What to do in Town
Tours can be a good way to experience a city, but they add up quick and depending on the guide may not be an improvement over exploring on your own. So how do you discover what's worth seeing / doing in a city and get your moneys worth?
I will do a tour from time to time to experience something specific, like when I went Dog Sledding in Svalbard, an activity I certainly couldn’t do without the tour! But usually a bit of research and chatting with locals will create a far more interesting trip.
Below are some resources I use to find free or inexpensive alternatives to the pricey tourist tours offered by most city welcome sites:
For SPECIFIC recommendations, search for to see what I did for fun while visiting.
📍 Travel Blogs
I always check my favorite blogs first for ideas - so take a look at your cities' Unmoored page ⤵️ for great idea’s and tips!
Social Media takes weeding through, but an instagram search
of your destination will sometimes uncover cool places to go
that won't be found on travel websites.
You can start with Unmoored's Reels 🔗 - they have tons of
travel trivia, museums & attractions to inspire you from all over the world.
For more ideas check out where I get my inspiration....
📍 World Heritage Sites
If you're into History & Culture many sites of historical significance are registered with the World Heritage Convention. I like to check the UNESCO 🔗 website to see if I am traveling near any Heritage sites that interest me.
📍 Atlas Obscura
For odd, funny & off the beaten path spots I always check Atlas Obscura 🔗 - it's community based so people can add the best hidden oddities of their city. (Use with caution ⚠️ - if a site sounds interesting but is out of your way, do some additional research to make sure it's worth the trip, sometimes contributors are a bitmore excited about their local gem than it deserves, lol )
📍 Free Tours
See if your city offers a FREE WALKING TOUR. (The guides do work for tips, but they are not mandatory.) Walking tours are a great way to orient yourself when you land and to knock out the 'must see' common spots all in one go. Usually the local guide is also a good resource for further insight into your particular interests in town. Ask about which museums are worth the cost and what the good local restaurants, bars or coffee shops are.
You'll probably get a better answer asking for their favorite 📍 as opposed to 'the best' - the best will get you the common tourist recommendation, but asking for their favorite will get you a smaller more authentic spot.
TO CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONALIZED FREE TOUR - research the good paid tours and when possible borrow their itinerary. Many sites even have maps of the tour included online. Yes, you will miss the guides stories, but with the exception of a few very gifted guides you'll get the same or better info with a bit of your own googling. (At least half of the average tour guides' schpiel is corny jokes, simplified lore and unreliable 'history.')
Get Your Guide 🔗 is a site that markets paid and unpaid tours for destinations all over the world. Airb’n’b 🔗 also has an Experiences page where locals advertise their skills and knowledge. You can often find neat, unusual things to do in a town by checking them out.
If you really can't be bothered doing your own research Take Walks 🔗 has good tours with more depth of history & culture than many other tours.
📍 Ask the Local Community
Travel Apps like Couchsurfer 🔗 do a great job of fostering community among nomads. If you post your destination people will often reach out to you and offer to show you around. You can also join posted events and connect with others on the site in their 'up to hang out' section.
There is even an app called Eat With 🔗 that connects you to local families willing to invite a traveler to eat with them in their home. The service isn't free but it's an interesting alternative to eating out every night.
Don't neglect the Local Tourism Office - yes they promote the 'tourist' sites but they are also locals, so ask their opinions about what else there is in town in you are looking for less touristy spots.
Once in town ask guides, concierges, bartenders, servers at restaurants, anyone you strike up a conversation with in the bus what their favorite spots in town are and if anything is going down while you're there!
Worth the Dough...
📍 City Passes
There will likely still be a few museums & attractions you want to see on your trip that will cost money. One way to keep costs down is to look into City Passes, like GoCity 🔗, that offer many of their most popular sites for free with a purchase of a one, two, three day (etc.) pass. These are extremely convenient to use, an app on your phone serves as your ticket to all these locations, (and they are also a great resource for seeing what activities there are to do in town.)
But these are only a deal if you intend to do a lot of paid activities - so do the math to see how much the activities you are interested in would cost on their own compared the pass price. And do the travel math too; realistically, how many of those activities can be done in the passes time period (this number gets exponentially smaller the greater number of people are traveling in your group! On my own I can knock out a signifigant number in a day and get my moneys worth, but families with teens for example would be less likely to move that quickly.)
📍 For Foodies
Devour Food Tours 🔗, (for people who love to experience the local cuisine and would be spending that money on food anyway) incorporate history & culture into their tours so you get more for your $.)
📍 Questionable Locations
As a female traveling on my own there are some places where it makes sense to go with a group. But I absolutely hate the idea of traveling with dozens of other people (wether its sweet retirees or partying rich kids, I get overwhelmed by large groups) and I don't like to be tethered tour on their schedule! Some smaller companies I do like, with more personalized groups and very good guides are Flashpack 🔗 & Intrepid Traveler 🔗.