The revealed preference method is simple: instead of working through a generic top-ten list, use what the last trip taught you about what you actually like. If you loved Lisbon's hills and handmade tiles and the sense that the city was slightly crumbling in a beautiful direction, that tells you something specific. It tells you more than "I like city breaks."

The Lisbon Traveller

Loved the steep streets, the azulejos, the fado bars tucked into residential neighbourhoods, the sense of a city with a slightly melancholy grandeur. Your next cities: Porto (more compact, rougher, better food in some respects), Naples (louder, more chaotic, same emotional weight), Valletta (tiny, dense, sun-bleached version of the same feeling). All three reward slow walking and a tolerance for peeling plaster.

The Prague Traveller

Loved the medieval density, the Gothic skyline, the sense of a city frozen in several different centuries at once. Your next cities: Tallinn (smaller, quieter, same Baltic-Gothic atmosphere without the stag parties), Bruges (slower still, almost too preserved, but genuinely beautiful), Krakow (more lived-in than Prague, less tourist-polished, better food). These are cities for people who like to feel history as a physical texture rather than a museum exhibit.

The Copenhagen Traveller

Loved the design consciousness, the food culture, the cycling infrastructure, the sense of a city that had solved several things most cities hadn't. Your next cities: Helsinki (less flashy, harder winters, excellent design and an extraordinary food scene), Stockholm (larger, archipelago at the edges, same Nordic cleanliness of aesthetic), Amsterdam (more chaotic but comparable food scene and similar design sensibility). These cities reward the traveller who is as interested in how a city functions as in what it looks like.

Building a Personal Map

The point is not to replicate the last trip. It is to understand what it was about the last trip that worked, and to find the next city that exercises those same preferences in a different context. Over time this builds a map that is actually yours rather than a list assembled from travel supplement features. The map becomes a record of taste. The more trips you take, the more precise it gets.