquis clay” class on the third floor of a converted church in Copenhagen that I felt it. It was like letting out a big breath I’d been holding back maybe my whole adult life. It was like my heart was letting go. It felt like I was in this space just for me. Like I wasn’t on this journey for anyone else.
If my hair had been in clips, I would have unclipped it and let it down long, but since my hair was already down, I took a sip of my delicious tea and carried on making a nude sculpture modelled on Barry, a nude older man lying silently in front of me with his eyes closed.
This is it, I thought. This is a soft adventure.
What exactly is soft adventure?
By definition, soft adventure is “adventure tourism that requires little to no experience and is low risk” – so if you’ve ever wanted to take a holiday and try something of moderate difficulty (i.e. “I don’t want to climb Machu Picchu, but I’d like to go hiking in the forests of another country”) then soft adventure is indeed what you want.
The concept here is to step out of your comfort zone, but not so far that your heart starts pounding. Think après-ski rather than downhill skiing. Maybe a quick walk to the ski hut and try to talk to someone in a foreign language. And having tried a bit of adventure on a recent trip to Copenhagen, I can say that this is a great way for moms to travel, especially as a single mother of four boys who had no idea how to travel alone.
Here are my top tips for trying this travel trend for yourself.
Pamper yourself with a nice bed.
Going to Copenhagen alone seemed like a brave move, so I decided to do myself a favor and stay in a nice hotel. I chose Villa Copenhagen, a cozy and elegant hotel in a former post office. The bed was deep and comfortable, just like all the chairs and sofas I’d sat on in Copenhagen, the birthplace of hygge.
So my first suggestion when venturing out on a soft adventure is to make sure your resting spot at the end of a low-lift day is an experience in itself. Mix a little sleep tourism into your soft adventure and become the most fashionable mom traveler of 2024. Bonus: My hotel had a heated rooftop pool where I could float alone and relax and unwind.
It’s also wise to choose a centrally located hotel or resort so that you can get to your destination as easily as possible, find clean and safe public transportation, etc. Again, soft adventures are about low risk, high reward.
Sometimes it takes courage to dine alone and meet locals.
The trick to enjoying a little adventure when traveling solo is to find a local to help you. I took a leisurely stroll through the architecture of Copenhagen, listening to all the hot gossip about what’s going on in the Danish capital as the sun went down. I ended up at POPL, and instead of going to a real upscale NOMA on my own, I savored the legendary NOMA burger. Adventure is all about choices, and I always choose the perfect burger.
I decided to get to know the locals during my short stay, which I found to be quite courageous. I ate communal dinners at Kanalhuset (a canal house), took the bus to CopenHot and soaked in the hot and cold tubs alongside a bunch of young Danish men, and drank coffee and ate cardamom buns at Rugg Bakery as often as I could. I know it was courageous.
Aleksandar Nakic/Getty Images
Then, of course, there was the clay-sculpting class at Absalon, a community centre in the Carlsberg district. I had expected to make a mug or an ashtray, but instead ended up elbow-to-elbow with about 15 young Danish women, recreating Barry’s naked pose. We all joined in silence, sculpting his reclining body over and over again. “Don’t worry about the outcome, just be here,” our instructor admonished us. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Barry dozing off.
Don’t stress about doing anything, just focus on being.
That’s the whole point of soft adventures: don’t worry about the pictures and stories you’ll have when you get home. Of course, you can book a pricey trip just for yourself that doesn’t include all the popular tourist spots. Just enjoy a little, without trying to do too much.
