Find the bakery first

Before the map, before the museum: locate the place that smells like morning.

It is the fastest way to understand a town. Not the restaurant guide — the bakery, at seven, when the queue is entirely people who live there and nobody is looking at a screen.

Watch what they buy. If everyone leaves with the same dark round loaf, buy the dark round loaf. If there is a tray of something unnamed and slightly burnt at the edges that keeps selling out, that is the thing worth crossing town for.

You learn the rhythm of the place in ten minutes: who talks to whom, what time the second batch comes out, whether Sunday counts. Then you can go and look at the cathedral, with bread in your bag.