The Long Way Round
Getting lost in a city is not a failure of navigation. It is the only honest way to learn a place — by the accumulation of wrong turns.
I have been lost in cities on three continents, and I have yet to regret any of them. The wrong bus, the missed turn, the walk that took forty minutes longer than it should — these are not failures of navigation. They are the material of knowing a place.
Maps lie by omission. They show you the efficient line between two points, the street names, the approximate distances. What they cannot tell you is that the alley beside the bookshop smells of cardamom on winter mornings, or that there is a bench at the end of the long straight road where old men play chess in the late afternoon.
Against efficiency
The most direct route is almost never the most instructive one. Cities reveal themselves laterally — through the accidental detour, the neighbourhood you crossed by mistake, the staircase that deposited you somewhere unexpected.
I am suspicious of travellers who claim to have done a city in a weekend. You can see a city in a weekend. You can photograph it, catalogue its famous things, eat in its well-reviewed restaurants. But knowing a city is slower work.
The long way round is also the better story. No one recounts the journey that went exactly as planned. What we tell is the version where something went wrong — and we found something better instead.