This blog post will tell you what you need to know to make a city trip as cheap and efficient as possible. That means you won’t be bathing in luxury, but you’ll enjoy the city as much as possible with the least possible amount of money.
First things first. You’ll need a flight, hotel & transfer. We wrote a blog post How to book a cheap city trip, so we won’t repeat that information here 🙂
Free walking tour
When we do a city trip we stay more or less 4 days. That gives us plenty of time to explore the city at our own pace. We both love knowing the history of a city, that’s why we always do a ‘free walking tour’ on the first or second day of our arrival.
That way we have a good understanding of how the city is built and is lived in throughout the centuries. The last 2 or 3 days give us the possibility to visit certain interesting places that were talked about in the walking tour and intrigued us or to visit some restaurants and bars that the guide recommended.
Foursquare
Besides the advice of the guide we also love to hear (or read 😉 ) other peoples feedback, that’s why we always check the top rated, nearby restaurants on Foursquare. If it’s not a super expensive place we most certainly will try it out!
Google & Google maps
We use Google for 2 main reasons. The first reason is as an add-on to Foursquare. When we find something good on foursquare we Google the place for other reviews or pictures. Why? It’s easier to cheat on 1 platform than 2. The second reason is for Google maps. Our sense of navigation is not that bad, but we can’t say that Google Maps hasn’t saved us a lot of hours of wandering.
PS. Not that wandering around is a bad thing, but sometimes you just want to head to your hostel or hotel to sleep 😉
Tripadvisor
TripAdvisor has been a great source of noteworthy places to visit, eat something or to grab a drink at. They are not only very in depth, they also cover like 99% of the places we’ve visited.
Pokémon Go
As you can read in our blog post How we use Pokémon Go while we travel. We often use Pokémon go when we run out of spots to sightsee. A disadvantage is that you’ll need 3G/4G or wifi.
Eat and shop locally
Not only will you support the local economy by buying local products (in local shops). You will also save quite a lot of money doing so.
These shops don’t need to raise their prices to cover transport or marketing budgets. 😉
Cook yourself
Closely related to the previous. Even if you don’t shop in the small local shops, you can still save a lot of money if you make your own breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Got any tips you’ve found out yourself?
Let us know via the comments below!
[…] you can read in our blog post How to save money during your city trip, we almost always do a ‘free walking tour’ on our first or second day of the city trip. […]