This is not a travel guide. Or rather, it is—but not the kind that sends you to the same twelve places as everyone else, photographing the same angles, ordering from the same English menus, wondering if this is really what you came for.

We map the cities we love through the places that matter: the bar where the bartender remembers what you drank last time, the restaurant with no English menu because it doesn't need one, the café where locals argue about football at the counter while your espresso cools just enough to drink. The spaces between the famous sights, where cities actually happen.

Travel guides tell you what to see. We tell you where to be. There's a difference. One fills your camera roll; the other fills your memory. One checks boxes; the other opens doors. We're interested in the second kind—the kind that leaves you knowing a city rather than having merely visited it.

Every recommendation earns its place. We drink the drinks, eat the meals, sleep in the beds. We note what works and what merely looks good on Instagram. We prefer the genuine to the fashionable, the excellent to the expensive, the atmospheric to the antiseptic. When something closes or declines, we update. When somewhere new opens and proves itself, we add it.

Choose a city. Find a neighborhood that sounds right. Pick a place that speaks to you. Then close the guide and pay attention to where you are. That's the whole secret: we're not the destination. We're just trying to point you toward the right door.