A new filter to travel curated by the most intriguing locals.
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No one knows a neighborhood like its barista.

This conviction makes Filter a peculiar travel guide. It's the kind that in traveling 40 countries I’ve looked for but not found, it is in fact one essential way I do travel. Whether I’ve done a lot of research on someplace new or just a little, once I’m there I find a local coffee shop and ask the barista what they do for fun around there. They never miss.

In the shadow of the medieval walls of old Kraków, a barista told me one of his favorite things to do on a hot summer day was to leave town to swim in an old rock quarry that was filled in with 20 meters of water. In Edinburgh, a barista’s answer sent me Ubering past Castle Rock to Pitt Market on the coast, where one food stand served reinvented fish and chips (smoked salmon and sweet potato fries) and a music group performed acoustic covers of EDM.

Filter has its limits. You won’t find here the top 7 brunch spots in Paris, for instance. That isn’t the sort of question you’d ask a real person, and it isn’t the kind of answer they’d give you anyway. “The Best of” listicles are always abstractly limited and abstractly defined, and they would never tell you brunch isn’t Parisian to begin with. Real people tell you their favorites which they really enjoy even if a list says somewhere else is The Best.

- Josh from Filter