i got tired of being everyone’s google maps.
i have more than 800 places saved on google maps and, for years, i have been the friend people text before a trip. eventually i got tired of answering the same questions in twelve different group chats. this seemed more efficient.
it always starts innocently.
“where should i eat in paris?”
which is unfortunately not a question i know how to answer with one restaurant.
then it is rome. kyoto. where to stay in marseille. somewhere for oysters in cap ferret. a vintage shop. a bar. a museum. a hotel that is actually worth the room rate.
i have more than 800 places saved on google maps at this point.
most of them have also, at some stage, been sent to another human being.
so i made hoha trips.
the backstory
i suppose this did not come out of nowhere
my family has always been scattered around the world, so travelling was part of my life very early on.
i got used to the idea that places could feel completely different from one another, and that this was exactly the interesting part.
i have never been particularly good at arriving somewhere and doing only the obvious things.
i want to know what people eat when nobody is trying to impress a tourist. where they buy things. what building is worth entering just because of the room. where everybody goes on a tuesday night. what is happening one street away from the thing everybody already knows about.
basically, i have always wanted to see how a place behaves when it is not introducing itself.
then i spent years working in fashion, where a large part of my job was curation.
looking at too much, choosing very little.
figuring out what deserved space, what was actually new, what was just loud, and what you would still care about once everybody else had moved on.
apparently i never stopped doing that.
i just started doing it with cities too.
the editorial rule
so this is not a guide to everything
i am not interested in having every restaurant in paris here.
google has that problem covered.
i want the ones i remember.
the place i would cross town for.
the hotel where i would actually stay again.
the shop where i bought something i still love.
the restaurant where the room mattered almost as much as the food.
the museum i would give up an afternoon for.
the very specific bar i would send you to because you asked for somewhere that was fun but not that kind of fun.
that is the level of specificity we are dealing with.
the useful part
the hoha list
it is where all of these addresses will start living together instead of being scattered between google maps, notes, screenshots and messages i sent somebody three years ago.
you will be able to look by place or by category.
paris restaurants. vintage in tokyo. shoes in rome. design in paris. bars in kyoto. places to stay in marseille.
eventually, something close to you when you are already standing in the city wondering what to do next.
from the hoha list
five addresses, five completely different answers to “where should i go?”
- le cornichonbest fries in france. i said what i said.
- music bar lionthe club. tiny, loud, perfect. you will dance.
- la cabane du mimbeauoysters, shrimp, pâté and cold white wine. same family since 1860.
- gonne al vento vintagehallucinatory curation, especially the 80s.
- donanathe best moqueca for me.
the longer texts
and then there are the dispatches
some places only need one sentence.
some need considerably more.
the dispatches are for the second category.
trips, exhibitions, neighbourhoods, hotels, design, restaurants, and places i have somehow developed a thesis about.
sometimes useful for years.
sometimes useful until next sunday.
both count.
the point
the point, really
hoha trips is not me suddenly deciding to become a travel expert.
it is me finally putting something i have been doing forever in one place.
travelling since i was young. having family spread across the world. working in jobs where my entire value was supposed to come from having an eye.
and still, after all of that, being genuinely excited by the possibility that there is always another room, street, meal, shop, building or completely unnecessary detour i have not seen yet.
that part has never really gone away.
thankfully.
for now, i am starting with the places i already have too much to say about.
