Get to Know a City by Walking It
The best way to learn a city, see its inhabitants, and begin to understand a place is by walking it. Catching a cab, taking a bus, hopping on a subway are all perfectly viable means to get a traveler from one point to another, but the dusty nooks and crannies, the run-down churches never appearing in guidebooks, the dive trattorias will be nothing but an invisible blur.
Sure, you can follow the directions of a tour guide, a guidebook, a hotel concierge, and see what someone else wants you to see, but by hoofing it as much as you possibly can from place to place, you’ll see a city for what it really is.
I’ve taken some healthy walks from the train station in Rome to the Spanish Steps. It was in Rome many years ago that I started walking on vacations, mostly due to my budget, and just partly from a desire to see the place. I was in Italy for a month, then, on my own. After a few days alone in a pensione, intimidated by my lack of Italian-language skills and an unfamiliar way of being, I realized I could make this either the best or the worst vacation of my life. I got out of my room and started following my map.
I started small—to the Coliseum, to the Trevi Fountain, to the Pantheon. If I got lost, it didn’t matter—I had no set schedule, no one to meet, and no pressure to actually get there. I hoofed my way through much of Italy that summer, heading south to Naples, down to Palermo and back up north to Milan and Lago di Maggiore. I walked so much I walked part of the path again 20 years later when I brought the Youthful Adventurer to Rome after his eighth-grade graduation. We walked together in Paris a few years later. We walked through Guayaquil, Ecuador, and discovered a love of empanadas and Cokes. I always love to walk through Seattle and cruise all its bookstores.
I can’t imagine being afraid to go out, foregoing an opportunity to walk a city’s streets alone. Solo travelers have to learn to be with themselves, and the best way to begin is by taking a short walk.
—Lori Tripoli
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Like to walk on your travels? You might like these posts:
- A Dublin Walking Tour
- The Book to Carry while Cruising Paris
- Tempted to Walk the Path of Saint James
- The Wild Backstory
- Liquid Courage
- I Can’t Walk into a Bar Alone