The Case for Going Back
to the Same Place

We advocate, strongly, for the return journey. This is not a conservative instinct. It is a recognition that first visits are, by definition, incomplete.

The first time you go somewhere, you are managing information. The map, the menus, the transport, the language, the distance between the thing you expected and the thing you found — all of this takes energy. You are present, but you are also processing. The experience is real, but it is also, in some sense, work.

The second visit is different from the first in every important way. You know where you are going. You have already made the mistakes. The shopkeeper in the market recognises your face. The restaurant you loved the first time knows your name, or at least your table preference. The walk you took on a grey afternoon last time you are now taking in different light, and it is almost a different walk.

There is a particular quality of belonging that only repeated visits can produce. It is not the same as living somewhere — it is better, in some ways, because you bring to it both the attention of a visitor and the ease of someone who has been before. You are no longer performing tourism. You are simply somewhere you know.

We design return journeys as carefully as first ones. Often more so.