5 approaches to exploring a new city
Posted in Asia, Syria on March 13th, 2010 by Andy Jarosz – 10 Comments‘How do you eat yours?’ So asks the successful ad campaign for Cadbury’s (or should that be Kraft’s?) Creme Eggs. The point being that faced with eating the same egg shaped piece of chocolate, people will adopt a disturbing diversity of approaches to the task.
And surely the same observation applies to visiting a new city. You arrive at your accommodation and drop your bags. The day is still young and it’s time to explore. What is your strategy? Here are just a few of the most obvious approaches. Maybe you fit into one of these. Or maybe there’s a big group I’ve missed out entirely?
1. The military general. The map is pulled out in the hotel and double checked. A series of points have been carefully marked out, and a line drawn to join the dots. You know exactly where you’ll go and what you want to see, and you will follow this route come hell or high water. You have even chosen a place where you will eat, and know the time at which you will reach this spot. Reservations booked of course.
2. The bar hopper. You have the names of the favourite hang-outs as listed in your guidebook, and you immediately head for these watering holes. You’ll step out for some fresh air and visit the nearby sights if you have time, but if the craic is good then what’s the point? It’s the people who make a place memorable and you’re surrounded by a great crowd already, so why leave?
3. The tourist in denial. You have read the many stories warning you not to look like a tourist. So you have your map, but you never look at it in public, only letting it see the light of day when safely locked in a toilet cubicle. You won’t ask for directions in case people pick up that you’re not from round these parts and cart you away to be slayed as a human sacrifice. So you go from memory, having studied the map in detail before you left, and rely on frequent trips to the bathroom to recheck your coordinates.
4. The fearless wanderer. Not for you the predictability of a map or a guidebook. You’re straight into the heart of the action, and the smells and sights will guide you on your way. You don’t care if you won’t see the must-see sights. Within an hour you’ll be deeply engrossed in a conversation with local people, sharing photos of your family and being invited to eat the insides of a goat that will be slaughtered in your honour at a mountain cabin.
5. The useless planner. You want to be organised, and you’ve spent ages reading the guide books and studying the maps. You set off with a strong idea of what you want to see and how you are going to get there. And then it all goes wrong. You get distracted by a food stall that serves something you can’t resist, and then you get lost and end up somewhere you shouldn’t be. When you get out your map you realise you’re miles from where you thought you were, and you end up looking at glum suburbs and getting back to your lodgings exhausted and having seen little of what you’d planned.
I suspect we can identify a little of ourselves in many of these styles. For myself I would have to confess to fitting mostly into the last category. I don’t know why I bother planning. Last year we arrived in Damascus and as we were staying less than a mile from the Old City I decided to leave the guide book in the hotel and just make our way there and explore the narrow lanes and the souk. We spent over an hour wandering a series of narrow lanes, thinking that it really wasn’t that nice and wondering why there were no tourists. It eventually clicked that we were in the wrong part of the city altogether! Thankfully we had three more days to find the real Old City…

















