A layover city you’d never have chosen can still give you a great meal. Unplanned places aren’t wasted places.

Not every good thing arrives in a place you selected. A few hours somewhere you had no interest in can produce a meal, a conversation or a view you would never have scheduled, precisely because you were not managing the visit. Plans are useful, and they also filter out everything you did not know to ask for. Unchosen hours are where that gets through.

When you end up somewhere by accident this month, treat it as a real place for twenty minutes. Walk a street, eat something local, talk to one person. Then carry on.