Travel around with me and discover different cultures, gain new experiences, try unique food and enjoy what the world has to offer. My rule for old towns is simple: arrive with one anchor — a market, a viewpoint, a bakery someone swore by — and leave every hour after that unplanned.
The anchor-and-drift method
Pick your anchor for the morning, reach it slowly, then choose streets by light and smell rather than by map. The lanes that look unpromising on paper — the uphill ones, the ones without shops — are usually where the town keeps its real life: laundry lines, workshop noise, somebody's grandmother judging your pace.
Eat where the workers eat
The lunch test never fails: if the tables are full of people with dusty boots and ten minutes to spare, sit down. Order what they are having, even if you cannot identify it. Twice this has produced the best meal of a trip; it has never produced a bad one.
Three villages I would revisit tomorrow
The canal quarter for golden-hour bridges, the hilltop lanes for sunset over the rooftops, and the fishing harbour for mornings that smell of salt and espresso. Routes, stay notes and market days are all in The Cities collection.
Wren Aldana
Travel writer behind Lantern Trails. Walks far, packs light, always carries a spare notebook.
