… in a post for American Express’s Get Currency blog, Matt Gross — the former New York Times Frugal Traveler columnist who had many fans here at BT — argues that asking locals for advice is often a bad move. He explains:
Locals are just as likely as anyone else to have bad food preferences, poor taste in clothing, and delusional ideas about the places they live in. What’s more, they won’t necessarily understand what you, a visitor to their hometown, really want to get out of your experience. When I was in Ireland last year, I kept asking locals — from hotel clerks to random strangers on the street — where to get some of the interesting Irish cheeses I knew were out there. And those locals kept sending me to Tesco, the British supermarket chain.
Budget Travel has more on this interesting, atypical approach to the conventional wisdom.