Arrive somewhere at six in the morning and you get a version of it that the guidebooks never describe, largely because nobody writing a guidebook is awake.
The shutters are still down. A man is hosing the pavement outside a bar that will not open for four hours. Two women argue amiably over a delivery crate. This is the hour when a place is still talking to itself rather than to you, and it is the only time you will see it that way.
Stay longer in fewer places
The arithmetic of a short trip pushes hard in the wrong direction. Four cities in six days sounds like more, and delivers less: you spend the surplus on stations, and you meet nobody twice.
- Pick one base and treat day trips as the exception.
- Go back to the same café three mornings running. The third time, something changes.
- Leave one day completely unplanned. It will be the one you describe when you get home.
The market is the shortcut
If you have one morning and want to understand what a place actually eats, skip the restaurants and go to the market. Prices tell you what is in season and what is precious. The queue tells you which stall is worth it. Nobody is performing for visitors at seven in the morning.
You learn more about a city from what it throws away than from what it puts in the window. Watch the back doors of the restaurants at closing time.
On getting lost properly
There is a difference between being lost and being unsure, and the phone in your pocket has quietly abolished the second one. Unsure is productive. It makes you look up, read the shopfronts, notice that the street is climbing. Navigating turn by turn, you arrive having seen nothing between the two points.
The compromise most travellers settle on: keep the map for the way back, and refuse to look at it on the way out. You will lose twenty minutes. You will also find the thing you came for, which is not on the map anyway.
What to pack that nobody lists
A pen, and something to write on that is not a screen.
Not for the diary you will not keep. For the address someone gives you, the name of a dish you cannot pronounce, the time the last bus leaves. Handing someone a pen is also a way of asking them to help you, and most people say yes.
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