Must Do
Activities, rituals, and one-of-one experiences worth showing up for. Sunrise rooms, neighborhood walks, hands-on lessons, the kind of thing you tell your friends about for a decade.
All cities · Must See · Must Try · Must Eat · Must Drink ·
Istanbul
Outside deck, simit, a glass of çay, two continents in twenty minutes.
Catch the late afternoon ferry. Stand on the right deck. The skyline goes pink, then bronze. Eat dinner on the Asian side and walk back to the ferry under streetlights.
Stalls, smoke, mezes, a small carafe.
Walk the market mid-morning, then sit at a long table, order three mezes and a fish of the day. Two hours minimum. No phones at the table.
Büyükada or Heybeliada, walking shoes, a long lunch.
Day trip from the city. Cars are banned. Walk the perimeter, eat at a working seafood place, swim if it is summer. Last ferry back at sunset.
Lisbon
Miradouro, plastic chair, view of the river.
Pick a quiosque on a miradouro, order a beer or a ginjinha, watch the light fail. The river goes copper, then black. Stay through the streetlights.
Not the Instagram one. The full route.
Catch it at Martim Moniz on a weekday morning before the cruise crowd. Sit on the right side. Get off in Estrela for a coffee and the small basilica.
Ten-minute river crossing, two-hour seafood lunch.
Take the ferry from Cais do Sodré, walk the riverfront to a working seafood place, order grilled sardines and vinho verde. Take the late ferry back.
Mexico City
Live trio, esquites cart, no rush.
Walk down from the Frida house, eat at the market, sit in the plaza when the trios start. Stay an hour longer than you planned.
Editor's note: Skip the haunted-house tours. Trust the plaza.
A neighborhood market that doubles as a Sunday school for living.
Drift through the textile and ceramic stalls, eat a quesadilla from the corner cart, end at the bookshop in the plaza. Walking pace, no agenda.
Streets close to cars, locals come out on bikes.
From Plaza Río de Janeiro to Parque México and back. Three hours, two coffees, one helado. The city's best argument for itself.
New York
A working park on the Williamsburg waterfront, Brooklyn side.
Bring a coffee, sit on the steps, watch the bridge light up. The skyline of Manhattan is a free show. Walk south to a slice on Bedford after.
Reading rooms, free programming, end with a walk in Prospect Park.
Two hours in the building, no agenda. Then exit through Grand Army Plaza into the park. The city becomes a different city in fifteen minutes.
Free, twenty-five minutes, the right side of the boat.
Manhattan to Staten Island at sunset, then the next ferry back as the city lights up. Stand on the deck. No headphones. No drink. It does the talking.
Paris
Fruit stalls, a covered hall, and the oyster cart at noon.
Get there by ten, walk the open stalls, eat oysters and a glass of muscadet from the cart, then drift to a cafe in the eleventh. A whole Paris day in three blocks.
Editor's note: Skip the Place. Stay in the side streets.
Bring a baguette, a bottle, and one friend.
The bridges between Jaurès and République. Sit, watch the locks fill, pass the bottle. The city is loudest in your phone and quietest on the water.
Pick the eleventh, the third, or the eighteenth.
Three hours, no list, no queues. The eleventh teaches you the modern city. The third teaches you the old one. The eighteenth reminds you Paris is also a hill town.
Tokyo
A neighborhood bath, opened before the sun, for under a thousand yen.
Find a working sento in a residential pocket, arrive at opening, and follow the rules. Wash, sit, soak, sit. The building is half the experience. The neighborhood waking up around it is the other half.
Editor's note: Skip the trendy spa rebrands. The plain old sento is the point.
Cherry-lined paths, paper-wrapped breakfast, no rush.
Start at Nippori, exit through the cemetery, eat your way down Yanaka Ginza, end with hojicha at a kissaten. Two unhurried hours. No queue, no fuss.
One full loop, window seat, no headphones.
An hour-long lap of the city, narrated by the rooftops. Take it once early in your trip and once at the end. The view changes after a week.