When I was young I thought tours were a cop-out.

A lazy way to see a city or town instead of roughing it, getting lost, and talking to locals.

But then most of my travel centered around local bars and bike rides.

But as I hit my mid-to-late twenties I started seeing the wisdom in tours. Riding around Büyükada in Istanbul is nice and bar hoping in Berlin is fun but you don’t learn much beyond how to get lost and which German beers a particular bar offers.  As a mid-twenty to late-twenty something I started to crave something more – which was a bit of culture.

Also, truthfully, I had less time. My two weeks of vacation meant there was a certain urgency to make a trip feel “worth it” and well, I could always get drunk at home.

So I started going on tours. At first, my then boyfriend/ now husband and I would book half-day and full-day trips though Viator.com, which is still my go to. The groups trips were nice but we found the private tours to be more enriching because we had the opportunity to speak more with the local tour guide. We also used Tripadvisor and just Googled “Tours in X city” to find options.

Later we started booking themed tours mostly centering around food or photography. To this day I still swear that I take my best photos on photography tours. There’s a certain comfort to knowing that a local thinks it’s ok to pull out your professional camera in the middle of the crowded street in Argentina or Vietnam and start snapping pictures of places and people. We’ve even made lasting connections with some of the professionals we’ve taken photography tours with (I’ll list some recommendations by country below).

Recently, due to the expense of tours (and our long term travel) and our general desire to wake up after 12pm everyday we started going on Free Walking tours.

At first, I was a bit nervous feeling like a Free Walking Tour would potentially be a bust and/or we would be stranded with a large group of people unable to see or hear the guide, but truthfully, so far, my experiences have been grand.

You can usually Google Free Walking Tours in X city and find a few options. They usually have a morning and afternoon option and some require reservations while others just ask you to show up.

The people who volunteer to guide free walking tours are true believers in the democratization of tourism and feel tours should not be out of reach for those who could otherwise not afford them. The guides are often times professionals in history and architecture and they absolutely love their city.

So my advice for people debating taking tours while traveling is — you should always find a way to go on tour while in a new place.

Even if your vacation has taken you to a beach on a Caribbean Island. There are always tours, free and paid that you can take and 9 out of 10 times you end up happy and feeling a bit more connected to a place.

How to Do Tours Right?

However, there is the possibility that one can “over do/ overbook” or under do tours. For example, in Bangkok, Christian and I felt like maybe we had over done our tours. We booked something for almost everyday, and that meant waking up early and walking all day. By the end of our time in Bangkok we needed a vacation from our vacation and promised to go easy next time.

When we traveled in Quito, Ecuador we created a balanced combination. We took a tour the first day to orientate ourselves around the city center and then we booked two more tours for various days and in-between time we relaxed and explored the city ourselves.

In Amsterdam, we took a more budgeted approach.

We booked two paid tours. One photography tour with Inbal Tur-Shalom through Airbnb Experiences and another themed group tour of the Red Light district through Amsterdam Red Light District Tour where we learned the history of prostitution and drugs in the Netherlands and also had the opportunity to consume chocolate in a new and unique way.

We also took a free walking tour of the city with Free Walking Tour Amsterdam which was fantastic. We learned about the streets we had walked down and felt like we got to know the place. We also got recommendations from the guide on how to fill our time, which bars to go to, and where to find gluten free food.

When we were not on tour we woke up late, walked into town, and spent the day eating and seeing museums. It was the perfect combination of a budget week in Amsterdam while staying in a house boat with Airbnb.

I say all this to say I am a huge supporter of taking tours. There’s no shame in it and it can be inexpensive (free) if you sign up for free walking tours.

I look forward to more tours we will take on our travels.

Suggested List of Photography Tours by Country:

Vietnam

• Vietnam Photo Adventures with Arnaud. A prolific street photographer.

Argentina

• BuenosTours “Half day Photography Tour” with documentary filmmaker Richard Shpuntoff. We opted to book three additional days with him. One of my photos from the trip won a Flickr 2016 gallery recognition.

Amsterdam

• AirBnb Experience “Take a scenic walk with a photographer” with Inbal Tur-Shalom. She’s an architecture photographer.

Tokyo

• Night Tour of Tokyo with EYExplore Tokyo