We traveled on our own but were guided by others during our 6-week trip in the Balkans and elsewhere, from which we just returned home.

In Slovenia, a local professor showed us around the capital, Ljubljana. That’s her, Nina, in the red shirt. 

In Zagreb, Croatia, we received an excellent tour from a lifelong resident, Mirjana, wearing the white hat.

We learned about Split, Croatia, from Roko, top photo, a guide whose family has lived there for generations. In Dubrovnik, our guide was Marko, who you see holding a notebook filled with maps and historical photos he showed us. Like Roko, he said Croatian guides work hard during the busy summer season, then relax during the winter.

As I’ve written previously, we’re fans of free walking tours, which have become available worldwide. We usually book them for our first full day in a city, to get oriented and learn about local history and culture. The guides work for tips, so are motivated to be enthusiastic and helpful. With few exceptions, the ones we’ve used have been excellent.

A group’s size is unpredictable. We were Nina’s only customers in Ljubljana, and also with our guide in Durrës, Albania, the port town where we spent a day before sailing overnight by ferry to Italy. After we landed in Bari and dropped off our bags, we got some fresh pasticciotto at a bakery, then took a walking tour that included more than twenty people.

We’ve also traveled with more traditional guides, such as Ana, an Albanian woman who led the two of us and five Brazilian guys during our driving tour of the Balkans. That’s her in the black outfit at a historic castle in Krujë, Albania.

Our final guide, in Frankfurt, was Haotong, who shared his perspective on growing up there in a Chinese immigrant family. In turn, Haotong was interested to learn about our Asian-American marriage and about my mother’s flight from Nazi Germany as a girl. Conversations like these are as memorable as any of the sights we see.

We’ve used several of the big companies that offer these tours, such as Guru Walk and Sandemans, as well as local companies. We research them online, find a tour that matches our schedule, then book a reservation. They respond with instructions about where to go and what to expect. They send reminders before the tour and, if necessary, let us cancel without a problem. That’s what we did in Naples, where we opted instead for a free Rick Steves audio tour I’d downloaded. We also used Rick’s excellent audio tours in Rome and Florence.

Free walking tours are helpful in another way, too. When we’re figuring out where to stay in a city, we check where the tours start, then seek lodging nearby. That puts us close to major attractions even if we don’t take the tour.

We always tip the guides and post good reviews. After all, they work hard and provide a great service. Are they really “free”? Well, not exactly, but when it comes to learning about the places we travel, “not exactly” is working just fine for us.