12 essays tagged “music”.
Lisbon, Portugal
I came to Lisbon in 2008 for a long weekend, came back in 2011 for a month, and in 2019 stopped pretending and rented an apartment. Most of what is now said about the city — that it is hot, crowded, expensive, complicated — is true. None of it is the whole story. This is the rest of it.
February 14, 2025
Berlin, Germany
Berlin is the only major European capital that has been multiple cities within a single lifetime — divided, reunited, gentrified, bohemian, exhausted, reborn — and that experience of being remade is still, somehow, the city's most reliable trait.
November 8, 2024
New York, United States
Most first-time visitors to New York spend three days running between the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, and a Broadway show. The better trip picks one neighbourhood per day and walks it until you have a coffee place by Thursday.
May 23, 2024
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne is the second-largest Australian city and, by most metrics that matter to a traveller, the more rewarding one. The laneway coffee culture, the food, the small-bar scene, and the Australian Open in January make for a city that punches well above its harbour-less weight.
November 12, 2023
Budapest, Hungary
Budapest's two best institutions are its thermal baths and its ruin pubs — both unique to this city, both essential, both best understood by trying them yourself. The river is the city's spine and the baths are its lungs.
March 19, 2023
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Buenos Aires runs on a particular timetable: lunch at two, drinks at nine, dinner at eleven, the milonga at one in the morning, breakfast back at the apartment as the sun comes up over the Río de la Plata. Adjust your sleep schedule before you arrive.
January 18, 2023
New Orleans, United States
New Orleans is the rare American city that is structurally not American. The Creole, French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean inheritances combine into a culture — and a cuisine, and a music — that exists nowhere else on the continent. Skip the French Quarter early in the day; the city is bigger than its postcard.
March 26, 2022
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rio is one of the most dramatically sited cities on earth — granite peaks rising from the sea, beaches that stretch across the city's southern edge, forest-clad hills that run almost to the centre. The city's energy is famous and real; the trick is to find the slower-walking version of it.
February 26, 2022
Vienna, Austria
Vienna is a city that doesn't want to be done quickly, and it's surprisingly good at outlasting visitors who try. The Viennese take their afternoons in coffee houses for a reason. Sit down. Order. Stay.
January 15, 2022
Havana, Cuba
Havana is a city of crumbling baroque facades, 1950s American cars, the most particular post-Soviet political economy in the world, and a daily life that does not, despite the photo-tourism economy, perform for the camera. A short guide to the city's depths.
October 19, 2021
Seville, Spain
Seville is a city where the afternoon doesn't really happen — it's too hot — and the evening doesn't really begin until 9. Plan accordingly. The four hours between then and midnight are when everything that matters in this city actually happens.
April 22, 2021
Reykjavik, Iceland
Reykjavik in November has four hours of usable daylight, average temperatures hovering around freezing, and a small-town feel that disguises its position as the cultural capital of the North Atlantic. Pack for it; show up anyway.
December 15, 2020