I am sure we have all been on a City Break which starts on a Saturday afternoon and finishes on the Monday morning thanks to a low cost airline to an out of the way airport. By the time you check in to the hotel at your destination you are left with just one full day of sightseeing. These are my tips on how to make the most of your city break. Please feel free to add more:
1) Make a list of what you want to see before you go
When I was young I had a favourite teddy bear which I called Green even though he was brown, scruffy and very naughty. Sometimes he would hide himself in the most impossible places and it would take me a long time to find him – but the joy when reunited….. The list of the places I must see I call my Green List.
As a child (and even now) I wasn’t sure about eating broccoli. It always tasted bland, and although I knew it was good for me it seemed a waste of time. As a result I have a second list which is called the Broccoli List, sights you have heard about but you think could be a waste of precious time. For instance I had a city break in Istanbul a year or two ago. I had read books by Orhan Pamuk and wanted to see his Museum of Innocence but the history of the Turkish Ottoman Empire seemed so much more important that his museum only made the Broccoli list. But the Hagia Sofia and Military Museum were fantastic!
2) Don’t feel guilty if some “must see“ sights which made it onto your Green list don’t live up to your expectations. Leave without hesitation, be ruthless, and move on to the next place on your list.
After research on the internet and guide books I added a visit to the Grand Bazaar to my Green List and enjoyed it for the first ten minutes then the crowds, commercialism and noise got the better of me and I decided to cut my losses and moved on.
3) Book entry tickets online in order to cut waiting in queues. Especially good for really major sights like the Louvre.
4) Check opening times and days of opening – Use the internet to check opening times and whether there are any days of the week that the attraction is closed – lots of cities close their museums on Mondays for example. Turn up half an hour before the attraction opens to beat the thousands of lazybones later in the day, and enjoy relative peace and quiet – a typical example is Plitvice Lakes in Croatia. Try it!
5) Check local eating habits – In China they tend to eat very early. Lunch starts at 1130 and that is a good time to see the Forbidden City if you can persuade your guide to give up his lunch! You will be amazed how much The Forbidden City or any other sight in Beijing is almost empty during Chinese lunch or dinner time!
6) Don’t waste time on meals! The food in Istanbul was heavenly but we decided to have only one proper meal in the evening when we got tired of sightseeing and would appreciate the food more. Also we saved two hours which we spent in the Archaeological Museum which was on our broccoli list, but should be on everyone’s Green List!
7) Ask your hotel concierge before you set out on day 1 how to use the local public transport and where to get tickets from, you’ll save an awful lot of fiddling about if you find this out first and won’t look too much like a helpless tourist. And you’ll save an awful lot of money if otherwise you’d use taxis (see our previous blog article about taxi scams).
8) If you are going around the city by yourself, without a guide and not on a tour, check out what tours are available and how they fit everything together in the day’s itinerary – you don’t want to be charging across town back and forth, so see how the professionals plan their best tours. Remember these will probably be group tours so you might well be able to squeeze more in to your day than a group of 50 people can, but you will at least have an outline itinerary.
9) Book a local tour guide for half a day! You will learn so much more about the city and its people, how to get around, new attractions or closed ones, and it’s nice to be shown around by a friendly face. If you are heading to Asia or the Balkans, have a look at our range of private guided day trips on www.ReadyClickAndGo.com, or email
Tara@ReadyClickAndGo.com
Do you have any tips to add?
About the author: Tara
The travel professional with years of experience in the travel industry – in guiding, reservations, operations, contracting, customer service and product development – and have travelled extensively in Asia and Eastern Europe not just on holiday but also for work, inspecting hotels, visiting attractions and seeing exactly what each destination has to offer. The only way I could do this properly was with my own guide, car and driver and this inspired me to create my own range of customised private day tours for other people to be able to explore in-depth and learn to love their destination as much as I do.
Website: www.readyclickandgo.com
Website: http://www.readyclickandgo.com
