Exploring by Instinct

I live near Rochester, a city in Kent. Well, technically it’s not a city anymore, but that was due to administrative incompetence, a sadly common element of modern life. Anyway, it has a Cathedral so it is, in ecclesiastical terms, a city and has been for about 1400 years. I don’t have a favourite place to go in Rochester, but I definitely have a favourite time, Christmas! In a few weeks time, on the weekend of December 6 & 7 the Dickens Christmas Festival will be taking place. I genuinely cannot recommend it highly enough. I have been going to it for 20 years with only two breaks, one for Covid and one last year when it was cancelled at less than 24 hours notice due to a weather warning. As it turned out, the damaging winds didn’t happen so it didn’t have to be cancelled at all. Mind you, the local council in Medway are seemingly desperate to end the festival by any means possible, despite it bringing so much business and prestige. End of rant! For that reason you should get along to Rochester on the first weekend of December to experience one of the best festivals anywhere while you still can.

When you visit any new place you should get out at the first opportunity and explore on foot. Just look around on your first afternoon or evening and see what takes your fancy. Guides to a city are useful, as is the local knowledge of people who live there, but nothing beats walking round a corner and seeing something that takes your breath away. I have made so many of my favourite discoveries this way in cities around the world. This evening my wife and I will be in Salzburg for a few days and the first thing I want to do is to explore the old town and see what I want to do and to see during the visit. Yes, we have ideas for the holiday, with the Christmas Markets being the reason we are going this week, but I know that some of the things we do will be because we have seen something and visited it on a whim. Expect blog posts about the trip with recommendations, but don’t take too much notice of them. Explore for yourself and make the discoveries unique to you.