Facts don't make memories. People do.

I picked them up early, the way I always do for day trips. Already seated in the mini van, after I'd introduced the driver, I did the same thing I always do: I told them what the day was going to look like.

"So today, Arcos de la Frontera..."

"Sorry — what?"

The woman in the back seat was already pulling up her phone. "We have Ronda. Look." She turned the screen around. There it was, in her agency's confirmation email, in black and white: Ronda.

The driver and I looked at each other. Ronda is further — longer drive, different road — and I'd already booked a restaurant for lunch, although if you cancel with enough notice, it doesn't really matter. I did what you're supposed to do: got on the phone with the agency to cross-check the facts.

Halfway through that call, the client tapped my arm.

"Hang up."

I hung up.

"Which one's actually better?" she asked. "You tell me."

And here's the honest answer I gave her: Better for what?

I laid it out as plainly as I could — what they'd find in each place, what kind of morning it would be, what kind of crowd, what kind of light. No sales pitch. Just the real shape of two different days. She listened, looked at her husband, and picked Arcos.

At the end of that day, on the way back in the car with the Sierra behind us, her husband said something I still think about: "Honestly, thank god for the mix-up. I don't think I'd have enjoyed a place with big coaches unloading groups of forty." Then, almost as an afterthought: "Our agency never even mentioned this place. Why not?"

I replied, in the most diplomatic way I could, with a shorter version of the following:

Here's the thing nobody tells you when you're planning a trip: the agency wasn't wrong. Ronda is breathtaking. It's also, statistically, the answer every well-meaning travel agent will go for, because it's the answer that's already worked for the most people, the most times, with the least risk. I've never once met a guest who told me they didn't like Ronda. It's the obvious recommendation. But it's also the same recommendation for ten thousand other trips.

This couple, in particular, had travelled to Andalusia in April, right into the middle of the Semana Santa crowds — which they hadn't expected, and were genuinely longing for somewhere quieter. Honestly, with Ronda in one hand and Arcos in the other, they made the right choice. Though if they'd picked Ronda, we'd have gone to Ronda.

Don't get me wrong — I'm not a travel agent, and planning your whole trip across Spain isn't my job; that's for others to do. But in the city I was born and still live in, I've got a saying: facts don't make memories, people do.

Here's what I mean by that. Almost everyone arrives with the same list, because almost everyone read the same five blogs. And there's nothing wrong with wanting the postcard version — the crowded, central, unmistakably beautiful spots exist for a reason. But I've watched plenty of travellers arrive convinced that's exactly what they want, and then, a day or two in, quietly change their minds. Suddenly they'd rather sit somewhere quiet than somewhere pretty. They'd rather take a taxi to a bar full of locals than walk to the one everyone photographs. They'd rather eat somewhere with no view and better prices than somewhere postcard-perfect and average.

Stepping outside the checklist social media hands you before you even land isn't easy. It takes trust — trust that a stranger might actually be reading you correctly, trust that "off-script" doesn't mean "worse." It's not for everyone, and that's fine. If what you want is the pretty, the central, the crowded — that's a completely valid trip, as long as you're choosing it with your eyes open, not just because it's what showed up first in a search. But for the people willing to hand over a little of that control, the surprise is almost always worth more than the plan was.

The postcard is always there if you want it. I just happen to know what's behind it — and that's what this blog, and everything I do, is really about.