Features

Frequent traveller: Street walking

29 Feb 2012 by BusinessTraveller

In which our correspondent finds her passion for exploring on two feet can lead her in the wrong direction...

Most of my life involves sitting down. I work sitting down, I travel in planes, trains, taxis and my own car sitting down, and I relax sitting down. In fact, the only time I’m not sitting down, I’m lying down. Maybe that’s why whenever half an opportunity presents itself, I go for a walk.

In a new city, it’s the best way to find your bearings, work out how everything slots together and, if you’re lucky, find a gem of a restaurant or shop to pop back to between meetings.

There are many obstacles in the way, however, and I don’t just mean doors. Whenever I ask the hotel receptionist for a map, they try to call me a cab. In Paris recently, one well-meaning staff member told me it would take a good 40 minutes to reach the Champs-Elysées, and wouldn’t a taxi be preferable? Little over a quarter of an hour later I was looking down the broad boulevard from the Arc du Triomphe, smug as you like and with one less receipt to put through expenses. And I’ve got short legs.

In New York last year, I woke early and chose to cover the 15 blocks to my first meeting on foot. When I told my associate how I’d got there, she simply saw it as another example of British eccentricity as well as understated boasting. She was right about the second bit, but walking has to be preferable to New York cabs, with their shiny, slithery seats, or the Uptown/Downtown maze that is the Big Apple’s metro system.

Some cities are just made for walking. Vancouver – an easy-to-navigate grid system with stunning water and mountain views only ever a short stroll away; Boston, with its beautiful brownstones and extensive parkland and waterside; Dublin – compact and quirky with buskers and pubs galore for a little pitstop; even London with its several villages, all with their own character. Why get around any other way when you can soak up the ambience and feel like a native?

Pic: Ben Southan

It must be admitted, however, that other places I’ve visited are not so great for getting out on two feet. In Los Angeles, two minutes out of the hotel, a police car pulled up beside me and the officer enquired if I was alright. Clearly, I must have either broken down or become disorientated to be using the sidewalk. In Atlanta after supper, I strolled out of the hotel, was accosted by three panhandlers in as many minutes and beat a hasty retreat to the bar.

Most of the Gulf isn’t up to much when it comes to walking either – although Doha’s Corniche is a pure pleasure before the heat comes (spring or autumn). Then there’s personal safety. Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg – none of them are really places for a clear-the-mind stroll, handbag on person (mine’s a Mulberry, too, so there’s no way I’m going anywhere). In Rio once, walking home by Ipanema beach, I even found myself amidst an armed police standoff. To say I picked up my pace was an understatement. 

Looking ahead to this year’s travels, I already know that the cities I am most excited about visiting are those I imagine will be good for exploring on foot. An early morning stride out before breakfast, an hour between meetings, a postprandial stroll after supper. Sunrise on Lake Léman in Geneva, the French Concession in Shanghai, Nevsky Prospekt in St Petersburg, the Tiergarten in Berlin or, a personal favourite, the English Garden in Munich.

You can even walk in Hong Kong, through the covered walkways above the traffic, in air-conditioned comfort during the height of summer. The many wrong turns make it a peculiar form of exploration but a safe one.

Still, don’t get too cocky. In Sorrento on holiday last year, I decided it would be a good idea to take the coastal road to a well-regarded restaurant just outside town – I could take in the views while the sun set over the water, I reasoned. Well, it looked like it was just outside town. The best part of an hour later, the sun was well and truly gone, and so was the pavement, but the hairpin bends were getting ever hairier, the cars ever faster, and the cliff-side drop ever steeper. Now that was one time I sprinted into the nearest hotel and begged the receptionist for a cab.

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