How to Be a Tourist at HomeNEWS | 26 July 2026This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Travel has a way of making us curious. We wander unfamiliar streets, strike up conversations with strangers, linger in museums, and notice details that we’d otherwise rush past. But that mindset doesn’t need to be reserved for vacations. Below, Atlantic writers and editors share their advice on how to rediscover the places they know best.
Stop at your neighborhood ethnic restaurant. This is on my mind because the World Cup just ended, and for each day of the tournament, I tried a meal from one of the countries playing that day. Over the course of 32 days, I ate food from 32 different places (the final was the first time I had to duplicate, eating Argentinean cuisine again), mostly without leaving the Washington, D.C., area.
Every day, I felt like I was taking a new trip. Two blocks from where my kids go to school, I found an Uzbek restaurant that I’d never known existed. I walked into an Egyptian place down the street from my house that I’d previously overlooked. When I went to a Haitian restaurant one evening, I felt like I’d been transported to Port-au-Prince. I had Senegalese food for the first time. I sampled ćevapi at a Bosnian restaurant and vori vori soup at a Paraguayan spot.
By doing so, I saw my neighborhood in a brand-new light and discovered what surprises are around the corner in even the most familiar places.
— Matt Viser, staff writer
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One way to see the place where you live through fresh eyes is to borrow someone else’s. When a friend visits from out of town, I'll give them a little time, in deference to custom, to stretch their legs and get their bearings. Then they’d better buckle up, because I’m going into tour-guide mode. Did my college buddy who drove up from Baltimore bargain for a whirlwind circuit of my objectively not-that-interesting Delaware town? Doesn’t matter. The nerdy facts and local lore that I’ve accumulated over the years will come spilling out with rapid-fire enthusiasm and questionable accuracy. (“See that hill over there? General Washington once walked up it looking for the British, saw none, and walked back down.”)
Landmarks that I haven’t been to in years will be explored anew. Drinks and subpar nachos will be shared beneath the musty rafters of the tavern where the surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon once imbibed. Inevitably, my friend will ask questions about my town that I had never thought to ask. We’ll go looking for the answers. And new local knowledge will be gleaned, with which future visitors will someday be regaled.
— Will Oremus, staff writer
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I live in Chicago—which means there’s no shortage of places to try and things to see. However, getting stuck in a routine of going to the same neighborhood spots can be easy. One way I’ve found to break myself out of that pattern is to tack on a new experience to something I already have to do: I’ll visit a nearby coffee shop after getting my driver’s license renewed downtown, I’ll get on the L train to dinner early enough to wander through an unfamiliar neighborhood, I’ll pop into a new grocery store after a workout class, or I’ll take the scenic route along the lake as I drive out to the suburbs. It’s a low-effort way to discover new corners of the city without the pressure of planning out an entire excursion—and it makes even the most mundane errands a little more exciting.
— Katie Anthony, associate editor
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I’ve always found meeting strangers easier while traveling than when I’m at home. Planes are like dive bars, in the sense that within these dimly lit, claustrophobic spaces where drinks are served regularly, you may find yourself making friends with a seatmate in 32C. My brother once asked to borrow a laptop charger from a stranger at the airport, and somehow, that stranger ended up at my next birthday party. In new cities, taxi drivers and tour guides become temporary companions.
So why not re-create that openness at home? Host a party and tell people to bring plus-ones. Use those bruised bananas to make bread for the neighbor you still haven’t met. Buy coffee for the person standing in front of you in line at the café. Or here’s a ridiculous idea: Ask a stranger for directions—even if you already know where you’re going. Perhaps they’ll send you along a new route that you never would have chosen yourself.
— Lila Shroff, staff writer
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This week, I’m visiting my hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for my grandfather’s 90th birthday. I come here at least three times a year, so I’m used to the same routine: my daily hour-long morning walk around the neighborhood, pickleball with my very competitive and skilled father, a pilgrimage to Franklin Street to relive my college days, and so on.
What’s new on this particular trip is the addition of my six-month-old son. He’s at a fun age where, with bright, Carolina-blue eyes, he perceives his surroundings and knows he’s somewhere unfamiliar but comfortable. Bringing him along for all of my Chapel Hill activities has given me a fresh perspective on coming home. By going with him to the local pool, putting him in a new He’s Not Here Blue Cup onesie, and seeing as much family with him as possible, I’m reexperiencing my hometown through his eyes. As my son takes in the sights and sounds of North Carolina, I gain a deeper appreciation for where I grew up and for my own parents, who created those traditions for me.
— Michael Leibel, senior editor
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Take a city tour. A long time ago, I spent a couple of summers working as a tour guide and bus driver in Alaska, where I would lead tours of Anchorage and Valdez. Whenever somebody local would come aboard (usually with family from out of town), I’d be nervous, afraid they’d be bored or that I might get some facts wrong. Instead, I almost always heard that they had come away with a new outlook on a place that they passed by every day or had always meant to visit.
You don’t even need to have out-of-town guests as an excuse—just hop on a tour bus or boat for an afternoon, and you’ll almost certainly notice something you’d overlooked before.
— Alan Taylor, senior editor
Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
The Week Ahead
Spider-Man: Brand New Day, about what happens to Peter Parker after the world has forgotten that he exists (in theaters Friday) Furious, a crime-thriller series inspired by the 1987 film Black Widow about an FBI agent hunting a serial killer (out Monday on Hulu and Disney+) Biological War, a book by Annie Jacobsen, the best-selling author of Nuclear War, on how a lab accident or a biological attack could spiral into a global pandemic and societal collapse (out Tuesday)
Essay
Rich Polk / Billboard / Getty
Music’s New Superstar Is Here—And She’s Rather Relaxed
By Spencer Kornhaber
Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey are two of music’s great masters of emotional excess, and it’s long seemed fitting that they’ve shared one of Billboard’s highest achievements: the longest-running Hot 100 No. 1 for a solo woman. That record was set over 14 weeks by Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” in 1992 and 1993, and then matched by Carey’s “We Belong Together” in 2005. (We’re talking about non-holiday tracks; the 22-week reign of Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is in a class of its own.) The enduring dominance of songs by these two volcanoes of vulnerability seemed to prove an iron law of pop: Greatness comes from giving all of oneself. Their record has now been equaled by the 27-year-old country singer Ella Langley, a very different artist indeed.
Read the full article.
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