this week's tip | use all five senses for the best travel experience

at Hyde Park, Sydney

To get back into the swing of dishing out advice, I thought I'd recommence my weekly tip segment with a topic I'm almost a pro at: travel.  This particular tip comes from the bottom of my heart because I sincerely believe you will make the most out of every place you visit if you take it (and it's simple): walk, don't drive. 

When you walk around, all five of your senses are engaged in the experience, allowing you to get the most out of it and cement it in your memory.  Driving past, through or over famous landmarks will never give you the same feel as if you walk them!  When you're out there amongst it all is when you get the chance to hear and smell the city and its vibe.  You feel the ground beneath your feet and the air as it grazes your skin.  You are free to pause for as long as you like to admire or photograph something you see.  And there's always a much greater chance of stopping along the way to touch artifacts and taste local snacks or drinks!

To me, driving through a place is almost like watching it on TV.  Sure, you see the landmarks just fine and can take a snapshot, but trust me: without smelling, hearing, tasting and touching things along the way, you're getting hardly anything out of your visit.  And you'll forget it all anyway!  Luckily Will, who used to be a drive-by-er, has come around to my way of travelling :) Now whenever we visit somewhere new, we look for a hotel in a central location, drop our things off and go exploring on foot.
Without walking around places, we never would have experienced so many of the wonderful memories we've made, like when we:

• discovered the piano player in Manhattan's Washington Square Park
• got spontaneous upper lobe piercings in Queensland's Surfer's Paradise
• stumbled across an Hounfour that spooked us out of our brains in New Orleans!
• rescued a sea turtle on the Great Barrier Reef...

Just to name a few!  

pushing my luck in New York's East Village

meeting the locals at German Festival, Mt Tamborine QLD