Go Out on Walking Tours

If you are going to a new place, sitting in your room or going around in a tour bus, get up on your foot and walk around a little. This is the only way to get the real flavor, the real feel of the place. So if you go a new city, make sure that you go out on walking tour, with a guide or on your own. If you have a MP3 player, you can easily download self-guided tours, just plug it in, and walk around without having to go through the hassle of flipping through your guidebook every few minutes.

You will be able to explore the place closely if you are on foot. You can also stop as and when something catches you fancy, a quaint coffee shop for example. You can talk to the local people, learn new things about the place, and have a much more intimate experience.

There are different kinds of walking tours, with different points of focus. Like you can go through the New York City walking tours on a food tour, photography or museum tour, whatever suits your taste. This way you can do what you enjoy most. There is a ghost tour in the Savannas for the really adventurous, for example. On photography tours, you can not only learn something new and useful but also make your trip memorable through timeless pictures.

Some other adventure tours like looking for Jack the Ripper in London, ghost trails in New Orleans are widely popular.

Walking around will also help you cut down your budget. Even in the city of New York, which is supposed to be the most expensive city in the world, you can go around on meager expenditure if you don’t mind doing long distance walking. Walking through the city will also allow you to get the best deals on things you want to buy. One thing to be careful about though is that you need to an extensive background check about the place, popular destinations, shops, and emergency contacts like hospitals or police stations.

The most popular walking tours will take you through China Town and Little Italy. For movie buffs, there are themed tours like Sex and City, Gangs of New York and even Friends tours. Travel operators, all over the city, organize these tours.

Even in London, you can take a tour, which takes you to places that inspired Harry Potter or the Da Vinci code trail in Paris.

Some people make the most of food-related tours, which work around specific delicacies in any region—the pasta tour in Italy for example or chocolate tours in New York and Paris.

But besides these major cities, there are walking tours for the countryside too. In these tours, you are transported from one place to another and you explore these places on foot. They take you to unconventional places where you can see the real heart of the country, up close. These tours are one to two weeks long, and are conducted in various parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe.