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Travel & the art of waking up
Most travel writing is about where you go during the day. I am more interested in the other part: the first minute of the morning, before you have decided anything, when a room tells you exactly where in the world you are. These are the three I think about most.
1. A glass-roofed cabin in Finnish Lapland
The appeal here is simple and slightly ridiculous: the ceiling is the view. You lie on your back and the sky is right there, and if the aurora appears you do not have to get dressed, find your boots or stand in a field at minus twenty to see it. You just open your eyes.
It helps to be honest about the odds, because a lot of writing about this is not. Visit Finland puts the aurora season in Lapland from the end of August to early April, with September to October and February to March as the strongest stretches, and October and November statistically among the best. During autumn and spring the lights appear on roughly every second clear night. That last phrase carries the weight: clear is doing a lot of work, and a week of cloud is a perfectly normal outcome.
What nobody warns you about is that the real strangeness is not the aurora at all. It is December and January, when most of Lapland enters the polar night. In the far north the sun does not rise for weeks. Morning is not a sunrise, it is a slow blue glow that arrives and then leaves again, and waking into it must feel less like a new day starting than like being briefly let in on something.
What waking up is like
Cold air on your face and a warm bed underneath you, a sky that is either black, green or soft blue, and absolutely no reason to get up. In summer it flips entirely: the midnight sun means the light never properly goes, which is why an eye mask is less of a luxury there than a necessity.
2. A tatami room in a Kyoto ryokan
A ryokan does something no hotel does. Your bed does not exist during the day. While you are at dinner, staff lay the futon out on the tatami, and in the morning they come back and put it away again. The same room is a sitting room, then a bedroom, then a sitting room. You do not wake up in a bedroom, you wake up in a room that has been temporarily lent to sleeping.
Everything is low. You are on the floor, so your eye level in the first waking moment is a few inches above the matting, and the whole room reads differently from down there. The walls are paper, so light does not arrive as a beam through a gap in the curtains but as a general, even paleness that fills the room from every side at once. There is usually a tokonoma, a small alcove holding a scroll or an arrangement of flowers, which is the only thing in the room asking for your attention.
Then there is the choreography of it. A yukata folded and waiting, wrapped left side over right, because the other way round is associated with death and causes genuine offence. Slippers that come off at the edge of the tatami. Breakfast that might be miso soup, grilled fish, tofu and nori, served at a time someone else has decided. For one morning, every small decision is made for you, which is either deeply restful or mildly maddening depending on your temperament. I think I would find it restful.
What waking up is like
Firm floor, soft futon, the faint grassy smell of tatami, and light with no direction to it. The room is quiet in a particular way, because paper walls absorb sound rather than bouncing it.
3. A cave house above the caldera in Santorini
These are called iposkafa, and they are not houses with a cave theme. They are carved directly into the cliff face, with no foundations, because there is nothing to put foundations on. The result is a building with a narrow front and surprising depth, running back into the rock rather than spreading sideways, with domed and vaulted ceilings and walls finished in red and black stone and Theraic earth mixed with lime.
The layout is the part I find most appealing, and it is consistent: the living room sits at the front where the windows are, the kitchen tucks into a corner, and the bedroom is at the back. The deepest, darkest, coolest part of the house is the part you sleep in. That is the opposite of how most of us arrange a home, where the bedroom gets a window and we then spend money on blackout blinds to undo it.
It means waking up in near darkness and walking forward toward a doorway of light, which is a lovely sequence for a morning. The Theraic earth insulates, so the room is cool in summer and warm in winter without doing anything. And because the villages sit on the caldera rim looking west, the sun comes up behind you rather than over the water in front. The first thing you see is not the sunrise but the far wall of the caldera catching it, which strikes me as the better half of the deal.
What waking up is like
Cool, still, and dark enough that you have no idea what time it is. Then a short walk toward a bright rectangle of doorway, and the whole island arriving at once.
Three kinds of morning light
Reading these back, the thing they really differ on is light, which is also the thing that most decides how a morning feels anywhere.
Lapland
Light from above
Overhead and changeable, from green to black to a long blue twilight. The ceiling is the source, which is why you can watch the morning happen without sitting up.
Kyoto
Light from everywhere
Paper walls diffuse it, so it arrives without a direction or a hard edge. Nothing glares, nothing casts a sharp shadow, and the room brightens as a whole.
Santorini
Light at the end of the room
None where you are sleeping and plenty where you are heading. You choose the moment you meet it, which is a rare amount of control over a morning.
Borrowing the feeling at home
You cannot carve a cave into a semi in Rutland. You can take the underlying ideas, and most of them cost nothing.
- Separate the bed from the window. The Santorini principle. If you can move the bed away from the light, or improve the curtains, you get the dark-to-light sequence rather than being woken by whatever the sky is doing at five.
- Make the light indirect. The Kyoto principle. A lamp bounced off a wall or filtered through a linen shade in the evening is far closer to that diffused paper-wall quality than an overhead bulb.
- Put something in the room worth looking at. One tokonoma-ish spot, a shelf or a small table holding one considered thing rather than twelve. It gives your eyes somewhere to land that is not your phone.
- Reduce the number of morning decisions. Part of what makes a ryokan restful is that the choices are already made. Lay clothes out, set the breakfast things, decide tonight what tomorrow starts with.
- Change into something you only wear for this. The yukata idea. A set of pyjamas or a robe kept for evenings, rather than whatever was nearest, turns getting changed into the start of something.
What I would pack for any of them
Different climates, same short list. Unfamiliar rooms are harder to sleep in than familiar ones, and most of that comes down to light, noise and not having your own things.
- A blackout eye mask, for the midnight sun, a thin curtain or an early flight.
- Earplugs, which weigh nothing and fix the one problem you cannot negotiate with.
- Pyjamas you would be happy to be seen in, since shared bathrooms and breakfast rooms are common in all three.
- A robe, which doubles as a dressing gown, a layer and something to throw on at six in the morning.
- Your own pillowcase, if you are particular, because it is the one piece of bedding you can realistically carry.
- Something to read that is not on a screen, for the hour when you are awake and the day has not started.
For the mornings in between
Three things that work as well in a Rutland bedroom as in any of the above. Browse more in cotton pyjamas and robes.
Myza
Japanese Crane on Coral Women’s Cotton Pyjama Trouser Set
100% cotton with a long-sleeve button-up top and full-length trousers, in a crane print by an independent designer. Breathable enough to travel anywhere on this list.
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Myza
Green Dots Organic Cotton Robe
A wrap-front robe in 100% GOTS-certified organic cotton with side pockets. The closest thing in a suitcase to a yukata waiting folded on the tatami.
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SMUG
Cherry Blossom Contoured 3D Blackout Sleep Mask
Recessed eye cups keep the pressure off your lashes, and an adjustable fastening means it stays on. There is a version that comes with earplugs, which covers both problems at once.
Shop now →Frequently asked questions
When is the best time to see the northern lights in Finnish Lapland?
Visit Finland gives the season as the end of August to early April, with September to October and February to March the strongest periods, and October and November among the best statistically. In autumn and spring the lights appear on roughly every second clear night, so cloud cover is the real variable.
What actually is a ryokan?
A traditional Japanese inn, often near hot springs, with tatami-matted rooms and paper walls. The defining difference is that the futon is laid out for you each evening and put away each morning, so the room serves two purposes. Yukata robes, slippers and a traditional breakfast are usually part of the stay.
Are Santorini cave houses dark inside?
The back of one certainly is, which is precisely where the bedroom goes. They are carved into the cliff with a narrow front and considerable depth, so light reaches the living space at the front while the sleeping area stays cool and dim. The Theraic earth also insulates, keeping them cool in summer and warm in winter.
Which of the three is easiest to actually book?
Santorini, by a distance, and cave houses are available well beyond the famous hotels. Lapland glass cabins book up far ahead for the winter season. A Kyoto ryokan is the one most worth researching carefully first, since they vary enormously and the experience is the point.
Is it harder to sleep well in an unfamiliar room?
Many people find the first night somewhere new is poorer than usual, which is a well-recognised and generally temporary effect. Taking a few familiar things with you, keeping your usual wind-down and controlling light and noise all help. If sleep is a persistent problem rather than a travel one, that is worth raising with a GP.
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Informational note: This article is a personal piece rather than a travel guide. Seasons, opening times and availability change, so check current information with official tourism sources and your accommodation before booking.