After moving to Prague a while back, on a whim, I decided to take a couple of pay-what-you-feel-like small group tours offered by a little three person company, and I couldn’t believe how fun it was and how much it grounded me in the city.
I’ve since hired them to do private tours when friends and family come to visit, and it’s always a great memory maker.
If you are coming to Prague, check out 100 Spires City Tours. They have a smart and funny YouTube channel too (“Real Prague Guides”). Three hours for about 100 Euros. Totally worth it.
I lived in Prague from 2014-18, and I love those tour guides! The Honest Guide’s videos are terrific! If the Naked Guide is still doing tours, I highly recommend him too. I took his Operation Anthropoid tour when he was still developing it, and it was really powerful and informative.
Thanks, Mari! Not familiar with Naked Guide, but I've watched the Honest Guide videos for years. They have quite a following. The Operation Anthropoid tour sounds interesting!
I once went on a free walking tour of Annapolis with a costumed guide who was a former heart surgeon. He explained that in the 19th and 18th centuries, men in tights would present their calf as a flirtatious gesture. So now whenever my husband points his toe and extends his ankle, I know he's down to clown or ready to jig. Either way we're about to have a good time.
Insert Dall-E illustration of Rick Steves smoking a giant doobie and saying “When You’re a Tourist, Be A Tourist!” here.
To this point, I’m going to Brooklyn for a wedding in a few months and wouldn’t mind recommendations? Staying at a hotel in downtown Brooklyn. I’ve done most of the affordable Manhattan stuff as well as going to the Museum of the Moving Picture and the Brooklyn Museum, walking the bridge, etc. I’m tempted to mostly just walk around and eat and drink, but is there something big I’m missing?
You can go from your downtown BK hotel to DUMBO and then walk up the hill, along the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, then cut slightly west to Clinton or Court and explore the Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens (great Italian American neighborhood — get some fresh mozzarella at Caputo’s) and then down into Red Hook. It’s a great walk. A couple hours maybe. A slice of Brooklyn.
My mom's a tour guide! Hire Elka Ganeva. (seriously tho the amount of shit she and her tour guide friends know is nuts. Basically, it's very smart, curious people who can't sit still and this is the only work for them) Definite recommend.
Also, those double-decker style bus tours are underrated. I was always kind of disdainful of the concept until I took my senior citizen dad to Rome (a city I know well) and we took a bus tour. It’s a great way to get a sense of a city’s geography when you first get there. A few years later we did a bus tour of NYC (I lived there almost 20 years at that point) - in a few hours you can get a sense of the city, which makes it seem less overwhelming when you don’t know a place well.
Yes! Thank you for mentioning people with limited mobility. My daughter is disabled, and we have taken bus tours so she can see more of the places we visit. Horse-and-carriage tours are also a lovely way for seniors and people with disabilities to enjoy a city.
And especially if a city has poor or confusing public transit. Those hop on and hop off bus tours are great for getting around and way cheaper than taking cabs around.
Boat tours, as well! The best architecture tour in Chicago (well, okay, it's the only one I've been on but it's REALLY good) travels down the river. It's fantastic and the seating is very comfortable.
There's a great documentary called "The Cruise" about this guy who gives really interesting bus tours of NYC. He's a bit eccentric, but really good at his job. Also Freddie did a great video walking tour of Prospect Park awhile back. Rick Steves of Brooklyn, maybe?
Yeah, it’s a tremendous film. I love those “fly on the wall”type character studies. Directed by Bennett Miller. I think it’s on YouTube but I’m not sure how to link it. Anyway, it’s well worth a watch.
I strongly support your “be a tourist” advice and this advice is on balance right certainly, but I must admit to some Tour Guide Anxiety. It’s true that maybe 3 of every 4 tours I’ve been on in my life have been fun or interesting, but it’s so brutal to be stuck with someone annoying or extremely boring for hours and hours.
Impossible! As a meek and non-confrontational person, it's usually too small a group to leave unnoticed. And as a boring person myself, I never like rubbing anyone's face in the fact that they're uninteresting.
The best tour guides I've had were basically a college professor, stand-up-comedian, customer service rep, Yelp database, fitness instructor, and clinical psychologist all in one.
I know... but most comedians stink and these guys and girls aren't even comedians! I guess it's partially that everyone's in a good mood and on vacation.
I have lived overseas for the past eight years, in two countries, and I endorse this post. Tour guides not only share information with us, but they open us up to the kinds of conversations and insights that you won’t get by just reading a guidebook.
Here’s just one of many examples: Several years ago, when we were visiting Dubrovnik, we booked a tour of Mostar. The tour began with a two-hour car ride with a private driver. He took us through the Serbian part of the country so we could see the differences in architecture, grave markers, and food (we stopped for a snack). Once we got to Mostar, our tour began with a lesson on the authentic way to drink Bosnian coffee in the roastery owned by the guide’s family (miraculously, it survived the war). We then walked around the city and were able to see history as it was still expressed on the scarred buildings and in the mass grave in the center of town. Our guide and her family survived the war, and she shared personal stories with us. Our daughter, greatly moved, hugged her and said she was sorry. Our last stop was lunch, and our guide recommended Bosnian specialties we could try. We finished out the day with an hour on our own, where we enjoyed more typical Mostar sights like those guys who jump off the famous bridge and plunge 60 feet down to the river.
Our driver took us back to Dubrovnik along the coast and pointed out how we crossed borders five times during the two-hour drive, to make it clear how (literally) Balkanized that part of the world is.
All this for about $250! Tour guides help you to a deeper understanding of their home and give you the chance for authentic connections.
Man, I'm the opposite. Never, ever do tours. I advise against them. And I speak as someone who is a great tour guide! I find them exhausting and irritating. I have no problem looking like a tourist.
I travel by myself. A lot. The only person in my entire life I enjoyed traveling with was my son, who was my regular traveling companion from his birth until our last big trip,a cross-country road trip, the year he graduated. When he went off into the world, I've done even more travelling, loved it all, but am much happier finding what interests me and hunting it down. Google is great that way.
So true! It's always worth it to spring for the small group tour -- as opposed to a larger group. We've had some great ones over the years. I wish I could remember the contact info for our Istanbul guide I could share with this group.
The first thing I did when I visited and studied for school in Belfast was take a bus tour, which helped familiarized me with the city layout and the broad strokes of the population and culture. The second thing I did was take a few cabs around town so I could talk to some locals about their life in the city. Best crash course you can get somewhere new, if you know the language!
I went to Medellin on vacation once and a friend of mine recommended that I take a guided tour of the local fruit market. That was something I would never had considered otherwise and it was fantastic. I tried about 10 or so fruits I had never heard of before. I certainly would never had tried a bunch of random fruit at a giant market on my own. It was this one if anyone is ever down there: https://realcitytours.com/exotic-fruits-tour/
Not exactly a tour guide kind of thing but I also like to rent a motorcycle and have someone local lead a ride. Sometimes I like to just get lost in a new place on a motorcycle but other times it's nice to have someone who knows the good roads to just show you.
In a related vein, my wife and I have hosted students from overseas and the pleasure as we derived from those experiences was further enriched by visiting their countries and enjoying be squired around by people who were anxious to show us as good a time as we had provided them. We toured the Netherlands and Slovakia this way, and my wife spent several days in Istanbul being shown around by two students we had hosted and was generously feted by their families. Obviously you can't find a link to these "services" on the Google machine, but if you have the chance to host people from abroad, it provides a great experience on both ends.
Totally agree with this!
After moving to Prague a while back, on a whim, I decided to take a couple of pay-what-you-feel-like small group tours offered by a little three person company, and I couldn’t believe how fun it was and how much it grounded me in the city.
I’ve since hired them to do private tours when friends and family come to visit, and it’s always a great memory maker.
If you are coming to Prague, check out 100 Spires City Tours. They have a smart and funny YouTube channel too (“Real Prague Guides”). Three hours for about 100 Euros. Totally worth it.
I lived in Prague from 2014-18, and I love those tour guides! The Honest Guide’s videos are terrific! If the Naked Guide is still doing tours, I highly recommend him too. I took his Operation Anthropoid tour when he was still developing it, and it was really powerful and informative.
Thanks, Mari! Not familiar with Naked Guide, but I've watched the Honest Guide videos for years. They have quite a following. The Operation Anthropoid tour sounds interesting!
Such a cool city!
I once went on a free walking tour of Annapolis with a costumed guide who was a former heart surgeon. He explained that in the 19th and 18th centuries, men in tights would present their calf as a flirtatious gesture. So now whenever my husband points his toe and extends his ankle, I know he's down to clown or ready to jig. Either way we're about to have a good time.
Once again, got a great cackle out of this.
Insert Dall-E illustration of Rick Steves smoking a giant doobie and saying “When You’re a Tourist, Be A Tourist!” here.
To this point, I’m going to Brooklyn for a wedding in a few months and wouldn’t mind recommendations? Staying at a hotel in downtown Brooklyn. I’ve done most of the affordable Manhattan stuff as well as going to the Museum of the Moving Picture and the Brooklyn Museum, walking the bridge, etc. I’m tempted to mostly just walk around and eat and drink, but is there something big I’m missing?
Go to Park Slope and see if you can spot Freddie😄.
😂
You can go from your downtown BK hotel to DUMBO and then walk up the hill, along the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, then cut slightly west to Clinton or Court and explore the Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens (great Italian American neighborhood — get some fresh mozzarella at Caputo’s) and then down into Red Hook. It’s a great walk. A couple hours maybe. A slice of Brooklyn.
My mom's a tour guide! Hire Elka Ganeva. (seriously tho the amount of shit she and her tour guide friends know is nuts. Basically, it's very smart, curious people who can't sit still and this is the only work for them) Definite recommend.
But where?
Where does she work, Tana?
Also, those double-decker style bus tours are underrated. I was always kind of disdainful of the concept until I took my senior citizen dad to Rome (a city I know well) and we took a bus tour. It’s a great way to get a sense of a city’s geography when you first get there. A few years later we did a bus tour of NYC (I lived there almost 20 years at that point) - in a few hours you can get a sense of the city, which makes it seem less overwhelming when you don’t know a place well.
Downside is they tend to be pretty expensive.
Yes, especially for people with limited mobility
Yes! Thank you for mentioning people with limited mobility. My daughter is disabled, and we have taken bus tours so she can see more of the places we visit. Horse-and-carriage tours are also a lovely way for seniors and people with disabilities to enjoy a city.
And especially if a city has poor or confusing public transit. Those hop on and hop off bus tours are great for getting around and way cheaper than taking cabs around.
Boat tours, as well! The best architecture tour in Chicago (well, okay, it's the only one I've been on but it's REALLY good) travels down the river. It's fantastic and the seating is very comfortable.
My college offered this tour during orientation week--it was amazing!
I’ve been on one of those - it was really great!
There's a great documentary called "The Cruise" about this guy who gives really interesting bus tours of NYC. He's a bit eccentric, but really good at his job. Also Freddie did a great video walking tour of Prospect Park awhile back. Rick Steves of Brooklyn, maybe?
Not just a great documentary. Arguably one of the greatest character study documentaries of all time.
Yeah, it’s a tremendous film. I love those “fly on the wall”type character studies. Directed by Bennett Miller. I think it’s on YouTube but I’m not sure how to link it. Anyway, it’s well worth a watch.
Yes, there is a hop on hop off trolley tour of Boston, too. My Grammy has bad knees and this one made it possible for her to really see the city.
Food tours are also fun.
I strongly support your “be a tourist” advice and this advice is on balance right certainly, but I must admit to some Tour Guide Anxiety. It’s true that maybe 3 of every 4 tours I’ve been on in my life have been fun or interesting, but it’s so brutal to be stuck with someone annoying or extremely boring for hours and hours.
If a guide or tour is bad/boring, can't you just leave? Ignore sunk costs!
Impossible! As a meek and non-confrontational person, it's usually too small a group to leave unnoticed. And as a boring person myself, I never like rubbing anyone's face in the fact that they're uninteresting.
🏅
The best tour guides I've had were basically a college professor, stand-up-comedian, customer service rep, Yelp database, fitness instructor, and clinical psychologist all in one.
I’m always shocked by how well their bits work. Was it just like 6 months of constantly trying out new material?
That's how all comedy is developed!
I know... but most comedians stink and these guys and girls aren't even comedians! I guess it's partially that everyone's in a good mood and on vacation.
We just need for comedy to be vetted more carefully so fewer groups are offended. Then it will be funnier
I have lived overseas for the past eight years, in two countries, and I endorse this post. Tour guides not only share information with us, but they open us up to the kinds of conversations and insights that you won’t get by just reading a guidebook.
Here’s just one of many examples: Several years ago, when we were visiting Dubrovnik, we booked a tour of Mostar. The tour began with a two-hour car ride with a private driver. He took us through the Serbian part of the country so we could see the differences in architecture, grave markers, and food (we stopped for a snack). Once we got to Mostar, our tour began with a lesson on the authentic way to drink Bosnian coffee in the roastery owned by the guide’s family (miraculously, it survived the war). We then walked around the city and were able to see history as it was still expressed on the scarred buildings and in the mass grave in the center of town. Our guide and her family survived the war, and she shared personal stories with us. Our daughter, greatly moved, hugged her and said she was sorry. Our last stop was lunch, and our guide recommended Bosnian specialties we could try. We finished out the day with an hour on our own, where we enjoyed more typical Mostar sights like those guys who jump off the famous bridge and plunge 60 feet down to the river.
Our driver took us back to Dubrovnik along the coast and pointed out how we crossed borders five times during the two-hour drive, to make it clear how (literally) Balkanized that part of the world is.
All this for about $250! Tour guides help you to a deeper understanding of their home and give you the chance for authentic connections.
Yes tour guides add so much to a visit. We hired three in Rome. One for the Vatican, one for The Palatine, one for Borghese Gardens.
Man, I'm the opposite. Never, ever do tours. I advise against them. And I speak as someone who is a great tour guide! I find them exhausting and irritating. I have no problem looking like a tourist.
I travel by myself. A lot. The only person in my entire life I enjoyed traveling with was my son, who was my regular traveling companion from his birth until our last big trip,a cross-country road trip, the year he graduated. When he went off into the world, I've done even more travelling, loved it all, but am much happier finding what interests me and hunting it down. Google is great that way.
So true! It's always worth it to spring for the small group tour -- as opposed to a larger group. We've had some great ones over the years. I wish I could remember the contact info for our Istanbul guide I could share with this group.
The first thing I did when I visited and studied for school in Belfast was take a bus tour, which helped familiarized me with the city layout and the broad strokes of the population and culture. The second thing I did was take a few cabs around town so I could talk to some locals about their life in the city. Best crash course you can get somewhere new, if you know the language!
If you ever get the chance, the tour guides at Gettysburg battlefield are insanely well versed in every aspect of the battle. Didactic af.
Fair enough, but read the old Joe Queenan sendup of Civil War reenactors in Spy Magazine archives
I went to Medellin on vacation once and a friend of mine recommended that I take a guided tour of the local fruit market. That was something I would never had considered otherwise and it was fantastic. I tried about 10 or so fruits I had never heard of before. I certainly would never had tried a bunch of random fruit at a giant market on my own. It was this one if anyone is ever down there: https://realcitytours.com/exotic-fruits-tour/
Not exactly a tour guide kind of thing but I also like to rent a motorcycle and have someone local lead a ride. Sometimes I like to just get lost in a new place on a motorcycle but other times it's nice to have someone who knows the good roads to just show you.
In a related vein, my wife and I have hosted students from overseas and the pleasure as we derived from those experiences was further enriched by visiting their countries and enjoying be squired around by people who were anxious to show us as good a time as we had provided them. We toured the Netherlands and Slovakia this way, and my wife spent several days in Istanbul being shown around by two students we had hosted and was generously feted by their families. Obviously you can't find a link to these "services" on the Google machine, but if you have the chance to host people from abroad, it provides a great experience on both ends.