When people ask me for travel recommendations, they're usually expecting me to name the biggest cities I've visited.
London. Rome. Seattle. Dublin.
And while I've loved spending time in each of those places, I've noticed something after years of traveling: it's rarely the big cities that stay with me the longest.
Instead, it's the smaller towns. The places where shop owners remember your face. Where you can hear church bells instead of traffic. Where dinner lasts for hours and no one seems to be in a hurry.
I've learned that some of my favorite travel memories happened in places that weren't necessarily on my original itinerary. These smaller destinations became the highlights of the trip, and in many cases, I'd happily return there before revisiting the larger city nearby.
Here are three small towns that completely won me over.
