New York, Milan, Paris… all exceptional destinations in their own unique ways. I spent a lot of time in Paris as a tour guide in my teens and adored it, and I love a trip to a tourist fave as much as the next person.
But they are also busy. They are expensive. And they can have such extreme hype that many are disappointed because nothing can quite live up to the city they’ve dreamed of for years.
So let me propose something that is as daft as it is radical: go somewhere so UNhyped that you can (hopefully) only be pleasantly surprised.
I’m being serious, though that’s not actually my reasoning. Pretty much wherever you are in the world, there will be places that everybody flocks to and places that are sadly ignored, but each will have their appeals and their charms.
Don’t write off the charms of the place nobody waxes lyrical about. Pursue them. Even if you don’t know in advance what they are.
Visiting somewhere unhyped means you might explore that bit more deeply.
When there aren’t 8000 online articles telling you the must-sees, you dig around more yourself.
You go round corners that TIME OUT might not have told you to go round, or you wander into the church or the museum that you’ve never heard of.
And that’s where the charm lies: sometimes in what you find, sometimes in the exploration itself.
And if you get stuck for places to wander to, here are some ideas I use to kick off some ideas:
- Just opening Google Maps and searching. Do you want green space? Independent cafes? Good views? A cracking nightlife? There will be suggestions and reviews of them all
- Apps like AllTrails and Go Jauntly suggest walks that include places of interest and well-trodden paths that can show you places worth seeing
- Asking locals, who often love to tell you their favourite haunts. Sometimes at length, but just relish the human connection and don’t rush off
- Asking your friends on social media. Someone will have been somewhere nearby and have recommendations, even if it’s a nice aquarium they went to in the 70s – look, I didn’t say these were failure-free suggestions, they just might well spark some beautiful, accidental discoveries
- An app called SetJetters is a fascinating one for film and TV fans. Open it up and it shows you all the spots in your vicinity that have featured in movie or telly sets, so you can go and recreate your favourite scenes
- See what leaflets are distributed around town. Smaller towns and villages seem far more likely to still spread ideas this way, so a cuppa in a cafe can also fill your itinerary for a week if you browse their noticeboard
Admittedly travelling somewhere unknown doesn’t always work. I’ve just spent an unfortunate few days visiting a place that, in the end, I hated.
But in all fairness that has happened when I’ve been to London, too. Every trip is a risk in that respect – it may rain, someone may be really rude to you, everything may be closed…
But more often than not, eschewing tourist traps and going instead to somewhere that was popular with the Victorians, or somewhere that’s easy to get to by train, or somewhere that’s close to the town your old friend lives in, or just somewhere you saw on a TV show, means learning and discovering and seeing things that others haven’t yet heard endlessly about. It means having stories to tell and photos to show that people haven’t heard and seen before.
And it can teach you things about yourself, too. Whether it’s that you have a previously unexplored hankering for Eccles Cakes, or whether it’s that you know never to go to Harrogate again.
Images: Philippa Willitts