Twelve small rituals for the road.

01 · The first-coffee promise

Whatever you were arguing about at the gate, you're not allowed to raise it again until you've each finished a coffee in the destination. This is not evasion; it's biochemistry. Ninety per cent of the time the argument is gone before the second sip.

02 · The ten-minute apart

Once a day, go your separate ways for ten minutes. Bookshop, church, the ferry ticket booth, a cigarette on the balcony you don't actually smoke. This isn't retreat — it's oxygen. You cannot be alone with someone without occasionally being alone without them.

03 · The same restaurant, twice

On any trip longer than three nights, eat at one restaurant twice. Same place, different order. It is a small mercy for the travel-tired mind, it makes the waiters warmer to you, and it turns a chance meal into a shared memory. You will remember the second night, not the first, and forever.

04 · The five-minute unpack

The first thing you do when you enter the hotel room is unpack the entire bag, every trip, no matter the duration. Five minutes; two hangers each, one drawer for essentials, one shelf for shoes. Nothing lives in a suitcase for the length of a holiday. The room becomes yours the second the bag is empty.

05 · The evening walk, before dinner

Between shower and dinner, walk somewhere without a destination for thirty minutes. It is the small hinge in the day that separates the tourist part from the couple part. All of the good conversations we've had about our life were had on evening walks in cities we didn't live in.

The evening walk is where the real trip happens. Dinner is just where the notes are taken.

06 · The one-photograph rule

Take one photograph of each other, every day, and one only. The rule fixes what the phone camera destroyed: the pressure to document instead of be there. One photo, taken with a little care, is worth more than fifty of the same view.

07 · The local paper

Buy a local newspaper in a language you don't speak, on the first day. Bring it home. It won't be read. Twenty years later it will fall out of a book and remind you of everything.

08 · The hotel bar at ten

Every hotel has a bar that quiets down around ten. That is the good hour. Sit there for one drink together, even if you're tired. Talk to a bartender who's been there twenty years, if there is one; they will tell you the two things about the town that no guidebook will.

09 · The market before nine

If you're staying somewhere with a market — and most places worth going to have one — go early, on your third day, not your first. By day three you know what a euro of tomatoes actually costs; by day one you don't. Buy fruit, cheese, bread, and eat it on a wall.

10 · The book exchange

On any trip longer than four nights, exchange books halfway through. Whatever the other person is reading, take it, read a chapter. You will end up in a small argument you don't get to have at home, about a character neither of you have any responsibility for.

11 · The letter to yourself

Write one postcard, from somewhere warm, to your own home address. Not to a friend — to yourselves. When it arrives, weeks after you get back and the tan has faded, the trip resumes for an afternoon.

12 · The last dinner

The last dinner of any trip is sacred. Table booked in advance, view or no view, no phones on the table, no talk of the flight. Order the second course. Have the dessert. Say the thing you didn't have the courage to say on the first night, because the light on the water will hold it. Walk home slowly.

The couples who travel best are the ones who know how to be bored together.

Adopt three of these on your next trip. Add three of your own. In twenty years the rituals are what you'll remember, not the itineraries.