5 Ways to Discover the Treasures in your Own Backyard.

• June 16, 2017
  By Marie Jacques-Wingo

The travel bug is something that many of us struggle to tame on a regular basis. If you are like many of the avid travelers that I know and often vacation with, you are planning your next adventure while still on your current adventure; that's just how you satisfy your travel urges.

However, if you have a regular 9 to 5 and you have exhausted your paid time off bucket, or you simply are low on funds, you can still satisfy your travel urge by discovering the treasures in your own back yard in between your next international adventure.

1. Purchase a city pass

Many metropolitan cities offer a City Pass to discover the treasures that city has to offer. Websites like www.citypass.com is a one stop shop for city passes in popular metropolitan cities like Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York, and so on. City passes are jammed packed with some of the most exciting sites for a much lower price than you would pay if you were to visit each of these sites individually. For example, the Atlanta city pass allows you to visit the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coca Cola, the CNN Studio Tours, Zoo Atlanta or Center for Civil Human Rights, and the Fernbank Museum of Natural History or Football Hall of Fame. All of this for a great price of $75 per adult and $ 59.00 per child.

2. Attend a seasonal event

You will be surprised by the sheer number of events that take place in your city or neighboring city. If you are from the Caribbean, many of the major cities with a large Caribbean population host their yearly Caribbean Carnival. In Atlanta, the yearly Caribbean Carnival happens during Memorial Day weekend. In addition to Caribbean carnival, Atlanta is home to many other festivals like the Jazz Festival; the Sweet Auburn Festival; the Dogwood Festival; Free concerts in the park; Pub Crawl; The taste of Atlanta; The taste of Haiti, and the list goes on. A simple Google search will get you started.

3. Purchase a tour

Have you ever heard of the saying, “you learn something new every day”, well that same saying applies to the city you live in. Purchase a tour and discover something about your city you may not have known. You can purchase tours from a local travel agency like Kaje Travel LLC, or your cities visitor center.

4. Visit your local visitors center/Order a visitor’s guide

If you are interested in touring your city but you are not interested in being inundated with the flood of information from a search on the internet, you can always visit your local visitors center. Every city typically has a designated visitors center that is packed with a slew of information to help you discover your city. They have everything from maps, to local publication, restaurants and even local coupons.

5. Be an unofficial tour guide

Nothing screams unofficial tour guide more than having family and friends visiting you from out of town. You can almost guarantee that they are depending on you to take them to the best museums, the best parks, the best restaurants or the best clubs. Throwing yourself into the research of finding ways to impress your out of town visitors can guarantee that you learn a something new about your city that you did not know.

Like Marcel Proust quoted “The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscape but in having new eyes” Sometimes it just takes looking at your city from a touristic eye view to discover that there are many treasures in your own backyard.