Design Your Own Alternative City Tour

Honestly, most city tours are a bore. Here’s how to easily design your own alternative tour to see your destination without sacrificing fun.

Find a theme

This should somehow be tied to the city you are in. The relationship can be as tenuous as you want, but the stronger the tie, the more interesting your tour will be. For example, free tapas in Madrid. Or most grotesque gargoyles in Paris.

Research that theme

Again, you can do as much or as little research as you want. But you’re going to have to at least do enough to find five sites to visit. Research can be done a variety of ways: online or in a library, word of mouth, or just walking around the city — depending on how in-depth you want to go. You can just as easily choose your gargoyles because they look funny as you can because of their architectural significance.

Make it rewarding

Assuming you are creating this tour for other people as well as yourself, make each destination its own reward. This is easy in the case of the tapas; at each bar you get to eat tapas. But in the case of the gargoyles, it is more difficult (that is, of course, if you don’t consider education its own reward). Maybe you bring a bottle of absinthe and everybody gets a drink at each destination you find. Maybe you make it a scavenger hunt. Maybe you think of something even more cool and exciting. But making the tour rewarding will ensure that you and your guests have a blast.

There are one million ways to customize your tour. The one cardinal rule, however, is that it must have a theme. Otherwise it’s a wander.