Free city tours

The family of free walking city tours around the world is growing constantly. The list reached 91 and I am sure there may be more that we don’t know of. The latest editions come from three different continents – Seattle Free Tours, Free Tour Seoul and Cape Town Free Tours. Some of these tours are daily, some happen couple of days per week, while others run only on special occasions like the San Fermín Free Tour during the festivities in Pamplona in Spain.

Why would you join a “free” city tours and where’s the catch?

There’s no catch. Most of the tours are led by enthusiastic guides that love their cities. It’s mostly locals with very good English. As you can imagine, they know a lot more than guide books and are not afraid to share a personal insight or a secret story. The guides usually try to make the tour fun, not just history but entertainment without being shallow. The tour is usually every day (sometimes even twice a day), at a fixed time, no reservation required, you just have to show up. The groups at a free tour are usually incredibly mixed – you can meet travellers from 6 different continents. In general, a free tour is an awesome start for the city – the guides can give you a lot of recommendations after the tour.

Did you know that we also expanded and now offer free guided walking tours in Plovdiv and Varna as well?

Last one is seasonal and runs only by request during the winter but the tour in Plovdiv is going every day at 2PM. Not surprising, guests love these tours and give them each 5 stars on TripAdvisor.

There’s actually a lot of positive change in tourism in Bulgaria since we started with the first Free Sofia Tour back in 2010. There are now free biking and hiking tours with Sofia Green Tour, the guys at the New Sofia Pub Crawl started showing the capital’s nightlife and independent free tours were created in Pleven and Veliko Turnovo. There’s also a regular shuttle bus to Rila Monastery. Attractions in Bulgaria keep popping up with the latest culinary adventure being called Balkan Cooking Class. Stay tuned for more!