The best part of getting lost…

Bologna, Italy

I love a plan when I travel. I love a reservation.

I love knowing where I am staying and where dinner is.

I like having a general idea of what I am doing and how long it will take to get there.

But, I also love abandoning all of it and just wandering.

Some of my favourite travel memories have come from taking the wrong street, walking far longer than intended, missing a turn and finding something I would never have gone looking for.

A tiny restaurant. A courtyard. A beautiful building. A local florist. A doorway that stops me in my tracks.

Sometimes it’s the things you weren’t looking for, that turn out to be the most interesting. A shop you weren’t planning to visit. A little bar that looks far more inviting than the one you spent half an hour researching. Or a street that makes you stop simply because it’s beautiful, even though you have absolutely no idea where it leads.

There is something wonderful about not knowing exactly where you are going. It leaves room for surprise.

And I think that’s part of the appeal of travelling in the first place. You can research a destination for months, save restaurants on Instagram, read reviews, make reservations and build an itinerary that would impress a small tour company. But you can’t plan for everything you might discover along the way.

Nor should you try.

Somewhere between the carefully planned dinner and the walk back to the hotel, there might be something far more memorable waiting around the corner.

The best part is getting lost.

Not completely lost, obviously. I still like to know roughly where I am, and I would prefer not to end up on the wrong side of a city after dark, with a purchase under one arm, and a phone on three per cent battery. There are limits to my sense of adventure.

“there is a particular kind of pleasure in losing all track of time and direction. You stop checking the time. You notice the details. ”

And while I enjoy a spontaneous detour, I’m not necessarily looking for an unexpected two-hour hike in the wrong shoes, particularly if dinner is booked for 7.30.

But there is a particular kind of pleasure in losing all track of time and direction. You stop checking the time. You notice the details. You look up at buildings you would otherwise walk straight past. You find yourself taking photographs of things that weren’t on your list, with no particular purpose other than wanting to remember them.

And occasionally, you stumble across somewhere so lovely that you wonder how on earth you found it.

That’s the beauty of leaving a little room in the plan.

I will always research my destinations, book the restaurants and make sure I know where I’m sleeping. I’m not about to become the sort of traveller who arrives in a city with no accommodation and calls it an adventure.

But I am learning to leave a few hours unaccounted for.

No reservations. No particular destination. No need to make the most of every minute. Just a comfortable pair of shoes, a charged phone (preferably above three per cent), and the freedom to turn left instead of right.

Because sometimes the best part of a trip isn’t the place you spent weeks planning to visit. It’s the place you found when you weren’t looking.