What Is Soft Adventure?

It wasn’t until I was sitting in my “croquis clay” class on the third floor of a converted church in Copenhagen that I felt it. A big old exhale I’ve been holding for all of my adult life, maybe. A loosening. A feeling like I’m in this space just for myself; I’m not performing this trip for anyone.

If my hair had been in a clip, I would have taken that clip out and shaken my hair down long. But since it was already down, I took a sip of my delicious tea and kept on creating my nude sculpture based on Barry, the naked older man resting gently on his side with his eyes closed in front of me.

This is it, I thought. This is soft adventure.

What exactly is soft adventure?

By definition, soft adventure is “adventure tourism that requires little or no experience and is low risk.” So, if you’ve ever wanted to go on a vacation and try something that sort of medium-challenges you (i.e., if you’ve ever thought, “I don’t want to climb Machu Picchu, but I want to hike in a forest in a different country”), you really do want a soft adventure.

The concept here is to dip a toe outside your comfort zone but not so far out that you feel like your heart is pounding. Think more après-ski than downhill ski, but maybe you briskly walked to the ski chalet and attempted to speak to someone in a foreign language. And now that I’ve tried my hand at a bit of soft adventure on a recent trip to Copenhagen, I can tell you it’s the perfect way for a mom to travel — especially this single mom of four boys who had no idea how to travel on her own.

Here are my top tips for trying out this travel trend for yourself.

Treat yourself to a nice bed.

After deciding it was incredibly brave of me to go alone to Copenhagen, I decided to stay at a lovely hotel as a sort of thank you to me. I picked Villa Copenhagen, a gorgeous old post office turned cozy, elegant hotel. The bed was sink-down-deep and comfortable — just like every chair and sofa I sat on in Copenhagen, the home of hygge.

So, my first suggestion as you venture into soft adventuring is to ensure the place you retreat to at the end of your low-lift day is an experience in and of itself. You know, mix a little sleep tourism in with your soft adventure to be the hippest mom traveler of 2024. Bonus: My hotel had a heated rooftop pool so that I could float around by myself to relax and unwind.

It’s also wise to pick a hotel or resort that is centrally located, making it as easy as possible for you to get where you’re going or find clean and safe public transportation. Again, soft adventuring is about low risk and high reward.

Sometimes, eating alone and meeting locals is brave enough.

The trick to experiencing a little soft adventure as a solo traveler is finding a local who wants to help. I took a slow walking tour of the architecture of Copenhagen, orienting myself and getting all the hot gossip about the goings on of Denmark’s capital just as the sun went down. I ended up at POPL, where I tucked into the legendary NOMA burger instead of going to actual, fancy NOMA on my own. Soft adventure is all about choices, and I choose a perfect burger *always.*

I made my short visit about meeting locals, which felt brave in its own way. I ate a communal dinner at Kanalhuset (a canal house) and took the bus out to CopenHot to do the hot/cold tub thing alongside big groups of squealing young Danish men. I drank coffee and ate cardamom buns at Rugg Bakery as often as possible. Brave, I know.

And then, of course, there was my clay modeling class at Absalon, a community center in the Carlsberg District, where I thought I might make a mug or an ashtray. Instead, I discovered I would be recreating Barry’s naked poses, elbow-to-elbow with about 15 young Danish women… all of us quiet together, shaping and reshaping Barry’s reclining body as the instructor reminded us, “Don’t worry about the outcome. Just be here now.” I breathed easier while Barry, I suspect, napped.

Don’t stress about doing; just focus on being.

Such is at the heart of soft adventure. Don’t worry about the photos or the stories you think you’ll want to tell when you get home. Yes, you can book an expensive trip just for yourself where you don’t hit every single hot tourist spot. Let yourself just enjoy doing a little instead of forcing yourself to do a lot.