You beat me to it! This whole time zone thing, man.
I did an exercise today that I like to do when I’m in a new city to learn to navigate my way around. For the first few days, I identify landmarks that I can correlate with how to get back to my rental from. Then I start going further afield. Today I walked about 2-2.5 miles using the map on my phone to get to where I was going. Lots of winding roads and missed turns made it nice and confusing.
Then I turned data off and tried to get back to my apartment. Well, I clearly took at least one wrong turn and I was JUST about to give up and call an Uber (they find you by GPS) when I saw what I thought was a familiar landmark. I walked a little further down the road and boom! It was a landmark. I was about a mile and a half from the apartment still but made it back with no further concerns.
This is something I recommend doing even if you aren’t traveling outside the country. Go to an area you’re not familiar with and start learning to navigate on foot using landmarks and maybe a compass if you carry one. But no maps, no Garmin.
It’s really important to be able to get your bearings quickly during an emergency whether you’re at home or not. Everyone always comments on my sense of direction but the trick is the landmarks. Some examples might be: a cute shop, a dog park, a playground, a movie theater (that’s what cued me today), a body of water, etc, etc. Remember WHAT SIDE of you that landmark is on when you’re headed home and you’re halfway there.