The thing you’re supposed to do when visiting a city is to take things in. Your senses should be overloaded with impressions, your camera rolls full of images which, when developed (or processed and uploaded), should work as small magical tokens conjuring the collected emotions back to life for a small, fleeting moment.

For the last three days we had walked around, taking little detours, allowing ourselves to get slightly lost—a gamble that when it pays off is highly rewarding. We had seen both the expected and the unexpected parts of town, at least as much as you can see without the hand of a native guiding you. If we got lost, or needed somewhere to eat, drink or rest, we had immediate access to a comprehensive list of the very best places around.

What you get when you walk in the direction laid out by someone you know and trust, is not only your impressions of the path, but also the blessed and approved impression of your guide. “This”, they would say, “is good. You should like this. I’ve not shown this to many, this place, this path, this road is a gift from me to you.”

When your guide is common consensus it is much easier to dismiss. If I don’t like the food in the restaurant 15264 people recommended I’m not offending anyone, and crucially, there’s no personal connection. Crowdsourced guidance is inferior, not because it represents an average opinion, but because there’s no individual accountability—and therefore no way to relate back, identify with your guide, even disagree or agree, without merely becoming the crowd.

Sitting in the plane circling over London waiting to land I’m thinking that perhaps it would have been better to have seen things that doesn’t have to be seen, to have eaten in mediocre places, but ones you found without assistance or recommendation. Perhaps we should have made more mistakes, but made those all our own.