People ask what the best thing to do in a city is, as if a city were a hotel breakfast with a laminated menu.

In mine, the best thing is to walk until the official city loses interest in you.

Forget the obedient circuit: square, church, museum, queue, ice cream, ticket, tiny photograph proving you were alive for six minutes. That kind of tourism has the emotional depth of a parking ticket. The city is not there. The city is where the pavement heats up, where the fountain talks to itself, where the trees rise in a dark line like undertakers waiting for the next public ceremony.

Then someone passes by on a skateboard, shirtless, cap pulled low, carrying the whole afternoon on his shoulders.

Nothing dramatic happens. That is the point.

The skateboard goes rrrrr. The water spits. A shadow stretches across the slabs with more elegance than most elected officials will manage in an entire lifetime. The scene lasts less than a second and refuses to explain itself. Perfect. Explanations are where mediocre photographs go to die.

I like the parts of the city that have not yet been fully tamed. The edge of a square. The side of a fountain. Bored young people. The man smoking with the face of a defeated empire. The dog that has understood traffic better than its owner. The places where people do not pose and, precisely because of that, reveal more than they would like.

A city is not honest when it shows you its monuments. It is honest when it is busy doing something else.

Go out when the light is rude. Stand in the wrong place. Wait. Let the city drag its small ordinary miracles in front of you: a skater, a fountain, a bad haircut, a nervous laugh, a leaf of shadow cutting the pavement in half.

You do not need a plan. Plans are what people invent when they are afraid to look.

The best thing you can do in your city is waste time properly.