About

I remember taking trips to visit National Parks when I was younger. These trips consisted of a whirlwind drive from state to state. Stopping briefly at a park and seeing the highlighted attraction, then hitting the road to the next. This, of course, was always done during peak tourist season. Each attraction packed with tourists standing shoulder to shoulder, all waiting hours to get the same photo.

Taking my first trip to Europe, I did nothing to break that style of vacation planning. I wanted to squeeze in every city I had dreamed of seeing. I ended up seeing four major cities in 10 days. When I returned, I was exhausted and had little to show for it except the long waits trying to get into an attraction, at an airport or train station, and dragging luggage around from place to place.  

That trip led to some drastic changes in how I took future trips. I decided to take longer trips and visit fewer locations. 

I visited major tourist attractions during the off-season and spent the peak season in less visited places. I pieced together my vacation instead of buying a package or using a travel agency. I soon found myself having much more fun doing the things I wanted, spending less money, and making lifelong friends.

I connected with like-minded people, and we planned trips together, making it even more enjoyable and fulfilling.  

Since then, I have helped family and friends plan similar trips. By doing this, I realized I wasn’t alone in being unsatisfied with the usual way of traveling. So to help reach more people, I and a few others decided to band together and offer our style of travel to the world.

We have traveled extensively, spending several weeks on multiple trips each year. We have, at times, even lived in some of the top destination cities in the world. 

We hope to provide you with an alternative way to spend your vacation time. You worked hard for that time off. We want to help you get maximum value out of it by giving you a fresh perspective on travel.

Guiding Principles

Trip Length

If the trip is across an ocean, the minimum time is two weeks. Four weeks is preferred, and never do less than two weeks unless it’s to visit family or friends for a holiday. Most trips consist of five or six weeks. Many people can’t go away for those lengths, but two weeks should be achievable by nearly everyone. When your situation changes later in life, you can start extending your trips to four or even more weeks.  

Depending on where you live, some of you may need to adapt this. The principle is not to spend ten hours flying somewhere for a 10-day trip. That leaves you spending much of your vacation on a plane. 

How to Travel

Travel on the shoulder-season or even during the off-season. However, if you travel during peak season, plan to spend most of your time away from popular tourist destinations.

Don’t cram too many destinations into one trip. I don’t get excited when I hear someone bragging about seeing four cities on a whirlwind 10-day European tour. That is not my idea of a relaxing and fulfilling vacation. On the contrary, it sounds more like vacation hell.

Instead, plan on one week per location with a few days carved out for visiting a more touristy area or two. For example, for a 4-week vacation, fly into city A and spend one or two nights. Then move on to the first area you want to explore and spend six nights. Then do the same for the following 3 locations. Finally, spend 1 or 2 nights in city B before flying home.

Following this advice gives you plenty of time to visit an area and relax. You meet locals and other like-minded travelers. You stumble into things you never knew about but end up being one of the trip’s highlights. It allows you some spontaneity to take advantage of a fantastic opportunity that falls into your lap.

Blending In

Learn the language. You don’t need fluency, but having even a few dozen essential words you expect to use greatly benefits you. We will be covering the techniques we use to acquire a new language rapidly. It goes over a basic method and a more advanced method.

Learning at least some of the language is essential to making local friends and getting around outside the more touristy areas where English speakers can become rare.

Getting Around

Take advantage of open-jaw flights. An open-jaw flight is where you fly in and out of different airports. An open-jaw flight prevents you from revisiting a city, but sometimes it may work best to circle back to where you began.

Rent a car for at least part of the trip. You can then look for those diamonds in the rough rentals, with scenic views and short drives to nearby attractions. We will cover the ins and outs of car rentals in each country we highlight.

Room and Board

Use hotels for short one or two-night stays. Take advantage of home rentals for four or more nights. Using home rentals outside of major tourist spots can save you serious money. They also allow you to prepare some of your meals at home. We prefer to pick up some local meats, cheeses, bread, and fresh fruits to keep at our rental.

Eating out can be a significant part of your expenses. To help save, you can take advantage of having a full kitchen in a rental home to pack some lunches or make some late dinners. In addition, getting local street food and eating in smaller local family-owned diners can save you money while enjoying the local cuisine.

In the Future

Our content will cover budget-saving tips and tricks, but we will also recommend some more pricey options. We prefer to save where we can and spend where it matters the most. Therefore, we blend our approach, sometimes paying less for an entire week’s stay at a home rental than we did per night at a luxury property.

Ideally, our content will focus on a one-week stay in the target city or region. Then, more content will follow with suggestions and detail for specific topics like where to eat or stay. You can use several of these to create a vacation that excites you. 

Occasionally we will post content to update services we use to book trips or travel-related products we find helpful. Affiliate links will be identified and using them costs you nothing, but helps us keep the lights on at No Tourists Here.

Example Itineraries

An example trip to Italy for four weeks could look like this:

1. Fly into Napoli and stay for three nights.
2. Get a rental car and head to Ostuni for a six-night stay in a home rental. 
3. Next is a six-night stay in Lecce.
4. Then, Drive to the Amalfi Coast for a six-night stay in Furore.
5. Finally, head to Rome, and turn in the rental car, ending the trip with a six-night stay.

An itinerary like this will let you visit a large portion of Southern Italy, spending a significant part outside the areas overwhelmed with tourists.

Timing this trip so that it begins at the end of the peak season and finishes in Rome just after the peak season will allow you to avoid the tourist crush altogether.

When making a shorter two-week trip, we concentrate on visiting one region and bookend it with short stays in two cities. For example, you could fly into Florence for a 3-night stay. Then take a rental car to a seven-night home rental in the Tuscan countryside. Spend time visiting small towns like San Gimignano and discovering new wineries. Finally, end your trip with a drive to Rome, turn in your rental car, and enjoy a four-night stay.

Closing thoughts

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.

– Paul Theroux

We hope you find the information here useful and if you do please leave a comment below the post. Everyone makes mistakes and we are no exception, if you find one or have some constructive criticism please leave a comment.