Noise, According to the Italian Driving Manual

Noise On ~ Book Noise ~ Clacson Dialects ~ Clacson Meets Lden ~ 

European Driver, Quiet in Theory ~ California Dreaming Horn ~ 

Exhaust as a Personal Statement ~  Studying for the Exam, Clutching My Pearls ~ 

Maximum Moderation, Minimum Compliance

A variation of the image used in the SID Manuale, in the chapter on noise

Noise On

I've always had an interest in noise, and an issue with noise. I'm interested in noise's impact on people, why some people don't seem bothered by it, and why I am, and why is there is so much of it—NOISE—in the world. Past posts include: Noise and Nuisance; Bronzino to Babbage, A Field Guide to Italian Hotel Noises, and You Know It When You Hear It.)

So, it was with surprise and delight that I found a chapter in the Italian driving-license book on noise. In the SIDA Manuale della patente A e B (the Italian study book), noise is not treated as a vague annoyance, the thing you complain about while closing the window. It is classified properly, soberly, and a little optimistically as inquinamento acustico: acoustic pollution. Be still my beating heart!

This treatment of noise immediately elevates it. Now my crazy rantings on noise have backing. The truck with the loose load passing below the apartment at 6 am is no longer merely “that truck again.” It is part of Chapter 22.

The book places noise beside air pollution, fuel consumption, exhaust fumes, vehicle maintenance, and the broader civic duty of not degrading our shared environment. It is a high-minded little chapter and I like that. It imagines the driver as a careful, rational, socially aware person who maintains the vehicle, limits unnecessary acceleration, avoids useless honking, and remembers that the road is shared.

Book Noise

The Italian driving manual does not treat noise as a mere irritation. It calls it what it is: inquinamento acustico, acoustic pollution. Section 22.1.5 begins plainly and lists a few behaviors you see commonly when driving around Italy.

Here's the section of the book:

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Il rumore prodotto dai veicoli a motore è causa di inquinamento acustico e di una serie di problemi di salute. I rimorchi vuoti, che sobbalzano eccessivamente, possono essere causa di rumore. Per questo motivo, ogni conducente ha il dovere di osservare le seguenti cautele:

• far verificare che la marmitta (dispositivo silenziatore) funzioni bene e sia di tipo approvato, sostituire la marmitta rovinata con una approvata per il veicolo, senza manometterla o modificarla
• evitare inutili e ripetute accelerazioni a vuoto, da fermi
• far controllare i freni se stridono (sostituendoli se necessario) e cercare di non frenare bruscamente
• non precorrere le curve ad alta velocità e no provocare lo strisciamento degli pneumatici
• sistemare il carico ed eventuali coperture in modo idoneo
• curare la manutenzione della carrozzeria e delle sospensioni
• chiudere delicatamente la portiera (anche per non danneggiare l'autovettura)
• per avvisare in caso di emergenza, usare il lampeggio al posto del clacson

Bisogna usare il clacson con la massima moderazione e nei centri abitati solo in caso di effettivo e immediato pericolo. Quando è necessario, suonare il clacson il più brevemente possibile.

Causano inquinamento acustico:

• marmitta non omologata
• uso improprio del clacson
• brusche partenze
• brusche frenate
• freni che stridono
• brusche frenate in curva
• carico svolazzante

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Some useful translations:

• inquinamento = pollution
• rimorchi = trailers
• sobbalzare = jump around
• marmitta = muffler
• clacson = horn
• freni = brakes
• carrozzeria = car body
• carico = load
• svolazzante = fluttering about

What I like about this list of causes of noise is how ordinary it is. The enemy is not only the roaring engine or the modified scooter exhaust. It is also the rattling trailer, the squealing brakes, the door slammed too hard, the horn used as punctuation, the fluttering tarp behind a truck. Noise is treated as a hundred small failures of attention. I guess you could say the entropy of noise in that everyone sort of says "Not my problem, I'm just driving down the road". This is similar to what we observed in the post Notes on Entropy from a Courtyard in Italy, which concluded that the concept of everyday entropy is the slow unraveling of order in one's surroundings because many say "not my job".

The manual is not saying: never make noise. Rather it says: do not make pointless noise. It is a tiny civic ethic disguised as test prep. Of course, I ace all the test questions in this section! They seem so obvious to me.

This careful driver exists. Somewhere maybe? Or, possibly only in the illustrations in the book.

Joking aside, studying for the Italian patente has changed how I hear the street. Before, vehicle noise fell mostly into emotional categories: irritating, very irritating, and mostly “is that thing legally allowed to exist?” Now I have a point of reference, a chapter in the official driver's manual. The bad muffler, the squealing brakes, the horn used as punctuation, the rattling load in the back of a truck: these are not just sounds. They are categories of noncompliance and sections that at least I can console myself with and point to even if it doesn't really help.

Clacson Dialects

The word clacson looks odd to English eyes. It is the Italianized form of Klaxon, originally a trademarked name for an electric warning horn. Treccani defines clacson as a graphic variant of English klaxon, now used in everyday Italian for the acoustic warning device in a vehicle. In official language you may also see avvisatore acustico, which is more literal: acoustic warning device. But clacson is the word more commonly used. The word sounds noisy.

The manual says the clacson should be used with la massima moderazione, and in towns only in cases of immediate and real danger. Good advice in theory, but in practice it's another story. (Also, "maximum moderation" sounds less like driving advice and more like a rule for surviving modern life.)

Moderate your horn, your speed, your acceleration, your impatience, and we'd add perhaps also your expectation that anyone else has read the same page. Why? Because, in practice, the horn has many unofficial meanings in Italy. It can mean:

“I am here.”
“You are slow.”
“The light turned green 0.4 seconds ago, step on it!”
“I know you, hi!”
“I am entering this blind corner and please be aware.”
“I am annoyed, and everyone within hearing range should be informed.”

So yes, officially, the horn is a safety device. Practically, the horn is a language. It has grammar, dialect, local idioms, and emotional range. It may be brief, extended, musical, accusatory, celebratory, or existential.

Clacson Meets Lden

While the Italian driving manual treats noise with admirable seriousness, as inquinamento acustico or acoustic pollution, there are no hard limits. The guidance seems squishy, basically "try not to make noise".

The European vocabulary around noise is more precise: Lden, Lnight, dB(A), exposure thresholds.

• Lden is the average noise over the whole day, evening, and night, with evening and night weighted more heavily because noise then is more disruptive.
• Lnight is the average night-time noise, especially relevant for sleep.
• dB(A) means decibels adjusted to approximate human hearing.

The European Union’s Environmental Noise Directive is not exactly a “keep everyone below this number”, but more a framework for measuring, mapping, reporting, and managing environmental noise. The commonly used reporting thresholds are around 55 dB Lden for day-evening-night exposure and 50 dB Lnight for night exposure. (Official legal text.)

WHO Europe is more direct in its health-based recommendations. Its 2018 environmental noise guidelines recommend keeping road-traffic noise below 53 dB Lden and below 45 dB Lnight. Earlier WHO night-noise guidance gives 40 dB Lnight outside bedrooms as a target to protect the public, especially vulnerable groups. (Guidelines table.)

This is all somewhat useful to know, though perhaps less useful at the exact moment a 50cc (cubic centimeters) moto is ripping down Via Pignolo making the left turn onto Via San Tomaso. (Ironically, a 50cc moto can make upward of 80 dB(A) of noise.)

So figuring out whether Italy has “done something” under the Environmental Noise Directive turns out to be its own small research project. The EU directive requires maps and action plans, but the results do not live in one tidy place. Some are reported to the EEA (European Environment Agency), some appear through ISPRA (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambiente) indicators, and many live with regions, cities, airports, railways, and road operators. Italy has implemented the directive through D.Lgs. 194/2005 and has reported population exposure using Lden and Lnight. So yes, the maps and plans exist. Whether the street below your window has become quieter is, as usual, a different and more personal question. Maybe in a future post, we'll dig into these reports but for now, we'll have to accept that it's being thought about, seems to be measured, and maybe work is in progress to mitigate exposure. (Glancing quickly at the reports shows road noise as by far the largest contributor to noise exposure.)

In daily life terms, 50 to 55 dB(A) is not the apocalypse. It is roughly equivalent to a quiet street, a refrigerator hum, moderate rainfall, or the lower edge of conversation. These numbers are not about one spectacular noise event, or whether your ears are immediately damaged. They are about cumulative exposure: the acoustic climate you live in hour after hour, night after night. A loud burst, say a 50cc moto, a truck, or a horn, may pass quickly and add energy to the average. But, more importantly, it interrupts the body. It makes you pause, tense, wake slightly, or lose the thread of what you were doing. Environmental noise is often the background soup: tires, scooters, brakes, engines, deliveries, a horn here, a horn there, all simmering below the level of catastrophe but above the level of peace.

So where are we with noise? The manual gives noise a better name: acoustic pollution. The EU and WHO go further and give it numbers for measuring, even if the averages wash it all out.

European Driver, Quiet in Theory

The Italian book’s treatment of noise is not unique. Germany has an explicit Umweltschutz category in its theory-test material, where unnecessary acceleration is not just wasteful but noisy. France folds le bruit et la pollution into the theme of using the vehicle with respect for the environment.

The vocabulary changes, but the fantasy is shared: the driver as a calm, technically competent, socially aware participant in public space.

Naturally, we started to wonder if Italians are better, about the same, or worse in terms of noise pollution. How would you even measure this?

It turns out that comparisons are not that easily had. A 2022 study in Environment International looked at road-traffic noise exposure across 724 European cities and 25 larger urban areas, using Lden starting at 55 dB. It found that almost 60 million adults were exposed to road-traffic noise levels considered harmful to health. But the study also noted a very practical problem: the underlying noise maps varied in method, format, and quality. So the question 'Are Italians noisier?' quickly becomes 'What did France measure, what did Germany measure, and did Italy count that street with the delivery scooters?' Still, the broad picture is clear enough: road-traffic noise is a Europe-wide problem, and in many cities a large share of adults live above the 55 dB Lden threshold. (ScienceDirect)

The health connection in the ScienceDirect article is not that a honking car directly causes heart disease, satisfying though that explanation might be. Rather, traffic noise disturbs sleep, raises annoyance, and keeps the body making tiny stress adjustments: heart rate, blood pressure, hormones, vascular strain. Over years, those small insults can become less small. In that sense, inquinamento acustico is not only a poetic phrase from the driving manual. It is a public-health phrase hiding in plain sight.

The Italian and more generally the European driver, at least on paper, are custodians of the shared atmosphere: air, fuel, fumes, tires, brakes, and sound. It is a great idea in the manuals, but as we have noted, its application is where it kind of falls apart.

This is not to say that manuals are useless. Quite the opposite. They reveal the ideal. They show the shape of the civic person we are all supposed to become once we close the book, pass the exam, and enter a traffic circle with six exits, two motorcycles, a delivery van, and someone behind us expressing an opinion about our driving through the horn.

California Dreaming

After thinking about Italian drivers in relation to European drivers, we started to wonder about the United States. But the United States is not one driving system. Requirements and handbooks vary by state, even if the broad ideas are often similar. So, for a concrete example, we looked at California: not the largest state by area, since that honor goes decisively to Alaska, but the most populous state in the country, with more than 39 million people. Here's the California Driver Handbook.

California, being California, does have a section on “Green Driving,” with advice on smooth acceleration, steady speeds, tire pressure, vehicle maintenance, extra weight, and zero-emission vehicles. The environment is there, but mostly through the American vocabulary of efficiency, emissions, and technology.

The horn appears elsewhere, under safety. Use it to avoid collisions or warn others of hazards. Do not honk because someone is slow, because someone made a mistake, or because you are angry. The handbook even reminds drivers that the horn sounds much louder outside the vehicle, which is both obvious and apparently necessary to say.

What's interesting and laudable is that the Italian manual gathers these behaviors under a wider moral weather system: consumption, exhaust, maintenance, noise. The poorly maintained muffler, the unnecessary acceleration, the horn used as punctuation, the rattling load in the back: all are small failures of shared space.

The California handbook says: be safe, be efficient, don’t be a jerk. Gratuitous musical reference: "All the leaves are brown. And the horns are quiet..." sort of thing.

The Italian book says: you are part of an acoustic environment. Please behave accordingly. Gratuitous musical reference: "Prisencolinensinainciusol" sort of thing.

Exhaust as Personal Statement

The Italian driver's license manual also warns against modifying the vehicle, especially the muffler. This is where the theory becomes disconnected from reality, because some vehicles seem to treat the muffler not as a device for reducing noise, but as an instrument of self-expression.

The manual, being a manual, does not say any of this. It simply says the muffler should be approved, functioning, and not tampered with. It does not dwell on some drivers' desire to be heard before being seen.

After going through hundreds of quiz questions, I'm surprised how many questions come down to "is it okay to modify your muffler?". These muffler questions along with the noise questions are easy for me. Too bad the exam wasn't all of these types of questions.

There is something real hiding inside of rules, and that is that noise is rarely only mechanical. It is social, be it a horn or muffler. Noise says: I am here, I am impatient, I am powerful, I am careless, I am festive, I am young, I am late, I am delivering something, I am above maintenance schedules. But who could write rules and create exam questions for these meanings?

We could not find a neat statistic for how many Italians actually modify their mufflers. Perhaps this is just as well, because the phenomenon is easier to hear than to count. What we can say is that the issue is real enough to be written into the Codice della Strada. Article 155 says that drivers must avoid troublesome noise caused by how they drive, how the load is arranged, or other acts connected with circulation. It also says the silencing device, when required, must be kept efficient and must not be altered. So, the manual is not just being fussy. It is turning a legal principle into quiz form: the muffler is not a lifestyle accessory, even if some drivers seem to disagree.

Of course, aftermarket exhaust replacement is not automatically illegal. If it is approved for that vehicle and used as approved, it may be fine. The trouble begins when the exhaust becomes less “replacement part” and more “announcement system.” Somewhere between homologation and self-expression, the manual raises its hand and says: no.

Studying for the Exam, Clutching My Pearls

One of the strange pleasures of studying for the patente as an adult is that the material says more to you than to a teenager. You have years of observing driver behavior, and you are quicker to say, "wait a minute—that's not what I have observed!"

The book says:

• Not to accelerate unnecessarily. The, a car accelerates unnecessarily.
• The horn is for immediate danger. Someone honks because a pedestrian has the audacity to use a crosswalk.
• Avoid rattling loads. A truck passes with something loose and metallic performing percussion in the back. At 6am.

So the city becomes a listening exam, and I try not to turn it into a moral judgement on what I'm hearing. Studying the rules creates a new sensitivity where I hear the street not only as background and blatant violation, but as a series of tiny decisions being made long before we landed in Italy or set up shop on Via Pignolo.

Maximum Moderation, Minimum Compliance

The driver's manual describes a quieter, more considerate world. A world where drivers maintain their vehicles, use the horn only when needed, avoid pointless acceleration, secure their loads, and remember that other people also have ears.

We are not always living in that world.

But there is something charming about the attempt. The manual names the problem. It gives us the polite version of civic life. It says: here is how not to add unnecessary noise to the world.

And that may be enough for a chapter in a driving book. Not enough to silence a modified scooter. Not enough to stop the celebratory honk, the impatient honk, the “I am behind you and therefore must communicate” honk. But enough to make you hear them differently and maybe even appreciate them.

I'll take that as a start. That's lesson one.

Once noise gets labeled as inquinamento acustico, we need to consider it as part of the shared air, like exhaust, dust, heat, and all the other things we contribute without quite meaning to.

The road is not only visual. It is not only signs, lanes, lights, and right-of-way. It is also sound. A public space has a soundtrack, and every driver is adding something to it. This is lesson two.

The Italian manual asks, with charming optimism, that we add less. Con la massima moderazione, of course.

Five Days in Fez, Morocco

Night Arrival ~ The Medina as Rhythm ~ Riad or Dar ~ 

Guides, Shops, and the Tourism Machine ~ Food as Navigation ~ 

Getting Above and Outside ~ Nothing Special on This Street ~ 

Submit to the Fez ~ Photos

  

   
Top row: Royal Gardens of Fez and Souk Sabaghine of Fez.
Bottom row: Views of Fez including 1) Medina market on Friday with overhead lattice work,
2) Chouara Tannery - Fez, 3) Palace Bronze Doors, and 4) Exiting the Nejjarine Museum.

Night Arrival: Entering the Medina

The flight from Bergamo to Fez is short, barely three hours, but the time to transition felt much longer. 

One moment we are in northern Italy, negotiating airport security and grabbing a last-minute coffee at Eataly. A few hours later we are walking across the tarmac at the Fès–Saïss airport staring at the bold geometrical shapes and colorful patterns of the terminal, inspired by the Maghreb region. Moments later we try to recalibrate our thinking as we stand in the customs line staring at Arabic script and reminding ourselves to read right to left.

The drive from the airport was our next attempt at recalibration.

The road into the city passed along large dusty boulevards dotted with palm trees, more French-influenced Ville Nouvelle than medina. Cars drifted between lanes like lazy flies. People stood by the roadside alone and in groups, waiting for something or someone, we couldn't tell.  The medina always seemed just around the next turn, but it kept not arriving.

Our taxi driver was a risk taker, as we would learn several times during the thirty-minute drive. At one point he turned left into what was four lanes of oncoming traffic. Cars stopped within a few feet of our right-side doors. We all gasped. He looked at us, sincerely perplexed, as if we had misunderstood an ordinary traffic courtesy and that the vehicles did stop after all.

Finally, we arrived at Place Rcif, a large square beside one of the gates leading into Fes el-Bali, the old medina. A man was waiting with a cart. Into the cart went our luggage, and behind the cart went us.

Before ducking into the medina through Bab Sid L’Aouad, we had just enough time to take in the life of the square: women sitting and talking, kids kicking a soccer ball, vendors roasting corn. Yes, corn on the cob. We would come back for some a few days later, once Fez had worn us down and built us back up with courage to try it.

Bab Sid L’Aouad is not a ceremonial entrance. That role belongs more to Bab Boujloud, the famous Blue Gate on the western side of the medina. Bab Sid L’Aouad is more humble, more practical, and more connected to the daily service life of the city. 

After passing through the gate, we have about ten minutes of narrow lanes, smells, cats, trash, shopfronts, more cats, and shadows before arriving at our riad. In the days that followed, all of this would become familiar. On the first night, it was jarring.

Our home for the next five nights was Riad Dar Arsama Lux, tucked into the dense maze of Fes el-Bali. Over the course of the stay, it became more than lodging. It was refuge, dining room, observation post, and sometimes, if we are being honest, a beautiful little prison.

The first night we opted for dinner at the riad. After travel, a late arrival, and sensory overload, the arranged dinner was the correct decision. Tajine, bread, olives, and that slow generous rhythm of Moroccan hospitality eased us into the trip.

Outside the door was one of the oldest urban labyrinths in the world. Inside was calm. We would enter the labyrinth properly the next day, refreshed, or at least slightly less stunned.

The Medina as Rhythm

The medina of Fez is often described as a maze. That is accurate, but it is also a rhythm. During our five days, we fell into this rhythm: wander, pause, retreat, repeat. Mornings began in narrow alleys full of carts, donkeys, cats, shopkeepers setting up, and people moving with purpose. By midday we would usually start looking for somewhere to sit above the chaos.

One of those places was Café Clock. On our first morning we climbed to the rooftop terrace, escaping the clatter of the Rue Talaa Kebira below and looking out toward the Bou Inania Madrasa tower across the alley. From above, the city sounded different. Instead of noise, it became a soft texture: distant voices, metalwork tapping somewhere in the souk, the call to prayer drifting across rooftops.

The call to prayer in Fez did not strike us at first as much as it did in Istanbul. (Istanbul's calls to prayer were very loud.) Fez's softer call to prayer grew on us. At times it sounded like a chorus of slightly out-of-sync speakers trying to carry the same message across a very old city. Not exactly beautiful, not exactly displeasing, and certainly not background noise.

Fez is overwhelming if you try to process it all at once. It becomes more enjoyable when you let it arrive in fragments as we would learn. (Fragments and layers are useful and the way to think about and approach new places when traveling.)

Even the street signs began to feel like part of the puzzle. Our guide pointed out that in the medina, sign shapes can offer clues: square signs often indicate short local passages, rectangular signs suggest longer through routes, and hexagonal signs usually mean a lane or alleyway, or derb. Many derbs are dead ends. Like many things in Fez, the system was not perfectly consistent. We found at least one hexagonal sign on a street you could pass through. But the idea helped. The medina became slightly less like a maze and more like a language we were very slowly learning to read, one alley at a time.

The signs also carried another layer: Arabic, French, and sometimes Amazigh (or Berber, which is not considered the best label these days) written in Tifinagh, the geometric script that immediately catches the eye if you are not used to seeing it. Perhaps you might compare it to visitors in Seattle noticing Indigenous place names that locals may no longer consciously see. Or, in Alta Badia in Northern Italy where road signs have Italian, German or Ladin. Even the signs of a place speak to us in fragments.

Other fragments we noticed during our days in Fez: Painted alleys. Dirty alleys. Quiet courtyards. Big timbers bracing abandoned houses. A single plane tree in the Place Seffarine. A stork nest above Semmarin medina gate. A shopkeeper arranging a pile of dates with theatrical precision. A man in a dark cellar space feeding the fire of a hammam. A local oven used by families to bake, and the wonderful smell. The sun filtering through the wood lattice three stories above the souk we are walking through. A glimpse into a luxurious look-but-you-probably-can't-afford riad. Cats that look like they have survived three dynasties and impossibly small kittens already starting their ninth lives and don't need your affection, thank you very much.

The medina reveals itself through these fragments and more: half-glimpsed doorways, unexpected viewpoints, conversations that begin casually and drift into religion, trade, family, or the price of rent. Even errands became part of the experience. An ATM run, a pharmacy stop, or an attempt to find a café took us past layers of commerce: rugs, shoes, spices, cookware, fabrics, bakeries, beauty products, leather, and promising tourist signs whose QR codes never worked.

The longer we stayed, the more these small encounters became the substance of the trip. Fez is not a city that gives itself to you cleanly. It gives itself in dust, derbs, and unexpected joys.

Riad or Dar: Refuge, Home, Enclosure

A dar is traditionally a house. A riad, strictly speaking, is a house organized around an interior garden or courtyard. In practice, many guesthouses in the medina use the words in ways that blur. Our Riad Dar Arsama Lux had the intimacy of a home and the architectural grammar of a courtyard house, which is probably why the name works well enough even if you start overthinking it, which of course we did.

Staying inside the medina was never a serious question for us. Inside all the way. That was the idea. To visit Fez and stay outside the medina seemed like going to Venice and sleeping beside a motorway in Mestre. Convenient, perhaps, but not quite the point.

And yet, living inside the medina is challenging and changes you.

A riad turns inward. That is its beauty. It is also its limitation, at least as perceived from our modern sensibilities. Windows face the center courtyard. The outside world is filtered through the very few external facing windows, the roof, and whatever sounds drift through the walls. In our case, the central courtyard no longer had the open garden feeling one might romantically imagine. The sky was partially blocked with an opaque covering, to keep the rain out. Still, after a few days, we began to miss direct light and ordinary views.

Whatever happens in the riad's courtyard happens for everyone. Food smells. Voices. Footsteps. Dishes. The soft choreography of breakfast. The house had the atmosphere of a small rifugio, but instead of hiking boots and polenta there were tiled walls, carved wood, and Moroccan pancakes.

At the same time, it really did feel like living in someone’s home. In our case, the owners had used the riad as a family house before it became lodging, and our room had once been their main bedroom. People pay to have dinner with families in the medina. In a sense, we did that several nights and every morning just by staying here.

However, there is a contradiction with staying in a riad. It can feel like sanctuary and enclosure at the same time. You retreat from the medina into beauty, then retreat from the beauty to the rooftop for air.

The rooftop became essential. From there, Fez opened up again. The city sounded different from above: distant voices, satellite dishes, laundry, minarets, the murmur of life continuing across roofs. After a day in the lanes, the roof gives you access to the horizon.

Guides: Decoding the City, Entering the System

Like many visitors, we used guides. This was the right decision and also, later, something we had to untangle. We used two guides for three tours. One guide for a food tour. And one guide for a cultural tour of the usual stops and the same guide for a tour that we determined what we wanted to see (sort of).

One of our guides Ahmed (we used him twice) met us at our riad and from the start helped us understand the logic of the medina. We visited classic points in the historic core: Souk Sabaghine, where dyed wool hung above the street like a color chart; Bou Inania Madrasa, with carved cedar, zellij tilework, and plaster decoration framing a quiet courtyard; and Chouara Tannery, where the famous circular vats form one of Fez’s defining images.

Because it was Friday, a slower day in the medina, the tannery smell was less dramatic than expected. The mint leaves handed to visitors, useful in theory, remained mostly theatrical in practice.

The tours gave us confidence. That should not be underestimated. Fez can feel impossible at first. A guide helps make it navigable. You learn where you are, how to read the street sign shapes to learn about what kind of street it is, where the landmarks sit in relation to one another, and how to move through space that do not behave like streets on a European city map.

Our guides also gave us insight into Morocco in ways we did not expect. Religion came up often and naturally: prayer, Ramadan, saints’ shrines, Quranic schooling, and customs. This should not have surprised us as much as it did. Morocco is overwhelmingly Muslim, often cited at around 99 percent, so avoiding the subject entirely would mean avoiding one of the main ways the country understands itself. The subject was not avoided. It was part of the operating system of the place, and both guides seemed comfortable explaining it. We may have expected religion to be handled more cautiously with foreigners. Instead, it was part of normal conversation.

One small moment stayed with us. We had noticed less smoking than expected in Fez and were going to ask Ahmed about it. Before we could, he said he would be right back. He needed a cigarette and wanted to smoke away from us so as not to annoy us. A small courtesy, but a real one that he said was typical.

By the end of the trip, we may have had a few small complaints about our guides. That is easy to do after the fact, once you know more than you knew on day one. But they gave us know-how. They made the medina less intimidating. They helped us make enough sense of the city that, by the last day, we could move around on our own and enjoy it.

That is worth something.

Shops, Crafts, and the Tourism Machine

Fez is a city of extraordinary crafts. It is also a city that has learned, over centuries, how to sell its crafts to visitors. These two facts coexist.

Many of the shops we visited were places our guides took us. At first this made us suspicious. Surely there were commissions involved if we bought something. Surely these were not the hidden, authentic workshops we imagined discovering on our own. Over time, we realized something simpler: this is the system.

The system is not always sinister. Sometimes it is educational and useful. Sometimes it is charming in a transactional way. And sometimes it is just transactional without the charm. It depends on how we as tourists choose to participate in it.

At larger workshops like Art Naji outside the medina, the line between working craft space and tourist showroom is intentionally blurred. You watch clay become pottery, and small pieces of tile become mosaic before being delivered, gently but inevitably, into a large showroom. The demonstration is real. The showroom is also real.

At the Chouara tannery inside the medina, the same dynamic applies. You are not simply visiting the tannery. You are visiting a shop with a view over the tannery, a fact that is easy to forget. There are many such shops and guides often have relationships with particular ones, so guess where you'll get guided to. That relationship existed long before you arrived with your camera, and you were handed mint leaves.

We bought a rug during one of these guided stops and later found mixed reviews online for the shop. Did we pay too much? Probably. Do we like the rug? Yes. Did the negotiation feel real? Also, yes. Are we sorry? No.

The small irony is that on our first day we had stopped at Coin Berbere Carpets & Antiques and met the owner, who was friendly, informative, and not pushy. We liked him, we liked the rugs, and we told ourselves the sensible thing: you cannot buy a rug on day one! That would be ridiculous. You need to look around.

A day later, having looked around just enough to be dangerous, we bought one elsewhere.

Only later, back home and reading online reviews, did we feel the small ache of traveler’s regret. Maybe Coin Berbere had been the better place. Maybe not. We will never really know. But the experience complicated our own advice. “Wait before you buy” is still good guidance, but waiting does not automatically make you wise. Sometimes it only gives you enough confidence to make a different mistake. File under lessons in how travel purchases become little philosophical traps if you let them.

We learned, or relearned, several obvious things we somehow needed Fez to (re)teach us. For example:

• The person wearing a traditional outfit is not automatically the best person from whom to buy a carpet or anything. For example, the man in a white lab coat is not necessarily the best person to advise you on Moroccan argan oil products.
• A “lighter test” on fabric or leather may be a real material demonstration, but it is also a sales performance.
• A cooperative may be a cooperative (and make you feel good inside), but the cooperative story can also be part of the selling.
• The shortcut through a building that deposits you in a shop is probably not a secret shortcut given only to your guide because your group seems especially discerning.

This last point may seem embarrassingly obvious to have to say. It was apparently less obvious to us at the moment.

Some other practical tips we list if only to have here and return to this post ourselves and reread:

• Wait before you buy. In Fez, it is highly likely you'll see the same item or something similar again in short time. Buying on first impulse is like tearing into a piece of chocolate too quickly because you want it so badly, only to end up with little bits of foil in your mouth. 
• Photograph storefronts, signs, cash desks, street numbers, and anything else that will help you identify a place later. Especially if you bought something from the shop. Many shops are hard to find again online, if they appear at all. I can't tell you how hard it was after we came back home to find shops we bought from on Google Maps. Isn't the whole world on Google Maps? No, apparently.
• Decide what something is worth to you before the tea arrives, before the rugs are unfolded, before the words “final price” start floating in the air like incense. Decide with your partner or traveling companion about what you really want to buy, so you are on the same page.

The first time you see something, it will feel exotic and irresistible. The tenth time, it will begin to look familiar. By the twentieth, you may finally know what you actually like. Fez rewards patience, and not only in shopping.

Note on agave silk. We were really impressed with when we heard the story about agave silk in person in Fez and the salesperson ripped threads out of something that looked like an agave leaf and handed it to us. Later at the end of the trip, a friend in our travel group purchased a blue throw blanket as a gift for us. Early in the trip we had said we liked it but decided not to buy it. We were delighted with the gift. Back home, the story of agave silk sort of unraveled, sadly. The gift is beautiful but is likely just rayon. 

• In fabric shops in Fez, you are likely to be shown what was called agave silk, or sabra — a glossy vegetable “silk” supposedly pulled from the fibers of a succulent leaf. 
• The plant looked like agave, though the material is often marketed confusingly as cactus silk. Agave is not technically a cactus. 
• In Morocco the authenticity of sabra is complicated: some plant fibers are real, but much of what is sold under the name may be rayon or other manufactured filament. 
• The idea of it — desert plant turned into shimmering thread — explains its appeal, and also why it photographs so well in the shops and dyeing streets of Fez. We certainly were impressed and taken in by the story!

Note on strange math.  In the place we think is called Dar Ibn Khaldoun (we can't be sure), we purchased a rug and are sure we overpaid for it perhaps by 20%. We like the rug and are happy with the purchase. But one thing made us chuckle in the process. Our guide, in the moment, suggested that we get a second rug at a higher total price for both rugs and that would somehow be a much better deal. Really? He even lightly chastised us on why we didn't do it. He wanted us to spend three times more to somehow get a better deal. The math didn't add up for us, and we didn't need the second rug. We wondered whose side he was on. The answer is not always obvious in the tourism machine.

Food as Navigation, and the Search for the Right Meal

We expected to love the food in Fez more than we did.

This is not a dramatic complaint, just an honest one, and it may say more about the version of Fez food we encountered than about Fassi cuisine itself. Traditional Moroccan cooking has plenty of vegetables: cooked salads, vegetable tagines, couscous, lentils, beans, olives, zaalouk. But our particular path through food tours, street snacks, rooftop restaurants, and tourist-facing meals seemed to lean heavily toward fried breads, oily textures, sweets, grilled meats, and starch.

We had imagined dates, raisins, prickly pear cactus fruit, spices, light salads, delicate sweets, and some kind of culinary awakening. There were good meals, but there were also heavy fried breads, oily textures, indifferent soups, dry and tough meat, and sweets that were pleasant without being sublime.

Our food tour was useful but uneven. A phoned-in tour. We moved through markets, squares, and small vendors, but we also found ourselves wondering why a food tour had detoured into fabric and beauty-product shops. To be fair, the beauty-product stop had a spice section, but spices were not really the focus. The argan oils, creams, and other personal-care products received a stronger push. (See points above about shops and crafts.)

Still, the food experience left us with a useful challenge for a future visit rather than a closed verdict. How do we find more of what we are actually looking for, instead of being guided toward what visitors are assumed to want: the greatest hits, the easy tastes, the safe stops, the places already built into the tourism route?

This is similar to shopping in Fez. The first time through, you are learning the system while already inside it. By the time you understand what you want, you may have already eaten the fried bread, eaten too much Moroccan nougat (we did!), or nodded through a demonstration or two you don't know how you were corralled to join. Next time, we would enter a little wiser. We would still be appreciative, but with more control: more markets, more vegetables, more ordinary meals, more asking, and more saying no. A rooftop meal with a view confirmed that a view and a meal are two different things. More than once, the restaurants that looked like "places to go" gave us a better view of the idea of Fez than of the food itself.

The best meals were often the simplest ones.

Several evenings we returned to the kitchen at our riad, where the food felt personal rather than staged. Breakfasts and dinners there had the warmth of being in a house, which, in a way, we were. We also returned more than once to Café Clock, less because it was hidden or authentic, or any of the words one is supposed to use, and more because it worked. Sometimes a place becomes yours because it offers a table, a view, and a small pause when you need one.

One of the most interesting food-adjacent moments came not from a traditional meal but from a specialty coffee stand called Sqalli. The owner was trying to bring specialty coffee to Fez, and the experience felt strikingly European in the middle of the medina: espresso, milk texture, careful preparation, the language of third-wave coffee dropped into a city of brass trays, mint tea, and centuries-old trade.

We responded to it immediately because we are interested in specialty coffee. We weren’t missing it but it is something we celebrate when we see it. What was odd, was after several days of charming but transactional exchanges, the straightforward coffee conversation felt sincere and familiar. That positive response made us wonder about ourselves. Were we relieved to find something we already knew how to read? Were we appreciating a thoughtful new local business? Were we briefly escaping the medina while still standing inside it? Were we overthinking it? Yes, to all.

This is not to say we avoided more traditional coffee experiences. We also tried coffee from a street vendor (that same day) who prepared it in a pot heated in hot sand, one of those small theatrical daily rituals that makes you stop and watch even before you drink. Both experiences belonged to the trip. But the fact that the European-feeling Sqalli comforted us says something, even if we are not entirely sure what.

A not entirely flattering postscript: we were willing to pay a higher price for specialty coffee without blinking but haggled over the price of coffee prepared in hot sand on the street. Travel has a way of revealing your values, including the slightly inconvenient ones.

Getting Above and Outside

Every now and then, it felt necessary to step outside the medina.

This was not only about fresh air, because fresh air in Fez can be a relative category. Dust, smoke, and the smell of the tanneries can complicate the concept. But getting outside the medina, or above it, gave us perspective.

From Borj Sud and Borj Nord, the old forts sitting above the city, the medina suddenly made visual sense. What had felt from inside like an endless tangle of lanes appeared instead as a dense urban organism: rooftops, minarets, green-tiled religious buildings, and walls stretching across the valley.

We also spent time in the Mellah, the historic Jewish quarter, where the architecture shifts. Wooden balconies face outward, unlike the inward-facing houses of the old medina. Visiting the Aben Danan Synagogue reminded us that Fez is not one story but many: Islamic dynasties, Andalusian refugees, Amazigh traditions, Jewish history, French colonial urbanism, and modern economic pressures all layered together.

Outside the Blue Gate, we also walked through Jnan Sbil, the Royal Gardens of Fez. After the compressed lanes of the medina, the gardens felt extravagant: paths, palms, shade, water, and the simple pleasure of being able to see more than a few meters ahead. It was not dramatic in the way a major monument is dramatic, but it gave us something we had started to crave: open space.

A day later, and again just outside the medina, we visited Dar Bartha Museum, a former royal palace turned into a museum. Peace and calm were the main attractions there. The curated garden, shaded paths, and especially the massive leccio, or holm oak (Quercus ilex), near the entrance, welcomed us into the expansive tiled courtyard. After the bustle outside the gates, the museum felt less like another stop to complete and more like a place to exhale.

The river surprised us too. We hadn’t realized that Fez even had a river running through it until we caught a glimpse of it at Place Rcif. The Fez River, or Oued Fes, once fed a sophisticated urban water system, with canals supplying neighborhoods, gardens, and workshops. In the medina, the main course is associated with Oued Bou Khrareb ("river of filth"), a name that suits some of the smells we encountered. Much of the river is now hidden, covered, diverted, or folded into the city’s complicated infrastructure. Like many things in Fez, it’s present even when you can’t quite see it.

These excursions and viewpoints recalibrated the trip. Fez is not only a maze of alleys. It is a landscape, a water system, a set of neighborhoods, and a city under economic pressure.

Ahmed mentioned that many people live inside the medina because it is cheaper than living outside it. He talked about rents, air conditioning costs, solar panels as an economic decision rather than a simple environmental one, and young Moroccans leaving for work, often manual labor, with Spain as a major destination. We heard these comments as fragments, not statistics, but they helped us see the medina as a lived place rather than a preserved stage set.

Nothing Special on This Street

On the third day of our stay, we were tired of being redirected on our way back to our riad. Day or night, someone was there to correct us.

"The Blue Gate is that way."
"That is not the way out."
"What are you looking for?"
"Are you lost?"
"Nothing special on this street."

Nothing menacing, but after the first time, not exactly charming anymore. The last phrase became our favorite. Nothing special on this street. Well, we chose the riad on this street, I think that is kind of special, right? Or it could be a warning label for travelers who think they are discovering something private in a city that has been handling visitors for a very long time.

Of course, the people who said this to us were often right for the average tourist trying to get to the Blue Gate. You could read it as helpful. Or you could read this as looking for an opportunity to make a little money off a very lost tourist directed to a dead-end derb. We quickly learned to ignore them and get back to our temporary home, our riad, our refuge.

There is a certain comedy in being presumed lost when you are, for once, not lost. There is also a lesson. In Fez, moving independently changes the social script. A foreigner walking confidently down a residential lane still triggers intervention. Sometimes helpful, sometimes entrepreneurial, sometimes simply curious.

Speaking of street interactions, we felt that we never quite made easy street-level connections in Fez the way we have in some other places. Smiling at strangers did not seem to function as an entry point. People did not smile back in the casual, acknowledgment-based way we are used to. This does not mean people are unfriendly. It means the codes were different, and we were not fluent in them.

After five days, we finally felt we had made a small dent with our riad hosts. Not a dramatic connection, but a real warming. Fez did not hand us intimacy quickly. It made us earn even a small ease.

Submit to the Fez

By the last full day, something had shifted.

It was Sunday. We navigated on our own. We went shopping and laughed and began to bargain without feeling completely ridiculous. We visited two museums. We roamed streets that had begun to make sense. We ended the evening in Place Rcif, eating grilled corn while dust blew across the square and a child in our group played soccer nearby with the local kids.

Vendors displayed their wares. People wandered around chatting. The square did what it had probably done every evening long before we arrived and would continue doing after we left.

It was at that moment that we finally said it: okay, Fez is not so bad. Not exactly a slogan for the tourism board, but for us it was progress. The city had not changed. We had.

And by the way, that grilled corn felt like one of the most satisfying and non-controversial purchases of the trip!  

Fez can feel overwhelming at first. The medina is loud, dusty, crowded, and relentless. Guides lead you through predetermined routes. Shopkeepers pull you into stores. The density of history and commerce can make it difficult to find your footing. Even beauty can become tiring when it comes with a sales pitch. 

But if you stay long enough in Fez, and if you resist treating the city like a checklist, something else emerges. The rhythm slows. The streets become recognizable. The same cafés appear at the right moment. The maze begins to make partial sense. Partial sense may be the only kind Fez offers, and perhaps the only kind worth asking for for a short term stay.

Five days was just enough time to start to reach this point.

Ah, and the guides. We are surprised how much we've written about guides in the post, a subject that we usually don't dedicate so many words to.  But Morocco was different. Guides help you navigate physically and mentally in a sense but they are first and foremost part of the tourism machine. We didn't have that in mind when we arrived and brought our own romantic ideas into mix, which perhaps led to some bittersweet feelings after the visit. (It doesn't help that we like to fact-check what we hear and where we were. And in that process, we find inconvenient truths and inconsistencies in what we were told.)

Would we use guides again? Yes, but probably less or much more directed about what we want to see. (Guides are economical, so why not use them?) Would we bargain for crafts differently? Absolutely. Would we stay inside a medina again? Probably yes, though we might ask more questions about light, windows, and rooftop access. Would we return to Fez? Perhaps, though its hard to say when there is much more of Morocco to visit.

Travel is not a courtroom. You do not weigh every annoyance against every pleasure and issue a verdict. In the end, it is about experience, and we had that. We had confusion, dust, cats, call to prayer, rooftops, rugs, corn, and a city that slowly became more legible. And, we had a big dose of thinking about what misplaced ideas we bring to a place and how those can play out.

And maybe that is what five days in Fez gave us: not mastery, not ease exactly, but enough familiarity to stop resisting the place and start noticing it.

Photos

  

Left: Borj Nord viewpoint looking over Fez
Center: Borj Sud viewpoint looking over Fez.

Right: View over Fez from a riad rooftop.

   

Left: Chouara Tannery - Fez, medina.

Center: Bou Inania Madrasa - Fez, medina.

Right: Art Naji - Pottery Design - Outside the medina.

  

Left: Aben Danan Synagogue in Fez.

Center: Balconies in Mellah of Fez.

Right: Courtyard of a fancy riad in Fez.

  

Left: Coin Berbere - rug shopping in Fez.

Center: Dar Ibn Khaldoun - rugs for sale.
Right: Fabrik für Stoffe loom in Fez.

  

Left and center: Fez Medina Street Signs showing different shapes.

Right: Timber bracing between structures.

   

Left: Fondouk Tazi - Poteries Istruments De Musique - wares in a side alley in Fez

Center left: Food in the medina.
Center right: L'art De Tissage Fassi - a djellaba for everyone - an "obligatory" stop on one tour.

Right: LE TRÉSOR DES MÉRINIDES - how to begin to judge what you are seeing?

   

Left and center left: Bab Boujloud (Blue Gate).

Center right: Bab Sid L'Aouad (east).

Right: Semmarin Medina Gate.

  

Left: Nejjarine Museum in Fez.
Center and right: Museo di Dar Batha in Fez.

   

Left: Neighborhood bakery in Fez medina

Center left: A man keeps the fires burning for a hammam

Center right: Place Rcif (Fez) and corn seller

Right: Water Porter Figure - Royal Gardens.

  

Left: Rainbow art alley - Fez.
Center: Slippers shopping on Rue Talaa Sghira in Fez, Morocco.

Right: A hard to find cooperative ready to sell you anything with argan in the name.

   

Views of Riad Dar Arsama Lux in Fez, Morocco. 

Non-controversial corn in Place Rcif Fez.

Planning a Trip to Death, Then Going Anyway

Proto-Travel ~ Not Everyone Travels This Way ~ Constructed Familiarity ~ 

Planning as Relationship Work ~ The Limits of Research

Sometimes for us obsessive people it feels like modern travel begins long before departure. Not at the airport or on the train. Not even when the suitcase comes out of the closet.

It begins months earlier, somewhere between opening Google Maps for the tenth time and learning the names of neighborhoods we've never visited. And, at this point you already have a pin collection of hotels, coffee stops, and sights in a city you are not even sure you'll visit.

In this light, we want to talk about how trip research itself has become a form of travel, at times as suggestive and powerful as the actual visit.

Proto-Travel

At some point, planning stops being preparation and starts becoming something else. It's like a low-grade form of mental relocation.

Before our recent trips to Spain and our ongoing planning for Japan, we realized we were already partially living in those places, at least in our heads. We knew train transfers before stepping onto the platforms. We had opinions about neighborhoods we had never walked through. We recognized street names from maps and videos. We knew where we wanted coffee in Seville and Osaka before we had even booked all the hotels.

Research has become a kind of proto-travel. It's not the trip itself, obviously. But also, it is no longer entirely separate from it.

Modern travel planning makes this easy. We can study routes, walk streets virtually, read years of blog posts, compare transit options, watch train departures in real time, and obsess over whether a transfer in Tokyo Station is psychologically manageable with luggage and jet lag. Add the modern AI assistant and it all goes into overdrive.

Of course, this did not start with Google Maps or AI. Years ago, in our 2012 post Too Many Maps - Iceland Case Study, we came home from Iceland with a small paper ecosystem: tourist maps, dining maps, bus maps, rental-car maps, promotional maps, and probably a few maps whose only function was to make us feel guilty about throwing them away. Proto-travel existed then too in a way. It was just folded badly and stuffed into a plastic bin that you eventually recycled.

With proto-travel, the unfamiliar slowly starts to feel familiar, and travel research compresses geographic distance.

Not Everyone Travels This Way

To be clear, this is not how travel has to work. It is how modern travel often works for us, because we choose it. We are not trying to program every hour of every day, though it may look suspiciously like that from the outside. The point is almost the opposite: to create enough understanding that opportunities can arise once we are there. A little intel work can make a trip more open, not less.

Some travelers book the flights, reserve a place to sleep, and let the rest unfold on the ground. There is a lot to admire in that. It sounds liberating. It also sounds, for us, like a controlled experiment in mild anxiety.

Others hand the reins to a travel company, which can be exactly right. There are trips where having someone else solve the logistics is not laziness but wisdom. Still, that is usually not where the pleasure is for us, at least for most trips.

Constructed Familiarity

One interesting side effect of all this preparation is the strange feeling of arriving somewhere that already feels vaguely remembered.

The obsessive planning, and yes, we call it that, also tickles the research bone. We like understanding a place in albeit a limited way before arriving, not because we think we can master it from a distance, but because a little preparation lets us go deeper once there. We get more experiential value. We notice more. We ask better questions. We waste less energy on avoidable confusion and leave more room for the interesting kind of confusion.

For our Seville Christmas 2025 trip (see Seville at Christmas: A Short Return to a Familiar City), we found ourselves navigating toward places we somehow already "knew." We had mentally rehearsed the rhythm of the days before they happened. We already had ideas about quiet morning walks, Christmas closures, and how neighborhoods connected.

With our Lanzarote trip (see Lanzarote - In the Layers), the research became even more immersive. Before arriving, we had already built a mental picture of volcanic landscapes, cactus gardens, wind-shaped terrain, and the strange visual contrast between black lava fields and whitewashed buildings. We were not just researching a destination anymore. We were constructing a framework for understanding it.

For our Japan 2025 trip (see 21 days in Japan – Observations and Tips), our preparation and therefore beforehand familiarity was taken to new levels. We were not contracting with an agency to do all the groundwork for us and instead arranged all the logistics ourselves. With a sizable language barrier and sheer unfamiliarity with the culture, we overcompensated you might say, on the planning.

For our upcoming Japan 2026 planning, you might think we have relaxed a bit. But no, we haven't. The drive to optimize and honestly just understand and create the opportunity for an experience has us again at a fevered pitch. We have spent evenings discussing Osaka coffee-shop clusters, Hiroshima tram routes, whether Amanohashidate makes more sense than Kinosaki-Onsen, and how many train transfers are acceptable in one day.

A recent trip to Fez (see Five Days in Fez, Morocco) was another version of this, though delayed in its execution. In summer 2023, we researched a trip for that fall in Morocco, mentally relocating ourselves into the medina before ever setting foot there. Then the September 2023 earthquake happened in Morocco, and for various reasons the plan went quiet for a while. The imagined trip was folded away, like one of those Iceland maps we couldn't quite throw out. When a friend later suggested a short trip to Fez, much of that old research suddenly became useful again. Not complete, not current, not enough to replace fresh thinking, but enough to give shape to the possibility.

This is another thing travel planning teaches: sometimes you have to be willing to set a plan aside without mourning it too much. A researched trip is not wasted just because it doesn't happen on schedule. Sometimes it waits for a better time.

Planning as Relationship Work

In a previous post, Why do we travel?, we tried to sort out what we actually get from travel: vanity, relaxation, exploration, companions, awe, and all the uncomfortable little negotiations that happen when people leave home together. 

Planning also forces many aspects of the why-do-we-travel question. A question that sounds simple until you try to answer it. Rest? Beauty? Food? Difficulty? Novelty? A sense of being elsewhere? A day with no decisions? A day with exactly the right number of decisions? In that sense, travel planning becomes an exercise in self-knowledge before it becomes an actual itinerary.

Planning a trip with a partner adds another dimension entirely, where travel planning becomes a kind of relationship rehearsal. Before the trip even begins, you are already negotiating pace, comfort, priorities, interests, tolerances, and expectations. 

One person dreams about quiet ryokans and long contemplative baths. The other may be thinking: "How long exactly are we supposed to sit in hot water?"

That realization recently reshaped our Japan planning. For example, Kinosaki-Onsen occupied a glowing place in my imagined upcoming itinerary: canal walks, yukata, atmospheric inns, slow evenings, public baths. It looked perfect in the abstract. But eventually I had to confront something obvious: the other half of my travel party is simply not a spa person.

So why exactly were we going there?

Good trip planning sometimes means abandoning the version of the trip you had already started mentally living in, and that can be surprisingly difficult. The planner often becomes emotionally attached to the researched version of the trip. Routes become narratives. Hotels become symbols. Carefully optimized itineraries can start to feel inevitable.

Then your partner says: "I don't think I would actually enjoy that." And they are probably right.

Travel planning becomes a small test of flexibility and empathy. You are not designing an abstractly good trip. You are designing a shared experience for actual humans. And the best planning decision may be to delete something you had your heart set on.

The Limits of Research

Of course, the researched version of a place is always flatter than the lived one because reality refuses complete reconstruction.

No amount of reading prepares you for exhaustion, weather, smells, awkward moments, getting lost, overheard conversations, or the random bakery that becomes your strongest memory of a city.

Tokyo was perhaps our clearest example of this gap between research and reality. On paper and during planning, it initially resolved into something simple in our heads: a giant city. Dense. Efficient. Overwhelming perhaps. But once there, it unfolded into something much more layered and human. It felt less like one city than many interconnected cities stitched together. Quiet side streets suddenly emerged beside giant stations. Tiny neighborhood coffee shops existed just blocks from overwhelming commercial corridors. And perhaps most surprising was the everyday politeness and cleanliness. We had read about it, of course, but experiencing it directly was something else entirely (see Japan Trip – A Salute to People We Saw and Cleanliness).

The same thing happened in Seville with the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo. During planning, it was just another museum pin on the map, one item among many. But in practice, visiting it became a whole-day experience. Crossing the river, wandering the grounds of the former monastery, getting slightly lost, eating oranges in the garden, and feeling temporarily removed from the tourist center of the city itself. The experience expanded far beyond what our research outlined.

And during our June 2026 trip through Normandy and Brittany (see 8 Day Getaway in France: Honfleur and Douarnenez), we realized that no amount of planning had prepared us for how deeply the countryside would affect us. The hedgerows, fields, small roads, changing light, and layered greens were not things we had really researched in detail. Yet they became one of the emotional centers of the trip.

Travel ultimately exceeds the models we build of it; otherwise there would be little reason to leave home at all. And thankfully so. The trip still has to happen.

And perhaps that is why research remains pleasurable. It brings us closer to another place without fully collapsing the distance. The destination remains slightly out of reach, preserving the possibility of surprise. Research becomes part of the journey, but never the whole thing.

We plan not to eliminate surprises, but to make better surprises possible.

Fez cat, sipping like us, from pool of information.