If you want to see a destination properly, don’t research it. Go in blind. Wander, flâneur – have a few drinks. Then totter around like a wobbly dessert. Trust your own judgement. Even if you get it wrong, it’s better to screw things up on your own, than get them right along with everyone else…

Pop quiz: when you think of ‘travel,’ what springs to mind? Battered backpacks and wide eyed wonder, or selfie sticks, ‘Insta-famous’ photo spots and a rugby scrum of tourists ruining Santorini?

I don’t know about you, but I’m opting for the cauliflower eared throngs of tourists every time. And it’s not ~the masses~, of which I conveniently don’t consider myself a part, that I have a problem with (in fact, I quite like having the gaggles of photo-hoarding geese around, dutifully trotting to wherever TikTok tells them, as they make me feel special), it’s myself. 

I don’t know when it happened, but sometime between asking a scammer to take a photo of me after he’d just charged me 60 euros for a 10 minute taxi ride at the age of 19 in Paris, and turning 28, thus converting into an ‘ageing millennial’ embittered at being told my skinny jeans and conformist life goals are no longer cool, I have somehow become everything I used to hate.

I guess it’s a canon event?

Living and working full time in Sydney, I now scour Instagram, TikTok and Google to find out the best things to do (and the best restaurants and cafes to go to) in any given destination, almost every time I go on holiday.

While some of these tools are useful time savers if you have limited hours in a destination, I’m here to argue, using a dredged up quote from the Anthony Bourdain, that – where possible – you should go into any new destination as naive and uninformed as you can.

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Why? Because it’s more satisfying to get things wrong – and you inevitably will – on your own, than get them right having outsourced your brain to a ’10 best restaurants’ list written by a copywriter who has probably never even been to the destination in question. And on the rare occasion you get it right, it’s much more satisfying. Either way you’ll be more ‘in the moment.’

As the late chef, travel show host and author once said: “I’m a big believer in winging it. I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one. Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I’m always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary.”

He also once said of Paris (and I think it’s advice that applies to a lot of places): “The absolute worst thing to do when you come to Paris is plan too much. Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, Arc de Triomphe, stand in line for hours to experience what everybody says you have to. Me? I like to take it easy in Paris, especially if I’m only in town for a few days.”

“Most of us are lucky to see Paris once in a lifetime. Make the most of it by doing as little as possible. Walk a little, get lost a bit, eat, catch a breakfast buzz, have a nap…Eat again. Lounge around drinking coffee. Maybe read a book. Drink some wine, walk around a bit more, eat, repeat.”

There you go, food for thought.

This story originally appeared on escape.com.au. It has been reproduced here with permission.

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