Pick a day in advance and commit to it. Left as a good intention it never survives contact with a well-researched itinerary.
| What you were told | What you do instead |
|---|---|
| The historic centre | The last stop on a bus route |
| The famous restaurant | Wherever people in work clothes eat at midday |
| The viewpoint | The supermarket |
| The museum | The launderette, the hardware shop |
| The guided tour | One street, slowly, for an hour |
A supermarket in an unfamiliar country tells you more about how people live than most museums manage. What a week of food costs. What is grown there and what is flown in. What is normal, what is a treat, what people eat when nobody is watching. It is free, it takes twenty minutes, and virtually no visitor ever does it.
Do not perform it. The moment the point becomes having an unusual story, the value is gone. Observation is quiet.
Ordinary places are someone's home. An outer neighbourhood is not an exhibit and the people in it are not local colour. Watch, do not impose, do not photograph people without asking.
This is not permission to be unwise. Unremarkable is not the same as unsafe. Apply the same judgement about area and hour that applies everywhere else.
| Which day | |
|---|---|
| Where I went instead | |
| What I noticed |