VisitBritain is the latest tourist board to realize that many travellers are hungry to meet locals and get off the beaten path while travelling. Its Be a Brit Different website includes blog posts from enthusiastic Britons about their favourite places and activities. According to the Modern Agent website, VisitBritain also has a plan to promote […]

Looking for a way to meet folks abroad? One option for adventurous types: couch surfing. It is, as the Christian Science Monitor put it recently, “the universe of social networking itself, simply pushed into the real world.” In a nutshell, travellers hit the CouchSurfing website and make connections with people willing to offer people a […]

OK, this isn’t so much about travelling like a local as it is about deepening your experience as a local in your own town. But I thought it was cool, anyway. The Neighbors Project aims to help people in densely packed urban cores and sprawling suburbs alike get to know the people next door, with […]

Rentalo.com, the vacation home rental giant, has just relaunched its website. The home page is still incredibly busy–woe betide folks (like me, ahem) who find it hard to read tiny fonts–but there are a lot of useful changes. In particular for travellers who like to live “la vida local,” it’s now easier to distinguish vacation […]

Paris’s bike-sharing program, Velib, recently celebrated its first anniversary. By most accounts (such as an article in The Telegraph), the program has been phenomenally successful, with 26 million trips taken in the first year (even though bike theft is also a problem). It’s a great alternative for visitors, as it’s cheaper that the Metro and […]

Heading to Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos? You might be interested in checking out Stay Another Day. This organization gives travellers the chance to meet, work with or stay with local people while supporting environmental and development projects. Opportunities include the chance to tour a handicraft workshop near Angkor Wat in Cambodia and to enjoy a […]

The Vacation Home Expo is coming back to the Cobb Galleria Convention Centre in the Atlanta ‘burbs, from January 23 to 25, 2009. I attended the inaugural show in April 2008 and found it a useful way to gather information on a wide range of vacation home rental companies. Granted, many of the exhibitors were […]

Like-a-Local.com, an Amsterdam-based organization that arranges dinners and tours with locals in several European cities, has added a Madrid shopping expert to its roster. Travellers can sign up for a three-hour customized tour with Tjarda, a Netherlands ex-pat, who focuses on boutiques in Madrid’s gay village. For more, see her Like-a-Local profile.

I suppose I should start by explaining the name of this blog. Well, I wanted to call it “La Vida Local,” to match my website of the same name. Unfortunately, that name was already taken. So I revived a name I’d considered years ago for another blog. “Facing the street” is my short way of […]