A visit to any city is like a conversation – says the author of nine books on various countries around the world – Pico Layer. We ask questions and the place answers itself, we only need to be able to hear them. How to get acquainted with a new village? The famous traveler will tell about ten things that everyone needs to do to feel and understand a foreign city better.
Be inspired with every moment of the first hours in a new place
The first impressions are the most important; they are worth thousand following impressions. The trip by taxi from the airport, the first walk on unfamiliar streets – these moments are engraved in the memory, and then the initial emotions get only stronger and acquire more details. So during the first days run away from e-mail, TV, news – anything that reminds the house, so that nothing hinders you from absorbing the spirit of the new place.
Find out what tourists usually visit
Some cocky fellows will tell you that they are not “tourists”, but “travelers”. But if being a tourist means to see all the attractions that make this place unique, what is so bad in it? Take on your first day in Atlanta, a three-hour tour of the city – so you will immediately understand what is where and which place is worth visiting again. Arriving abroad, visit the shops recommended by guidebooks to see what is generally available to visitors. And do not be afraid to ask a local girl, how to find the National Museum: maybe she will go with you and take a little road trip.
View the brochures in the hotel
Do not ignore the glossy magazines on the table in your room or suggestions for excursions in the guest information folder. From these, for example, you can find out that in Baltimore there is a unique and very popular art museum, and in Mauritius, you can walk in the company of lions.
Follow the instructions of friends
They may ask to find fried corn on Maui or to find a wise monk once met in Phnom Penh. It is not important what and where to look: the search results sometimes bring to such wonderful places, which you would never have seen otherwise.
Visit a theatre or a sport event
Playing with a ball or a symphony are understandable to all, to enjoy them you do not need to know a foreign language. And at the same time, a visit to the opera in Beijing, or a soccer match in Rio would have nothing to do with how you did it at home. And if it took a lot of energy to drag someone to the “Swan Lake” in his native city, the same ballet in Beirut will remembered for life.
Go to a bookstore
This is a great way to learn about the interests of local residents. For example, almost in any street of New Delhi in such a store you can find books on palaces, textiles, spirituality and Kama-Sutra, and completely different books can be found on the shelves of bookshops in Salt Lake City.
Take a bus to the final stop
Perhaps it is not worth going to the very end everywhere, but even the extra five or six stops will yield many discoveries. At the very least, you will be able to see a part of the city from the bus window the way the locals see it. And perhaps, you will find yourself in a totally unfamiliar area, which will completely change your previous impression of the site.
Read the daily newspaper
Almost every large city has a newspaper in English. If you have at least some knowledge of the language, be sure to leaf through that publication. And, do not disregard newspapers in dialects that are incomprehensible to you: you will be amazed with the unusual illustrations of the life of others. Newspapers have usually a lot more to say about the place than they themselves suspect, be it the page of marriage ads in The Times of India or headers in Key West Citizen.
Visit McDonalds
And you will be surprised to find that in Kyoto, visitors are offered burgers with tashuta chicken and corn puree, and in autumn rolls in the form of the moon will appear in the menu, and the people around you may be dressed in clothes from Vivienne Westwood and Dior. And in Bolivia, ladies sip Mac Coffee under the watchful eye of personal bodyguards. Of course, the food in these establishments is cheap and often predictable, but a visit to a simple fast-food restaurant is another way to learn more about a new location. After all, what else we are looking for in travel (as well as in love and in life), if not the combination of the unusual and the usual?
