Have you ever found a place on earth where you just feel complete peace?

That’s nice, dear. Good for you.

On mountain summits.

OP, I have two completely different places:

London and Luckenbach.

London doesn’t seem peaceful to most, but I’m so happy there. The history, the architecture - I must have lived there in a past life.

Luckenbach is hard to describe - it’s basically an indoor/outdoor dance hall with hundreds of huge trees, nice people, great music, and the easygoing magic of Willie and Waylon and the boys. I’m a native Texan and there is this ineffable sense of harmony and liberalism and cool people out there. It’s like what Texas should be.

I rent a cabin in the Hocking Hills, in Appalachian Ohio. I take a selection of movies with me, and enjoy the hot tub after hiking all day.

Thailand.

Dyatlov Pass.

Here on Datalounge Isle!

I took a drive north, out of San Francisco. I was going to just drive until I got hungry, find a place, and the head back. Just over the Sonoma County line on Highway 1 I pulled over and … listened. A light breeze in tall grass, birdsong, and a distant moo was all I heard. I can still remember the exact feeling of that time and that place. I’m generally happy and free of emotional turmoil but I truly knew peace in those 15 minutes.

[quote] Dyatlov Pass.

What's "Dyatlov Pass"?

I visit family friends that live in a small town in the Netherlands, their home sits up on a hill overlooking the Rhine. When I arrive we always walk to town to buy cheese and wine. We spend most of our time playing with the dogs, drinking tea, walking in the arboretum, at night it's usually a simple dinner on the patio...so incredibly peaceful.

Big Sur, without question. It almost feels like going back in time to me. There’s no place like it.

When I went to Austria we went way up in the mountains where it was foggy with little cottages and sheep everywhere. I loved it.

Did the sheep meet your expectations?

Ooh baby do you know what that's worth? Ooh heaven is a place on earth.

Las Vegas. New Delhi.

Yes, any place where people are waiting on me and I don't have to do shit

Tulum. I apologize, it’s a silly place to choose, but I do indeed love it. I go when it’s more quiet.

My last trip there was two years ago with my husband for New Years. We stayed in an adult only wellness retreat, no tv’s, and we tripped acid on New Year’s Eve while listening to gentle mood/spa music while on the roof by ourselves, just looking at the stars, in awe. Truly, the best night of our 20 years together — it was beautiful.

The other place that makes me feel alive is northern CA, driving from the Bay into Yosemite etc. Those golden hills!!! They are a Van Gogh! Everything about the hills of northern CA is my sweet spot — no, not their mountains, I’m not there for El Capitán, though I love seeing it. I’m there for those sweet hills and foothills. And swimming holes. And hot springs. I can still smell the trees, especially the big daddies.

Rural Scotland and Wales. Patagonia.

Lying under trees, with dappled light.

The Bathhouse

Balmoral

The Cloisters, in Fort Tryon Park, NYC

Big Sur

There are loads of peaceful places. Often they are places that exist mostly apart from outside distractions and influences, a perfect house or site, say.

Finding a place to live that energizes me every day, that improves my perspective and quality of life and that makes me feel fortunate to be or live there, that's a rarer thing, but they exist, too. A few cities for me.

Well, definitely not in Nice or the Isles of Greece. Although, I did drink champagne on a yacht.

A small coastal town in SE Ireland. I used to visit my grandma there and I still feel residual happiness and love when I go back.

R4

I feel like geography is genetically coded, in some way. I see those tall, thick trees and feel uneasy, even as I feel their beauty. And you might feel weird seeing the geography that makes me at peace: central Texas limestone cliffs, live oak trees. I don’t think I could ever live in Georgia or North Carolina.

R17

I just got back from a wedding in Isla Mujeres and would love to visit Tulum in the way that you have: quiet, few influencers. Any tips?

The only time I truly feel calm is sitting on the grass next to my grandmother's grave - as weird as it sounds. My mother died when I was little, so I never really knew her. I lived with my grandmother growing up, and she was a lovely person. I visit her grave twice a year, and even though it's sad, I also feel like I'm calmest sitting there - like my breathing almost becomes slower and steadier just being there.

Meditating at home

Yes, lying on a tropical beach that’s sparsely populated.

[quote]I feel like geography is genetically coded, in some way.

Not at all the case for me, R26, no place or landscape from my childhood calls to me as peaceful. As a kid I knew that home was a place I would make in another, better place. I read about art, architecture, history, geography and it's always been places that are charged with layers of history that appeal to me. Modern resorts, the seashore, a deserted island, or climbing mountains or hiking wooded trails...not for me, or not for long. I can appreciate the appeal, but it's very much a lesser, fleeting interest.

For me, complete peace is an ancient walled garden, a colonnade, a beautiful room with a great view, favorite streets, vistas of cities, unspoiled towns, parks that are a mix of highly orchestrated manmade elements among planned greenery. Peace is urban, or framed by architecture and design.

I understand that some people look "to get away from it all" to find peace, or find it in sentimental places from their early life. I'm not one, unless you count foreign trips into the equation.

Costa Rica

Oh, an island in the sun.

Which village is this, OP? It sounds lovely.

The top deck of the former Cunard liner Caronia in the middle of the South Atlantic, about 10 pm one December night with a brandy in one hand and my boyfriend in the other, listening to a professor of astronomy from Johns Hopkins lecture about the thousands of stars overhead. We truly felt at one with the universe.

Sanibel Island, Florida once, but not since Florida lost its mind.

Sunset in any of various desert parks in Arizona. The sunsets there are amazing.

The street where my old childhood home is. I drive by it sometimes.

Yachats, Oregon - July 4 weekend for many years.

Wonderful, small-town America celebration.

The Everest region of Thailand, the far NW Coast of Ireland, CapeCod

The cemetery near Stirling Castle in Scotland has benches where you can sit in peace and solitude as you look over the town nestled below. The cemetery itself is steeped in history and is not scary or depressing. I immediately felt the complete peace that you describe. I've been back three times.

The dunes at Herring Cove Beach in Ptown in the winter.

Yes, a bridge over the South branch of the Raritan River on Woodfern Road in New Jersey. this place gives me complete peace. I also swam there.