The word "free" is every budget traveler's best friend. However, the following "walking tour" might cause some pause.
Most travelers have embarked on tours that left a sour taste in their mouths. Mine just happened to be a day trip to Morocco that made me swear off guided tours forever. While tours offer the easiest way to see a city (at a steep price) they often do not allow for freedom.
Being carted around to souvenir shops and eating at restaurants priced up for tourists seems like the worst possible way to explore a new city.
This is why free walking tours are different. Most major European cities, and even some lesser-known ones, offer a free walking tour. I first learned about them when the perky receptionist at The Flying Pig Hostel in downtown Amsterdam passed me a pamphlet. “It’s a great way to cover the city!”
If the tour really was free, then why not dedicate a few hours of travel to test it out?
The next morning, promptly at 10am, a lovely Spanish woman in a red polo came to round us up like we were school kids on a trip. In the heart of Amsterdam, a flock of tourists met up to be separated into groups, take a big picture, and embark on our walk around the city. The guides were clearly the experts. The detailed explanations about the historical significance of sights I would have otherwise never known sold me on the idea of free walking tours.
After two hours the tour finished and I had the rest of the day to spend as I wanted.
"Free" is a loose term, however. It is free on the surface, meaning you do not have to pay any set price to join. The way several tour guides explain the idealogy behind the tours is that you pay what you feel the tour was worth. These tips ensure that the tours can continue without a surface charge.
Still not convinced? Here are five more reasons to join the tours.
These tours are the BEST thing to squeeze into a day trip. Tours usually start at 10 AM or 11 AM. In high season (June-September) tours are often offered in the afternoon and evening as well. This gives you plenty of time to get to the city in the morning, have breakfast, and meet your tour guide in a central location. You will see the sights of the city in two to three hours - just in time to get lunch!
Tour guides will know the best restaurants for guests to visit. Remember, they are city experts! This way you can avoid the tourist trap restaurants and really get in with the locals. When you finish eating, you have the entire rest of the afternoon to explore the city as you please. You can go back to places that piqued your interest or ask your tour guide for even more recommendations.
By the end of the day, you have experienced the best possible way to explore a city with minimal planning. Entirely stress-free!
These guides have their jobs because they are experts. The guides are almost always locals or have a higher degree in the country's history.
Sometimes you will have a funny 20-something in Seville that leaves you laughing for two hours or a charming man in Tirana who gives firsthand experience stories about life in communist Albania. Maybe you will have a warm guide in Skopje who calls everyone friend and somehow gets you drunk at 11 am on rakija. Then, you might just walk to the top of a fortress after those five rakija shots. If you are really lucky, you might end up in Kosovo in the low season and be the only person on the tour.
The guides, in my experience, do not shy away from difficult questions. They encourage you to ask questions, even the ones that highlight dark parts of a country's history. The guides chose to work with people from around the world for a reason; they believe knowledge is priceless. Take what you have learned, the good and bad, and carry it with you throughout your life.
Free walking tours are often independently owned tour agencies and do not receive support from the city. These agencies are usually started up by two or three people with the passion to educate the world. Some cities like Paris or Amsterdam are run by larger organizations where guides work on commission, but in smaller cities like Zagreb or Ljubljana, you are directly supporting the guides and their families. Vid, the feisty tour guide in Zagreb, pulled out his phone at the beginning of the tour to show everyone a picture of his newborn niece and told everyone that for this week, all proceeds from the tour would go directly to her to buy her clothes, food, and "toys she absolutely does not need."
"I have to be the funcle!" He proudly proclaimed.
A free walking tour and additional discounts around the city? It almost seems too good to be true. Several times I have joined the free walking tours and left with discount tickets to museums, shows, restaurants and even free shots at bars.
Rather than using you as a walking wallet to buy souvenirs as some tours do, these guides actively want you to enjoy the city more than they want your cash. Yes, sometimes they do receive a commission from these places, but everyone at some point has to eat. Why not do it at a locally recommended restaurant that continues to ensure backpackers and budget travelers can experience the world? Plus, the restaurants are always good.
Walking around with a group of retirees or families on vacation not your cup of tea? Not a problem. The free walking tours are almost always comprised of backpackers or other young people. These groups fill up every day with people from around the world. If you think hostels end up diverse, just wait until the tour opens your eyes even more.
Because you are there with other people open to learning about the world, you connect that much easier. Travelers are friendly!
There is usually a few minutes' walk between sights, and that leaves the perfect amount of time to strike up a conversation. If you came to the tour alone, you could leave with a travel buddy for the day - or a friend for life! Or, if you’re like me, you could end up at a Scottish reel night in Edinburgh purely by chance.
It has been five years since I’ve taken my first free walking tour, and I’m still in contact with people I’ve met through them.
The next time you see a flyer for a free walking tour in your hostel or hotel, take it! You never know what you’ll be missing otherwise.
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