This work takes me to a lot of places, and many of them I’ll only ever see once. You’d think that would feel sad – all those cities glimpsed and never returned to. Strangely, the opposite is true. The places I visit just once have taught me the most.

One visit makes you pay attention

When you know you’ll be back, you take a city for granted. When you know you won’t, you notice everything – the shape of the rooftops, the way the light falls at six, the smell of a particular street. A single visit sharpens the senses. You drink it in because you know it’s the only glass you’ll get.

No time to be anyone but yourself

There’s a freedom in a city that doesn’t know you and never will. No history to live up to, no reputation to manage. For one evening you can be exactly who you are, unobserved by anyone who’ll remember. That anonymity is oddly liberating – for me, and often for the person I’m with.

The beauty of the unfinished

A city seen once stays perfect in memory because you never see its ordinary days – the roadworks, the rain, the disappointments. It remains a single bright evening, suspended. Some things are more beautiful precisely because they don’t get the chance to become familiar.

Carrying my own ground with me

Constant travel could leave a person unmoored, so I’ve learned to carry my own steadiness with me – my routines, my limits, my sense of self. Being grounded in who I am is what lets me enjoy a strange city instead of feeling lost in it. The place changes; I don’t.

The takeaway

You don’t need to move through the world the way I do to use this. Treat more places – and more evenings – as if you’ll only see them once. You’ll notice more, take less for granted, and collect a whole gallery of single, perfect nights. A city you visit only once can stay with you for a lifetime.