The best meal on a trip may be the one you were hungry enough to notice fully.

Appetite does more for a meal than any kitchen can. The famous restaurant arrives after a heavy lunch and a long queue, while the bread and cheese at four o’clock, eaten by someone who walked all morning, lands with total clarity. Your state is half the experience, and it is the half nobody books. That is why the memory often attaches to something plain in an unremarkable place.

Stop planning every meal to be excellent and let a few of them be earned instead. Walk before you eat, skip the snack, and arrive properly hungry. Notice what you actually remember a month later.