The old travel writers I admire learned to sit in places

The old travel writers I admire learned to sit in places long enough to notice the rhythm beneath the itinerary: which café fills after the market closes, how a train station sounds at 6am versus midnight, the exact sentence that makes a stranger open up. Algorithms are good at summarizing a destination; they still can’t teach patience, embarrassment, curiosity, or how to recognize when a place has finally started talking back to you.