First line: "My best piece of travel advice is to avoid doing what the locals do."
The writer seems incapable of distinguishing between the special, cool local things the locals KNOW about, and which a tourist might well benefit from trying, and the things locals DO because they don't do those special, cool things every day. Instead locals are usually doing similar things to what we normally do.
The locals are living their lives on an organic cadence. They're not maximizing entertainment value or whatever. They will certainly know entertaining things to do, but it's literally not their job to entertain tourists. Maybe seeking out a Disneyland like experience in someone else's home is the problem? Bourdain, Rick Steves, et al. are fun to watch, but I can't help but feel they've actually made the world a worse place by romanticizing tourism. There are many sayings about how travel reduces prejudice... but if you actually look at it at scale, it's almost always a global negative.
I'd take you mushroom hunting (but really just exploring and running around in the forest this time of year), maybe pick up a trout on the way home to grill. That's a few days a week for me (the trout leas though).
As for touristy things here in Zurich - it's not really a tourist city. When we have guests from overseas we do have a set of activities to bring them on. When I've offered to bring them in the forest to find mushrooms/berries/etc they're usually not so interested.
The corollary of this is that if you are a local you should do some more touristy things.
I don't mean to go to a tourist trap and get scammed, but just enjoy your city a little more and do some things that usually only tourists do.
For example, despite living most of my life in London, I've never been to the Tower of London. Why would I? It's for tourists. Except it's probably quite fascinating, especially for a local.
I've been exploring related feelings in the related "For me, this is just a Tuesday" space. I had started to feel like a food tour group was stalking me personally. My usual Tuesday lunch. My usual Friday dinner. So forth. The first "gut feeling" was irritation. It's a lot of people showing up in a small space with random lectures distracting from whatever I was doing while eating (such as often reading a book).
It took a couple weeks, but I realized that I was the spoiled one and the other side of "For me this is a Tuesday" should be "I'm glad my local businesses are interesting to tours" and "It's easy to forget how impressed I might be with this lunch if I was visiting some other town, isn't it great it can be my 'usual Tuesday'?"
I started listening to some of the lectures. I could easily mock some of them and/or clarify/edit/fix mistakes in them, but also they can still be an interesting bit of perspective, including the way that tourists respond to them. It's fun to have that tourist perspective of the local area.
It's also a fun reminder to do and try more of the tourist things locally. When your "usual Tuesday" is someone else's exciting and desired vacation experience, what else are you seeing with the somewhat dulled eyes of being a local but would greatly enjoy if you thought like a visitor to your own city?
Tower of London is not a touristy thing its a culture thing.
I know quite a lot of all the cities i lived in. I have been a good tourguide to friends and family because you just learn stuff about your city.
I will not go to that one ferris wheel because some company build it, i saw them building it, its in a location which is weird, and why would i go on a ferris wheel in my city?
But everything else? The main castle, yes! The residence, english garden, white rose, german museum, Shirker's Alley, old michael, etc. yes! Have been plenty of times.
I lived in Manhattan for a decade and never went to see the Statue of Liberty. And it’s not like I wasn’t doing lots of things and I would go out three or four times a week and I’ve been to all sorts of places in NYC. Just never been to the Statue of Liberty.
I've lived in London, various places within the M25, for about 40 years now and still walk around looking up and enjoying exploring both new and old places. We do the Hidden City treasure hunts which is a great way of finding new spots.
Tower of London is good, there is so much history in there and a number of exhibitions well worth seeing.
I've done most of the "tourist traps"[1] and really enjoyed them. The London Eye gives you great views, especially at sunset; The Shard (cocktail bar, not done the viewing platform) is a bit expensive and style over substance but still worth doing once; Buckingham Palace is a world class historical living building; The South Bank has a lot going on and also gives great views of London; The Royal Albert Hall is a stunning concert venue; most of the big museums are free.
The one place I've not done as it really doesn't appeal to me is Madame Tussauds.
[1] Compared to other cites apart from the pedal rickshaws and the find-the-lady on Westminster bridge I don't think London is inundated with rip-off tourist traps like many other cities appear to be.
I've heard online from (American) immigrants to the Netherlands that Dutch life can seem pretty boring. But I think this just signifies a major cultural difference between the US and other more traditional cultures.
For a dutch person (and I suspect many other countries), life is not measured in the amount of 'cool' stuff you have or do. To me life is about friends, family, health and purpose. If I have that, I'm perfectly happy for every week to be the same as the last, for the rest of my life.
What’s even better is that thing with memberships here in the UK. While the single admission price for these “touristy” sites might appear quite steep, usually for not much more (and sometimes even without paying extra) you can become a “member” for a year and return as many times as you wish. This removes the pressure of “making the entrance fee worth it” and made several attractions much more enjoyable for us. Often, it even allows free entry into partner venues.
The phrase "do what the locals do" is very vague. Like, think about your own life - the "local" places that you go to hang out, drink, eat, have fun etc. differ very much depending on:
- your means of transportation
- how wealthy you are
- who you're with
- whether it's a special occasion or just a random Tuesday
> I’m skeptical of the term tourist trap (it’s mostly used as a term to place yourself as higher status/taste than other people, and is often used out of insecurity)
One thing I've read years ago about tourist traps is that one shouldn't be actively trying to avoid them, especially if they come from a country with higher purchasing power.
Some of these "tourist trap" activities are locals trying to make an honest living doing what they can. It should be fine to take a tuk tuk, or to buy paintings and souvenirs from people off the street.
Everyone should avoid getting ripped off, but what's 0.1% of a month's wages to a tourist could pay for an entire day's meals for a local.
I live in a tourist town. 3000 residents, 4 million visitors each year. And I'm just fine with the tourists not going to the places I go - we tend to like the quieter, more affordable places vs. the big fancy price-gouging places. But assuming that us "locals" just sit at home and do nothing is such an unfair and inaccurate assessment. Why would I want to live in a town as crazy as this if I did nothing here?
I enjoy having a vast variety of restaurants and activities that I otherwise would not have in a small town in the Midwest. The roads are well maintained, we have more parks than we otherwise would, there are trails, rivers, and tons of activities. We don't spend all our time partaking of the tourist activities, but we abso-freaking-lutely spend some time enjoying what the town has to offer.
I spend summers in Central Portugal after enduring the winter of Canada's North. Sometimes my Canadian friends want to spend a couple of days in Portugal and ask me what's for a good place to visit, or a good attraction to go to, etc. I always answer the same:
I have no idea. I don't go as a tourist. I go to live in my family's home town for 6 or 7 weeks and not think about work. I don't have any recommendations for a checklist. I avoid the touristy places if I can.
I then turn it around on them. If someone was visiting Canada for 2 or 3 days, where do you tell them to go? I dunno.
> P.S. if you are a local, you can do all of this too.
Last year, after spending a bunch of money putting in a fence, and having a puppy that didn't travel well, we decided that we were just going to take a week off and be tourists at home. We visited the museums we've driven by daily for eight years, and had a blast.
And, living in a touristy area, I want to point out that "do what the locals do" is excellent advice. I'll tell you all about where to get great food, great hikes, and not-too-crowded beaches. (Except the residents-only beach. We reserve that for us.)
Basically human "interesting-ness" is a very wide spectrum, skewed with a very long tail.
The average person may not be an interesting model for getting the most out of life in a short time in any particular place, but the top 0.1% of people measured by the texture, quality and interesting-ness of their lives exceeds any metric of "noteworthy events per hour" by a factor of 100.
The title is a non sequitur from the argument. The point is not to ask for a "bring a non-local to work day" where you tag along to a rando doing their normal routine.
The thing that locals do know a lot of the time, is the spots that are actually great but not hyped up by influencers/social media, the cool spots that are often good by virtue of not being well known, etc. And no one is arguing that the locals know all the best cultural attractions, the point of asking locals for advice is to understand what they see in their own city.
This is where platforms like Couchers.org or whatever come up, where you want to actually understand the locals, more than just see the hyped up touristy stuff (which often can also be phenomenal!).
The reason people use "When in Rome..." or "do as the locals do" is because that's how you get an accurate taste of what life in <place> is like. If you don't want to experience a glimpse of life in Paris, then sure go eat at a tourist trap. The quote below from TFA is an inadvertent own goal, I think:
>But today I imagine you visiting my hometown and spending a day with the locals. You’d probably end up watching reality TV, ordering some ‘New American’ food on Doordash (it’s a cheeseburger with Korean Kimchi Glaze™), and sports betting from your phone.
Perhaps TFAuthor hails from a place that isn't interesting enough for tourists to visit. Lots of small towns across the USA and Canada don't offer any compelling reason to visit unless you have relatives there.
There's a reason tourists flock to New York City and not to Schenectady.
You say that, but I’ve more than a few times found myself scratching my head when a local person has not known basics about where they live - everything from not knowing that there’s a supermarket one block over, to having never heard of the culture whose ruins litter their city.
I think the worst local advice I ever had sent me on a 3000km detour and got me interrogated by the FSB - basically it was “oh don’t go south of the Aral Sea, the road is terrible, you will die” - turns out that the road north of the sea had already been demolished so a new one could be built, and the one south had already been completely rebuilt.
Honestly, most locals don’t know shit about where they live.
There is a reason why touristic spots are touristic spots, even before the rise of social media and influencers. The reason is that they are usually the nicest spot in that zone.
Same reason why rich people buy (and inflate its value) land for holidays homes in certain places and not others. Because those are nicer places, where the landscape is beautiful.
The point is that the locals tend to think that spots which are actually generic and uninteresting are great because the mediocre imported cuisine they serve is different from the local food or their friend works there, and that spots full of influencers which are actually great aren't that interesting because they'd personally never consider taking a bus to the centre to queue up with tourists to enjoy a rooftop with a view when they can have coffee with their friends in their own suburb at a chain they've got a loyalty card for. Sometimes seeing what banal stuff people think is amazing and what beautiful stuff they take for granted is educational in its own right, but it's not necessarily a better way to plan a holiday than a guidebook.
There is one tourist trap I have seen often, and that is thinking one needs to do a certain list of things to see everything in your one visit of the place.
Check the lists of tourist traps, see what interests you and fill your day there with whatever excites you.
It is obvious that "do what the locals do" should not be taken literally, because locals are likely working most of the day. So the authors actual advice seems to be "avoid what the locals do, when they don't want to do anything". Everyone else likely interprets it as "do what the locals do, when they want to have fun" which is good advice.
My daily routines are of no interest to tourist. They are probably similar to their own routines at home anyway. When I got out on the weekends it can get wild though and I'd wager it's exactly what many tourists are looking for.
That would be lovely but seems people really really want to be in the same places I am.
This year just called defeat and I'm moving out to the countryside, hopefully. My city had almost no tourist three years ago and now I had to shout twice to a tourist guide for using a very loud speaker in the very street I live in.
Just today I saw a 1 start review in a place I really like, by a german lady that was baffled waiters didn't even try to speak english to her.
It's just impossible to fight this. Guess we'll have to make our nice place elsewhere until tourists find out.
As a local, one of the funnest things to do is to host out-of-town guests and to just do the touristy things in combination with local knowledge. Bus tours, museums, food, etc. Do it all. For me, it's stuff I'd probably never do unless pressed to provide entertainment for guests I care about.
So, do the local thing with tourists and retain a focus on a combination of showing off the best elements of being a local; with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the tourist. As a blow-in to NY, I'd like others to appreciate it too.
Do what the tourists do, but with the locals. Do what the locals do, but with the tourists.
Better advice isn't 'do what the locals do' or 'avoid what the locals do'. It's to actually talk to people, both locals and other travelers, instead of treating either group as a script to copy from a distance. Have a beer, ask questions, hang out, and see what people are really into.
Historically, that's what the locals did. This is 'do what the locals do' always referred to. Other comments call out entities like Bourdain who pushed 'do what the locals do' into popularization, but even he spent his time talking to the locals. That was his whole schtick.
It may be fair to say that in the modern age locals no longer talk to each other. Perhaps that is the source of disconnect we're now seeing?
I try to add some randomness to my travels. Just pick a few random places on a map, research them for a few minutes, and if there is anything remotely interesting there, just go there. If you discover something more interesting on the way and never reach your destination, then you definitively succeeded.
> But today I imagine you visiting my hometown and spending a day with the locals. You’d probably end up watching reality TV, ordering some ‘New American’ food on Doordash (it’s a cheeseburger with Korean Kimchi Glaze™), and sports betting from your phone.
This is an idiosyncratic and gratuitously contrarian take on what the actual advice means. If you go to New York, you're more likely to have a good time at a random neighborhood bar that the locals frequent than at a bar in Times Square. If you're in a small town, at least some of the locals probably know about a good hike 20 minutes out of town with a great view that would be hard to find otherwise. Don't overthink it.
My best travel advice (for urban areas) is simple: get lost. If you don't know exactly where you are or what's around the corner, you've got to take it as it comes, and that makes it all the more interesting. No FOMO or opportunity cost struggles, just what's in front of you right now.
This is both easier and harder with smartphones and GPS. Harder because, well, you know exactly where you are and have to actively ignore the phone. Easier because when you're ready to be done, you know exactly where you are!
I did that once about twenty years ago. I was in Seoul for a few days for work, and I had the last day free before my plane out in the evening. Without checking a map or guidebook, I got on the subway, rode a few stops, went up to street level, and wandered around; I repeated this four or five times. Other than one nondescript office district, every area I emerged in was interesting: a wholesale textile market, an upscale residential neighborhood, a lively commercial district. Though I don’t know the names of the places I visited, I still remember them all these years later.
As someone who's traveled quite a bit, I love doing this but I should also warn everyone to make sure they're in a place where it's safe to do so. While most tourist destinations are mostly fine, you don't want to end up in a random shady neighborhood in certain cities - even touristy ones (Barcelona, Paris, etc). It doesn't matter that 20 years ago you did it and it was fine, things have changed.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 71.2 ms ] threadFirst line: "My best piece of travel advice is to avoid doing what the locals do."
The writer seems incapable of distinguishing between the special, cool local things the locals KNOW about, and which a tourist might well benefit from trying, and the things locals DO because they don't do those special, cool things every day. Instead locals are usually doing similar things to what we normally do.
Which renders this article rather pointless.
As for touristy things here in Zurich - it's not really a tourist city. When we have guests from overseas we do have a set of activities to bring them on. When I've offered to bring them in the forest to find mushrooms/berries/etc they're usually not so interested.
I don't mean to go to a tourist trap and get scammed, but just enjoy your city a little more and do some things that usually only tourists do.
For example, despite living most of my life in London, I've never been to the Tower of London. Why would I? It's for tourists. Except it's probably quite fascinating, especially for a local.
It has been great, gave me another layer of appreciation for my hometown Gothenburg, Sweden.
It took a couple weeks, but I realized that I was the spoiled one and the other side of "For me this is a Tuesday" should be "I'm glad my local businesses are interesting to tours" and "It's easy to forget how impressed I might be with this lunch if I was visiting some other town, isn't it great it can be my 'usual Tuesday'?"
I started listening to some of the lectures. I could easily mock some of them and/or clarify/edit/fix mistakes in them, but also they can still be an interesting bit of perspective, including the way that tourists respond to them. It's fun to have that tourist perspective of the local area.
It's also a fun reminder to do and try more of the tourist things locally. When your "usual Tuesday" is someone else's exciting and desired vacation experience, what else are you seeing with the somewhat dulled eyes of being a local but would greatly enjoy if you thought like a visitor to your own city?
I know quite a lot of all the cities i lived in. I have been a good tourguide to friends and family because you just learn stuff about your city.
I will not go to that one ferris wheel because some company build it, i saw them building it, its in a location which is weird, and why would i go on a ferris wheel in my city?
But everything else? The main castle, yes! The residence, english garden, white rose, german museum, Shirker's Alley, old michael, etc. yes! Have been plenty of times.
Tower of London is good, there is so much history in there and a number of exhibitions well worth seeing.
I've done most of the "tourist traps"[1] and really enjoyed them. The London Eye gives you great views, especially at sunset; The Shard (cocktail bar, not done the viewing platform) is a bit expensive and style over substance but still worth doing once; Buckingham Palace is a world class historical living building; The South Bank has a lot going on and also gives great views of London; The Royal Albert Hall is a stunning concert venue; most of the big museums are free.
The one place I've not done as it really doesn't appeal to me is Madame Tussauds.
[1] Compared to other cites apart from the pedal rickshaws and the find-the-lady on Westminster bridge I don't think London is inundated with rip-off tourist traps like many other cities appear to be.
For a dutch person (and I suspect many other countries), life is not measured in the amount of 'cool' stuff you have or do. To me life is about friends, family, health and purpose. If I have that, I'm perfectly happy for every week to be the same as the last, for the rest of my life.
I had some work colleague who, when some new AAA video games came out, took a week of vacation so that he could play these the game non-stop.
- your means of transportation
- how wealthy you are
- who you're with
- whether it's a special occasion or just a random Tuesday
I regret reading and commenting, but hopefully save someone else.
One thing I've read years ago about tourist traps is that one shouldn't be actively trying to avoid them, especially if they come from a country with higher purchasing power.
Some of these "tourist trap" activities are locals trying to make an honest living doing what they can. It should be fine to take a tuk tuk, or to buy paintings and souvenirs from people off the street.
Everyone should avoid getting ripped off, but what's 0.1% of a month's wages to a tourist could pay for an entire day's meals for a local.
The local working in hospitality is earning minimum wage, the premium you pay goes to the landlord.
This has strong implicit assumptions on the kind of visitors that you have: for example, some people don't particularly like
* watching sports
* playing video games
* ...
but are fine to do this when visitors come and would love to do that.
I enjoy having a vast variety of restaurants and activities that I otherwise would not have in a small town in the Midwest. The roads are well maintained, we have more parks than we otherwise would, there are trails, rivers, and tons of activities. We don't spend all our time partaking of the tourist activities, but we abso-freaking-lutely spend some time enjoying what the town has to offer.
I have no idea. I don't go as a tourist. I go to live in my family's home town for 6 or 7 weeks and not think about work. I don't have any recommendations for a checklist. I avoid the touristy places if I can.
I then turn it around on them. If someone was visiting Canada for 2 or 3 days, where do you tell them to go? I dunno.
> P.S. if you are a local, you can do all of this too.
Last year, after spending a bunch of money putting in a fence, and having a puppy that didn't travel well, we decided that we were just going to take a week off and be tourists at home. We visited the museums we've driven by daily for eight years, and had a blast.
And, living in a touristy area, I want to point out that "do what the locals do" is excellent advice. I'll tell you all about where to get great food, great hikes, and not-too-crowded beaches. (Except the residents-only beach. We reserve that for us.)
The average person may not be an interesting model for getting the most out of life in a short time in any particular place, but the top 0.1% of people measured by the texture, quality and interesting-ness of their lives exceeds any metric of "noteworthy events per hour" by a factor of 100.
The thing that locals do know a lot of the time, is the spots that are actually great but not hyped up by influencers/social media, the cool spots that are often good by virtue of not being well known, etc. And no one is arguing that the locals know all the best cultural attractions, the point of asking locals for advice is to understand what they see in their own city.
This is where platforms like Couchers.org or whatever come up, where you want to actually understand the locals, more than just see the hyped up touristy stuff (which often can also be phenomenal!).
>But today I imagine you visiting my hometown and spending a day with the locals. You’d probably end up watching reality TV, ordering some ‘New American’ food on Doordash (it’s a cheeseburger with Korean Kimchi Glaze™), and sports betting from your phone.
Perhaps TFAuthor hails from a place that isn't interesting enough for tourists to visit. Lots of small towns across the USA and Canada don't offer any compelling reason to visit unless you have relatives there.
There's a reason tourists flock to New York City and not to Schenectady.
I think the worst local advice I ever had sent me on a 3000km detour and got me interrogated by the FSB - basically it was “oh don’t go south of the Aral Sea, the road is terrible, you will die” - turns out that the road north of the sea had already been demolished so a new one could be built, and the one south had already been completely rebuilt.
Honestly, most locals don’t know shit about where they live.
Same reason why rich people buy (and inflate its value) land for holidays homes in certain places and not others. Because those are nicer places, where the landscape is beautiful.
Check the lists of tourist traps, see what interests you and fill your day there with whatever excites you.
My daily routines are of no interest to tourist. They are probably similar to their own routines at home anyway. When I got out on the weekends it can get wild though and I'd wager it's exactly what many tourists are looking for.
This year just called defeat and I'm moving out to the countryside, hopefully. My city had almost no tourist three years ago and now I had to shout twice to a tourist guide for using a very loud speaker in the very street I live in.
Just today I saw a 1 start review in a place I really like, by a german lady that was baffled waiters didn't even try to speak english to her.
It's just impossible to fight this. Guess we'll have to make our nice place elsewhere until tourists find out.
So, do the local thing with tourists and retain a focus on a combination of showing off the best elements of being a local; with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the tourist. As a blow-in to NY, I'd like others to appreciate it too.
Do what the tourists do, but with the locals. Do what the locals do, but with the tourists.
Historically, that's what the locals did. This is 'do what the locals do' always referred to. Other comments call out entities like Bourdain who pushed 'do what the locals do' into popularization, but even he spent his time talking to the locals. That was his whole schtick.
It may be fair to say that in the modern age locals no longer talk to each other. Perhaps that is the source of disconnect we're now seeing?
This is an idiosyncratic and gratuitously contrarian take on what the actual advice means. If you go to New York, you're more likely to have a good time at a random neighborhood bar that the locals frequent than at a bar in Times Square. If you're in a small town, at least some of the locals probably know about a good hike 20 minutes out of town with a great view that would be hard to find otherwise. Don't overthink it.
This is both easier and harder with smartphones and GPS. Harder because, well, you know exactly where you are and have to actively ignore the phone. Easier because when you're ready to be done, you know exactly where you are!