Issue No. 08
A small editorial site by Tomás Aragón Riba. New essay every six to eight weeks. No tours, no newsletter, no recommendations you didn't ask for.
Issue No. 08 · Feature
A slow loop through the canals north of Westerkerk — three antiquarian bookshops, four cafés that close at four, and the small bridge from which the city looks more or less like it has for two hundred years.
All essays, newest to oldest. None of them are tours. All of them assume you will be walking alone.
Barcelona, October
From the harbour at Drassanes up to the back of Montjuïc through three districts that do not share much except that the rents are still low enough to be interesting. A walk that takes six hours and nineteen kilometres if you do it right.
London, late winter
A slow Saturday morning walk from Bethnal Green to Hoxton, written as a love letter to a part of the city that has been gentrifying for so long that the gentrification itself has begun to feel historic.
Paris, mid-winter
Three hours through the older streets of the third and fourth arrondissements, starting at the place des Vosges and finishing at a bakery that has not changed its window display since 1979.
Essay
A short defence of doing it yourself. Why a city explained by a guide is a different city from a city walked alone, and why both are real, and why I have come down on the side of walking alone.
Practical
A short list of the things that have proven, over fifty city walks in nine years, to be the difference between a good walk and an irritated one.
Amsterdam, spring
An afternoon walk across Museumplein, with one observation about its smallest museum — the Moco — which I had walked past for years without entering, and which I have, after one afternoon inside, decided to write about.
Amsterdam · Barcelona · London
The Moco Museum has three locations across three cities. I have walked the block around each, with no plan beyond paying attention. What follows is what I noticed about the three streets, the three buildings, and the way the same museum sits inside three different urban moods.