Overtourism isn’t new, it’s just taken some destinations time to stop seeing the dollar/euro signs ringing up on tills and start seeing the negative effects of what has often been partly their own doing – e.g. not regulating cruise ship numbers, or campaigns which have attracted the wrong sort of tourists. The first time I remember being shocked by the impact of the ‘wrong sort of tourist’ was in Barcelona during a blog trip to Catalonia in 2012.

Behaving badly in Barcelona
The transformation from the previous time I’d visited Barcelona was extreme. Las Ramblas late night was a stag and hen disaster zone. Waiting in line at an ATM I realised the swaying guy in front wasn’t withdrawing money, he was pissing against the wall. The group of bloggers I was with were mostly Spanish, American, and Canadian. The pissed up folk on Las Ramblas were mainly British. It was an embarrassment.
But, and this is a key point, the only place we’d experienced overtourism of this ilk was on Las Ramblas. We were taken to many other city centre locations where the visitor/local balance wasn’t weighted quite so much in the favour of drunken extranjeros.

Something we spotted shortly after moving to Tenerife was the herd habits of many tourists. A significant amount of people follow the same routes when meandering through towns and cities. In Puerto de la Cruz, the seafront promenade between the old town and the new could be jam-packed whilst one street back was crowd-free. Lots of great little tascas and interesting sights remained unseen by the majority of visitors because they were literally off the beaten trail. It was a piece of information which completely changed how we visited popular tourist destinations.

Drowning in Dubrovnik
I regularly read how Game of Thrones has been responsible for overtourism in the old town of Dubrovnik. I’m sure it has brought more visitors, but Dubrovnik had a serious overtourism problem long before GOT raised its tourism profile even higher. We had an exclusive sneak preview of a GOT tour just after the first series to feature Dubrovnik as Kings Landing was screened. GOT hadn’t become so huge at that point, we hadn’t even watched it and bluffed our way around as our tour guide, who’d been an extra in the series, pointed out key locations from the show.
The entrance to the old town, Pile Gate, was a manic war zone of tourists shipped in from cruise ships. It was a nightmare; moving through being almost impossible. A single organism which suffocated the beautiful, limestone-paved Stradun. However, dink up a narrow side alley and it felt like escaping a straight-jacket.

Huge tour groups are the scourge of many a city; touristic cream cheese disrupting the smooth flow through main arteries. However, they don’t clog up minor ones in the same way, which makes them easy to avoid. Once we know tour group routes we’re on the way to avoiding the worst impacts of overtourism.

A tour group antidote in Venice
Cities suffer from overtourism because they’re so popular. And they’re popular because they’re fabulous places to visit. Venice is a classic example. There is no alternative to Venice. It is stunningly unique and the most romantic city we’ve visited. We only got round to doing so in June last year as the ‘too busy’ tag had put us off for years. But it wasn’t that much different from every popular city we’ve visited. The main attractions were mobbed, and the routes between cruise ship and attractions were clogged. However, there is nowhere which isn’t beautiful in Venice and, again, just by veering off the main drag we strolled many delightful and quiet streets lining gorgeous canals. After dark, once the day-trippers had departed, the city wasn’t busy at all. We stayed in Venice twice, the first time was just off Piazza San Marco. The second was in Dorsoduro where the streets were equally charming… and totally devoid of tour groups.

Frantic Florence
It was similar with Florence. Where Ponte Vecchio and Piazza della Signoria were claustrophobic with people, Oltrarno on the south side of the river delivered the Merchant Ivory vision of Florence we’d hoped for.

Lively Lisbon
Lisbon suffers from overtourism of a different kind. I don’t tend to notice big tour groups in Lisbon as much as in the likes of Venice or Dubrovnik, they’re absorbed more by the city. But Lisbon’s popularity has exploded over the last few years among independent travellers. Airbnb and similar have capitalised on demand for a more ‘local’ experience, subsequently the personalities of some neighbourhoods have changed. There are pros and cons. Some areas which were seriously dilapidated have been invigorated. Others, which oozed local charm by the bucket-load, have had some of their character erased. Like every other popular city, visitors head to the same spots and tread the same routes. We’d never eat along Rua Augusta as it’s a tourist trap, yet its restaurants are packed daily even though there are far better places in the surrounding side streets. There are neighbourhoods where few tourists wander, between Chiado and Belém for example. As it’s another of those European cities where everywhere you meander is interesting, there are still plenty of crowd-free places to explore.

There’s no disputing these, and other cities like them, have a battle on their hands to balance the needs of the local population with that of a transient one. They are cities of joy, which is why so many want to enjoy them. Straying from the well trodden path helps reduce pressure on over-filled pavements, and spreads the love (i.e. money) as well as visitors around more.

That’s what I tell myself anyway, to ease a conscience which is guilty at wanting to visit already oversubscribed destinations.

A factor often connected with satisfaction levels is picking up/dropping off rental cars. The experience, good or bad, doesn’t impact overall on how we view a destination, but it can leave a lasting impression.

Good advice in Milan
The staff at Avis strongly advised, in a friendly ‘this is really for your own good’ way that we take full insurance. When we initially waved the advice away, saying we were used to driving in countless countries they responded with a “this is Italy people drive really badly here, you’ll need it. Trust us.” So we did. Within two days there was a dent in the side of the car, damaged whilst it was minding its own business in a car park beside Lake Garda. Incidentally, the entrance to rental car drop off at Milan is confusing as hell. We managed to find it, just. But over a couple of visits we’ve seen plenty of cars reversing along a busy approach road after they’d overshot the entrance. I hope they’d taken the full insurance option.

Most practical, Munich
Locating a proper supermarket right beside the exit and car rental hall in Munich Airport is inspired planning. You’ve got to love the Germans for this sort of forward thinking. Being able to stock up on wine, water, and snacks at non-airport prices before we set off on a long road journey gets things off to a happy start, especially if arriving quite late… or even early evening. Arriving at 19.00, a drive from the airport to our hotel took a couple of hours, making us too late for the ridiculously early German dinner times, but the snacks we’d picked up at the airport meant there was no hungry gashing of teeth as a result.

No manual drives in Glasgow
Despite having booked a car with a gear stick, Sixt at Glasgow Airport not only informed us they didn’t have the model we’d booked but that nobody drove manual cars there any more. Nobody drives manual in Scotland? Utter bollocks. To be fair, they did offer us an upgrade to a snazzy BMW or a limousine-like pimp car (their words)… both automatic. As neither of us have driven automatics, we didn’t fancy attempting it for the first time in an oversized monster on narrow, winding Highland roads. The only other option was a downgrade (no refund for their error) which we took.

It’s Zadar, but where are we going?
Stepping from the plane to being handed the keys to our hire car at Zadar Airport happened so slickly quickly that we were actually cruising the streets of the Croatian city before we knew where we were heading for. Partially my fault. A distracting party weekend in Hay on Wye immediately before travel combined with a shocker of a night in an airport hotel at Liverpool had meant I hadn’t gotten around to printing off details of our accommodation and couldn’t access the info from my phone. The solution was a prompt introduction to Croatian cafe culture with a quick pause at a cafe with wifi and strong, cerebral cobweb-clearing coffee.

A tale of two airports, Tenerife
Tenerife’s two airports are geographically quite close, but in other ways worlds apart. Tenerife North Airport made Airhop’s top ten best airports list. We wouldn’t argue with that. It’s one of the most relaxing airports we’ve travelled through, and picking up the hire car from CICAR mirrors the general laid back attitude. Newbie arrivals might get a shock encountering a four lane motorway immediately after arrival, but once free of La Laguna’s busy autopista, the drive along the north coast, with Mount Teide providing a stunner of a backdrop, gets the juices of anticipation flowing. Tenerife South is a decent airport, but exudes that homogeneous holiday resort airport vibe. My beef with it is that after a teasing arrival – Montaña Roja looking splendid on the coast – the drive south is through an unattractive landscape which has similarities to builder’s rubble; a poor first impression which isn’t helped by an overdose of naff billboards.

Worst car hire, Fuerteventura
Sticking with the Canary Islands, the most unpleasant car hire experience we’ve had anywhere was on Fuerteventura with Goldcar. It was our first visit to the island and it got off to such a bad start we were predisposed not to like the island after it. It was so bad Andy was moved to write a rant about the experience (I’m usually the ranter). Thankfully our experiences thereafter diluted the bad taste the Goldcar experience had left.

Longest wait, Marseille
Two things stick in my mind about arriving at Marseille Airport. It seemed to take an eternity before we were handed the car keys, the process seemed to take oh-so-much longer than anywhere else. Waiting in a greenhouse of a car rental office when it was 30C plus didn’t help. The other is the runway jutting out into the Etang de Berre lagoon – WOW. For all the fussiness, I like Marseille Airport.

You can’t be serious, Coyhaique
Chile’s Coyhaique Airport is a sweet and friendly big shed of an airport, and one I shall always have very fond memories of thanks to the kindness of the staff there. However, I did exclaim “you can’t be serious?” at one point when returning our Mitsubishi pick-up truck. Over nearly three weeks we’d driven hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres on the (in)famous Carretera Austral without any mishap other than the car wearing a dusty overcoat. The girl responsible for checking the car was returned in a decent state had commented “it’s so dirty I can’t tell if there’s any damage.” To be fair, after my McEnroe outburst the girl laughed and ticked the ‘all okay’ box on her docs.

A stunner of a way to arrive, Lisbon
It can take a long time to get out of Lisbon Airport. But once free of its clutches, if heading south across the Tagus, the experience is unique. After a few minutes you escape the city to cross the Tagus on the Vasco da Gama Bridge, until recently the longest bridge in Europe at just over 17km in length (12km being over water). It is an architectural marvel. Our first experience crossing it included a dreamy sunset of endless pastel bands drifting across the sky, an army of fisherman wading in the mudflats on each side of the bridge, and a flamboyance of flamingos in the wetlands at its southern end.

Bizarre Basel
Although only 3.5km from the Swiss city it’s named after, Basel Airport is in France so is jointly operated by France and Switzerland. The same car hire companies have different branches located in separate areas. Which you use depends on whether you pick up your hire car in France or Switzerland. It isn’t an issue collecting the car, but returning it is a minefield. You can’t leave a French hire car at a Swiss drop off point. If you try, you’ll be directed to the ‘correct’ country even though it’s the same company. Although they share the one building (only a couple of hundred metres separates them as the crow flies), you can’t just drive across the airport from one to the other. Nope, you have to leave the airport, join the motorway and seek out the correct entrance to the other country’s part of the airport. I know this because we got it wrong on a Monday morning when the motorway was gridlocked and the time left for being able to check in was running out. We only managed to catch our flight because a member of Avis’s French staff took pity on us and allowed us to leave our Swiss hire car in a French parking bay.

The joy of travel.

We knew there would be historic cities and beautiful landscapes. But the truth is that we had no idea just how overwhelmingly stunning those landscapes in Croatia would be, or that we would be assaulted by mouth-wide-open views that simply never let up.

Possibly the biggest surprise was Croatian gastronomy. We really didn’t know what to expect. What we found was a culinary tradition that, for us, surpassed areas which normally have travel bloggers salivating over their keyboards (I’m especially thinking Morocco and France).

Croatia had it all, putting it right up there as one of our favourite gastro hike destinations

Walking in Dalmatia – A land of emerald lagoons and flamboyant insects
We’ve enjoyed more challenging walking and more dramatic terrain than we experienced in Croatia. However, often it felt like walking in an unspoilt paradise – a Garden of Eden. I’m not sure how much of a reputation Croatia has as a walking destination but in mostly perfect walking weather in May we rarely met any other hikers.

On Hvar, we strolled through olive groves and past tiny historic hamlets, mysterious stone mounds and fields of wild flowers where the scent of wild orange jasmine was borderline orgasmic. One trail emerged at a small farm by the perfect Adriatic Sea and we were treated to a home grown feast during an afternoon so idyllic, it will take some beating.

On Mljet our routes traversed dreamy lakes and dappled forest paths where a flighty army of butterflies and the most exquisite looking insects I’ve ever seen added explosions of colour to the rich green landscape. At one point we caught a boat to an island within an island. At another we emerged at Roman fort beside a picturesque lakeside town and listened to the woes of a woman tending a goat with anger management issues.

Each walk was full of beauty and interest. There was often a tangible feel of walking in the paths of people from great ancient civilisations.

We’re also big fans of city hiking and Dubrovnik and Zadar offered two destinations that were ripe for exploring on foot. Dubrovnik’s streets can be a bit manic, but an escape to the walls both acted as a breather and stole our breaths away. Captivating Zadar didn’t have the same level of tourists but was the huge surprise of the trip that we would have overlooked completely if wasn’t for the fact that Ryanair made it a cheap option to fly there.

Our memories of all those places are filled with warmth, big smiles and a sense of discovery.

Wining & Dining in Dalmatia
From our first meal in Zadar, a world-beating seafood risotto and sensationally savoury cheesy gnocchi, our tastebuds were whooping with joy throughout our time in Croatia (save for two truly bad meals in Dubrovnik).

We were constantly impressed with the diversity of what was on offer; from light Mediterranean pastas and fish and seafood dishes to rich stews (pasticadas) and herby sausages. Traditional Croatian konobas with rustic designs and cosy courtyards were our favourite places to enjoy a varied cuisine that should keep all palates satisfied. Even the accompaniments to the main dishes scored high marks; creamy polenta instead of potatoes or blitva (Swiss chard, potato and garlic), a seriously tasty side dish that’s good enough to eat on its own.

When it comes to wine, Croatia’s is still a bit overshadowed by other European countries. But it has been a wine producing country since Roman times and the peppery, fruity reds we downed enthusiastically were right up our street, especially the Plavac Mali.
What made Dalmatia and other areas of Croatia a dream destination was the huge generosity and infectious humour of the people who offered us drinks at the slightest opportunity. I’ve lost count of the number of free grappas we were plied with – usually a throat stripping one for me and a softer, sweeter variety for Andy. The grappa highlight was at Konoba Lambik on Hvar where they even had a grappa experimental lab.

We were totally smitten by Croatia; its people, landscapes, towns, cities, food and wine. It was one of those places that had all the ingredients that ring our travelling bell.
It is an extraordinary gastro hike destination and we can’t wait to return to explore, and eat, more.

Jack is co-owner, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to lots of other places. Follow Jack on Google+

Abades is neither picturesque nor a fishing village. It does boast some decent coves and an interesting abandoned leper village, but the place itself is in reality a bland newish housing development on the east coast of Tenerife.

That it made it onto a Lonely Planet list illustrates how some travel lists should be treated with caution.

Some writers despise travel lists, viewing them as lazy travel writing designed to pull in lots of readers with the minimum of effort. However, statistics show people like lists. They’re the tapas of travel writing. In the one sitting you get to experience a taste of many different locations in bite-sized chunks. Plus, importantly, the good ones are very useful when it comes to travel planning.

The sad truth is that many travel lists are virtually useless.

The question is how do readers separate the wheat from chaff?

The bad travel lists

Arbitrary lists:- when it comes to travel lists many are just a random collection of places connected by some tenuous link. Whenever I see the likes of ’10 most picturesque towns in the world’, ’11 best seafood restaurants in Europe’ or ‘the 26 sexiest bars in the Universe’ I skip on to the next article. The bigger the geographical area a list covers, the more likely it is to be arbitrary. Any title falling into this category could also carry the subheading ‘the 12 (insert number of choice) best places that we can think of.’

Clickbait:- clickbait lists are designed to draw people in. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as what you get reeled in to read is worthy. A few years ago lists with numbers that weren’t 10, 5 or even 6 of the best etc. caught the eye because they’d strayed from the standard format. Now lists with titles like ’32 things to do in Latvia’ are so common they’ve become cliched and formulaic – travel writing by random numbers. That’s not to say there aren’t still some clever ones out there. We recently received a press release which included reasons not to visit a hotel in the Far East. These were obviously reasons designed to make people crazy with desire to visit the hotel. It was intelligent, creative and compelling marketing. Most aren’t. Some of the worst are the ’15 places in Europe you’ve never heard of’ type list. I often wonder what someone who lives in one of the ‘places you’ve never heard of’ thinks about that sort of title. It’s dumb. The worst I saw included Dubrovnik and Edinburgh.

Copywriting:- A significant number of travel lists are compiled by people who have never visited the places they include on their lists. It’s standard copywriting. I have nothing but the utmost respect for good copywriters. They are worth their weight in gold to travel companies wanting to perk up brochures and websites etc. The problem for me is when copywritten articles are passed off as experiential travel pieces. That’s simply deception. The main issue though is too much copywriting is badly researched, making lists pointless at best and worse, likely to cause disappointment when locations don’t match glowing recommendations (see Abades at the start). Occasionally they might even be dangerous. A recent ‘copywritten’ travel article I read included information about the difficulty levels of walking routes on Tenerife. The writer came across as being informed in what is a specialist subject, except they’d graded some challenging walking routes as easy and some relatively easy routes as being difficult.

Because it is new:- including places/locations in a travel list just to have a compilation which is ‘different’ is more a habit of the conventional travel press. Publications understandably want a different angle, so writers look for locations, bars, restaurants which aren’t regularly mentioned in travel articles. However, there’s often a vary good reason some locations aren’t regularly referenced in travel writing (see Abades at the start).

It’s been overdone but we’re pretending it hasn’t:- similarly, there are some locations which have been done to death. Cinque Terre in Italy for example. Mostly these locations are gorgeous, but everybody knows about them and subsequently they’re often very busy places. That’s no reason not to visit, but some lists don’t give readers the heads up about it. To coincide with Valentine’s Day, CN Traveler published a list of romantic small towns in Europe. There are delightful towns listed which are definitely worth seeing, and subsequently the likes of Sintra and Hallstatt are massively popular day-tripper destinations. But the article omits this information. In fact it claims Korcula in Croatia is so remote it keeps the pretty little town free of crowds. We couldn’t find a free parking space when we rolled into town.

The good travel lists
For all my griping, I’m a fan of travel lists. Like any person researching a holiday I find them extremely useful for giving me ideas for places to visit and for laying a framework from which to build on. The smaller the focus of a list, the better. So compilations involving individual countries, regions, cities, towns etc. tend to work for me. There are plenty of writers who know locations well enough to compile helpful, insightful and informed lists. Then there are travel publications which take a smart approach to compiling lists. These include those newspapers and magazines who ask writers they know to have extensive knowledge of specific destinations to put forward suggestions for places/locations to be included in their ‘best of’ lists.

The problem, as is so often the case with any aspect of the media these days, is how to tell the good from the bad and the ugly, those which knowingly deceive and simply don’t care. It’s difficult. Normally we’d say the devil is in the detail. Anything with a lack of detail, where there’s no feel of the writer’s personality or personal experience coming through is likely to just be copy, which in itself doesn’t render advice useless.

In the case of travel lists there’s no easy answer when it comes to knowing which you can trust and which you can’t. However, knowing what ingredients constitutes a bad travel list can help.

Right, I’m off to write twenty two and a half reasons why you should visit the most disgusting public toilets in Britain’s industrial cities.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+

But the idea the title is intended to get across is the point. Is there a law which says if we want to be considered discerning travellers we should only eat what is considered ‘local food’ whenever we visit a destination?

Absolutely not.

Take Britain. What is local food there anyway? Steak and kidney pie? Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding? Fish and chips? Haggis, neeps and tatties? Beef rogan josh with basmati rice? Chicken chow mien?

If visitors to the UK want to eat like a local, it could involve any of that lot. If a tourist was getting their gob around a tandoori in Rusholme, Manchester, they’d be eating like a local. Britain is one of those European countries where even smallish towns have restaurants influenced by gastronomy from other parts of the world.

World cuisines becoming staples of a nation’s eating pattern is just one reason why eating in restaurants serving food which doesn’t originally have its roots in that country is still eating like a local. Although, I’ve seen suggestions that traditional British nosh is so bad it needs to be propped up by food from other countries.

Balderdash. Having a diverse gastronomic melting point is a sign of a multicultural society. And that also means a richly varied restaurant scene.

Which brings me neatly to another reason why we regularly sneak in the odd burger and pizza when we find ourselves in different pastures, even though a big part of travel is trying food that is new to us.

Diversity.

In some destinations the menu from one traditional restaurant to another can be interchangeable. Sometimes there may be enough variation on that menu to allow foodies to try something different day after day for a fortnight or more, e.g. Italy, France and the likes of Croatia where a blend of Northern European and Mediterranean influences tends to keep menus interesting. Sometimes that boils down to regions within a country. Costa Brava’s slightly bonkers cuisine continually surprises and delights, yet in other parts we can get bored after a few days. In Spain’s case that’s because we live in Spanish territory, so often traditional menus don’t offer anything particularly new for us. For that reason, in Madrid one night we committed the crime of eschewing the tapas bars around Plaza Santa Ana in favour of a Thai restaurant.

After two weeks of hiking around Bavaria, enjoying hearty German fare nightly, we were more than ready to swap knödels for beefy Bavarian burgers with our frothy bier in Berchtesgaden. In the first few days in Bavaria, even though we’d hiked 20km each day, we put on weight.

Similarly in Corsica, having gorged on filling cheesy beignets and savoury wild boar stews to a point where we were dangerous close to exploding, the occasional pizza or burger acted as a pressure valve.

Then there are places where restaurant menus hardly have enough diversity to offer different choices over the space of a few days let alone longer. We reached being tangined-out very quickly in Marrakesh. Restaurant menus in small towns in Chile’s Aysén region tended to be limited. In both these places there were some excellent and diverse dishes to be savoured, but mainly in the form of home-cooking in riads in Marrakesh and stylish rural lodges in Chile.

Ultimately I’d argue that if food is a major part of a travel experience, you wouldn’t be happy with eating the same thing, or a variation of, night after night for the duration of any visit. Plus, locals eat burgers and pizzas so technically, as long it’s in a restaurant favoured by the resident population, it’s still eating like a local.

Actually, I have eaten burgers in France – a huge, appropriately named Pyrenean burger served with a bucket of French fries in Limoux. It was the only thing left on the menu as they were about to shut… at around 9pm (the downside to dining in France). It was delicious.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+

There’s no arguing the likes of Tenerife and neighbours Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote are all decidedly on the beaten track destinations. But here’s the thing I’ve learned about people who stay ‘on the beaten track’. They don’t stray far from the well worn path at all… even in tourist hots spots.

Zoom in close on what that means and you find that even within any one resort in a popular holiday destination and people generally follow the same track as everyone else. We’re only animals in the end and many people find comfort in staying with the herd.

In the town we live there are the ‘main tourist drags’ – the route the majority of people follow to get from A to B. Take a step away from the crowd and head up a side street to walk along any of the streets running parallel to the main drag and it’s a different scene altogether, often it’s where the more interesting places are to be found.

It’s no different in popular beauty spots. The most visited location on Tenerife is Mount Teide. Thousands of excursionists, independent travellers and locals descend on Teide National Park every day. Most of them stick to the same routine. They stop at the Teleferico cable car to get as close to the summit of Mount Teide as possible without actually having to put a lot of effort into walking, and stray a few steps from coach/car to the viewpoint at the Roques de Garcia.

These are the sort of places which are dismissed by people who crave going off the beaten track. Yet anyone who avoids popular tourist attractions is overlooking one crucial piece of information. To go off the beaten track, even in a massively popular tourist destination, often all you have to do is walk a short distance away from the crowds.

Less than a minute’s walk along a dusty volcanic path and the masses are jettisoned. What’s more, the great bulk of the rest of Teide National Park is devoid of people.

It’s more or less the same everywhere.

It was bedlam where our coach deposited us at Great Wall of China, but after a 15 minute climb of a steep section of the wall, we were virtually alone. Generally people who are on excursions don’t stray far from their coaches.

It’s similar with popular cruise destinations. Dubrovnik is chaotic when the cruise passengers descend in their thousands. At least Dubrovnik old town is. The ‘main drag’ through the historic streets is a chaotic sea of people at peak times of the day. Dubrovnik outside the old town isn’t affected by this mass invasion. Even in the old town, the streets away from the established cruise route are often tranquil places to explore, especially if you time your visit to avoid the cruise invasion.

Carcassonne in Languedoc is another example. One of the most popular tourist attractions in France, the medieval citadel is an tourist magnet to the point we couldn’t wait to escape. But the old ‘new’ town which lies at the feet of the citadel is not without charm. It is, however, free of the coach excursionists who clog the arteries of the citadel.

Wandering through medinas/souks in places that are popular tourist destinations, such as Marrakech, can involve an incessant and exhausting assault of offers of ‘help’. Ducking into historic buildings like ancient palaces or old forts is to escape into a people-free oasis of calm.

Cinque Tierre on the Italian Riviera looks enchanting, but I have no desire to visit after seeing photos of lemmings in human form bloat the picturesque streets. And yet I’m sure the same thing applies there as in the places I’ve mentioned; move away from the established tourist and there will be a different scene.

Living on an island known for mass tourism has taught us it isn’t very difficult at all to escape the crowds.

Going off the beaten track in on the beaten track locations is also immensely satisfying. Popular mass tourism hot spots are the last places many people would look for unique travel experiences.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+

Personally I favour sunsets. There’s one serious problem with sunrise, it happens far too early in the day for my liking. Whereas sunrise gives notice it’s time to leave a cosy cocoon so the working day can start, a sunset is generally a signal for fun to begin.

It feels unnatural to me to drag myself out of bed to watch the sun appear over the horizon, even if it does breath light and colour into the world. Sure it’s the dawn of a new day which might be filled with hope and many wondrous things, but sunsets mark the end of a day. You already know when it’s been a satisfyingly good one and can relax, drink of choice in hand, to enjoy the free light show in the sky.

The cocktail might be known as a tequila sunrise but that’s not when you be sip it, unless you’re seriously hardcore. Sunset bars do a roaring trade but have you ever heard of a sunrise bar? Maybe there’s a niche for a coffee shop with sunrise views.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the early morning vibe when the world is waking up. I cherish rosy memories of whistling milkmen leaving bottles on doorsteps and passing family bakers where the smell of freshly cooked bread could drive you delirious. Where we live now there’s an early morning buzz around the harbour which doesn’t happen at any other time of the day. Little blue boats unload their catch, chefs and abuelas clamour at the fish stall to buy the choicest specimens, old men with cigars clamped between their teeth sit around a table noisily playing dominoes. It’s a scene which makes me feel at one with the world.

But you know what? I prefer to experience it from the night side; heading home at sunrise when the world is waking up. There’s something deliciously decadent about getting to enjoy the dawn chorus before falling into a bed which embraces you with the warmth of an old friend. The other thing about the early morning vibe I enjoy, what’s happening in the sky is only a bit part player.

Sunset is different. Sunset is a performance which requires no great effort to enjoy. A rainbow of colours spreading across the sky can often distract us from what we’re doing. No matter how many spectacular sunsets we see, a good one will drag us outside to stand and stare in awe at the heavens. Sunsets are wonderfully social affairs – all over the world people gather to watch the sun go to bed. I think of sunsets and I visualise enjoying them with other people.

It’s impossible to pick out a favourite place to watch sunsets. That’s the beauty of them, you get wondrous sunsets all across the globe. Zadar in Croatia stands out because it has the longest sunset I’ve ever witnessed. Plus there’s a gimmick there which makes it even more special.

The irony is that although I’ll take a sunset over a sunrise any day of the week, one of the most memorable travel moments I’ve enjoyed to date involved a sunrise; climbing Spain’s highest peak, Mount Teide, in pitch darkness in order to sit with the gods and experience the birth of a brand new day from above the clouds.

That was extra special.

Where sunsets are flamboyant fun, sunrises tend to be more intimate affairs, possibly best enjoyed in the reflective company of your own thoughts.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+

On long walks, taking time out for lunch isn’t always practical and on these occasions we have to make do with a picnic. I love al fresco dining but if I never see another gum-shredding baguette filled with ham and cheese again, it’ll still be a day too soon. There must be a European wide rural hotel guidebook which states ‘if a guest asks for a picnic, it must include a ham and cheese baguette.’ Thankfully, there are exceptions to this rule.

These are some places where we’ve enjoyed some tasty lunches on the trail.

Tabernas on Symi

Hardly hardcore walking, but the trek up the Kali Strata from Symi Town on the Greek sland of Symi to head to one of the island’s many dream beaches can work up a sweat and a thirst. Greek tavernas remain my favourite establishments to while away the time drinking retsina and munching on mezes. The Greek heat, unbelievably turquoise sea, heady aroma of honeysuckle and wild herbs, creamy dips and sweet wine is an intoxicating mix (and not just because of the retsina). These aren’t lunches to be taken mid-walk. Thankfully you can catch a water taxi back to Symi Town.

Picnic in Provence

Sure there are plenty of quaint bistros serving food so good it can elicit involuntary moans of pleasure. But one of the best mid-walk lunches I’ve enjoyed was at a picnic table beside a stream near the moss covered ruins of the Prieuré de Carluc near Rellaine. It was a simple lunch consisting of chunky fresh bread and ripe Banon cheese, melted by the sun’s rays. Simple, but as sweet as the fresh spring water gurgling in the brook beside our table.

Konoba Lambik on Hvar

If an experience exceeded that of losing time in a Greek taverna it was an afternoon at Konoba Lambik on Hvar in Croatia. The walk to reach Konoba Lambik included wild flowers, olive groves, wild boar towers and English aristocracy. All juicy ingredients themselves, but the food and drink, all created, caught and distilled by the owners, erased memories of the walk and replaced them with an extra special experience. It was the first place I’d ever truly appreciated how good artichokes really were, thanks to a life-changing artichoke and broad bean stew.

On the road in the Atlas Mountains

En route to to Tachdirt in the High Atlas Mountains I lay in the sun on a hot wall beside a dusty track whilst our guides washed peppers and tomatoes in a mountain stream, which also provided the water to boil rice and make sweet mint tea. The salad they created was a mish mash of ingredients, including tinned sardines, olives, chopped pork, rice tomatoes, green pepper and red onion with some fresh bread. It tasted as good as any salad I’d eaten in a gourmet restaurant. That dash of al fresco seasoning just can’t be matched indoors.

Mountain Hütte in Salzkammergut, Austria

Austria and Germany’s hinterland is riddled with hüttes, perfectly positioned at some of the most scenic spots on mountain trails. Both countries are as good as anywhere we’ve been for being dependable when it comes to finding somewhere to have lunch mid-walk. The only problem is that many of the dishes on hütte menus are hefty affairs and lie too heavily on my stomach to be taken when there’s still a long way to go. Such was the case above Gosausee in Salzkammergut where, as everyone around us tucked into warming soups, we settled for belegte brote, a type of open-topped sandwich, with speck (cured ham) onions, gherkin and tomato. Another basic dish, but the accompanying views of the snow-capped Dachstein Mountains and a musically clanging cow bell soundtrack raised it way above the average mid-trail sandwich.

Lakeside Hütte in the Black Forest

Rarely have I been so pleased to see a lodge/hütte/taverna/pub as I was to see Vesperstube Unterkrummenhof on the banks of Schluchsee in the Black Forest. Despite having wind-proof gloves and a hat a bear would eye enviously, the icy sleet which stabbed at exposed skin for hours as we’d walked around the large lake had robbed all feeling from fingers, feet and legs. The hütte was warm and welcoming and, despite there being a third of the route still to complete, we pigged out on currywurst and chips. It did exactly what a good hütte/taverna/tasca should do – act as a sanctuary for cold and hungry travellers

Lunch in a Cave in the Canary Islands

One of my favourite walks anywhere is in the Anaga Mountains on Tenerife, a place which is the antithesis of what many people think of when the imagine Tenerife. The route to the cave village of Chinamada is uplifting – ancient laurisilva forest, hamlets and narrow agricultural terraces clinging to hillsides, jagged peaks, tiny hamlets, goats, the odd hen and killer views. The cave village lies halfway along a circular route so perfectly placed for lunch in La Cueva. Ironically, most people choose to eat outside the cave part. The food is basic Canarian with the signature dish being a messy splodge called escaldón (basically stock mixed with gofio flour). I love it because it is the real Tenerife.

Ham and Cheese Overlooking Lake Iseo

Everything tastes fabulous around the Italian Lakes. I can’t recall one mediocre meal. However, we didn’t always meet with success finding places to eat along the trails we walked. On one route we planned to eat in a bar/restaurant halfway along the route. It was shut… for lunch. On the largest lake island in Europe, Monte Isola on Lake Iseo, we were introduced to a classic Italian snack in a nondescript café with a sunny terrace overlooking this most dazzling of lakes; the piadina – basically a flat bread sandwich. I only ordered it because I saw another luncher eating something that perked my interest. They only did one type filling, ham and cheese. I loved it.

Trust the Italians to make even a ham and cheese sandwich seem gastronomically interesting.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+