We almost turned back from the Great Wall of China — one of the world’s most famous must-see attractions. Not because we had changed our minds, and not because of bad weather or a closed entrance. We had simply failed to check properly how we would get up there. Csaba is afraid of heights, and the first option we found was a completely open chairlift. Standing there, looking at it, we seriously considered giving up on one of the most famous sights in the world. Fortunately, we kept looking and found a more enclosed way up that Csaba could manage.
We thought the problem was solved. Once on the Wall, however, it was my turn to face something we hadn’t anticipated. My mobility is somewhat limited, especially when it comes to steep or unusually high steps, and some sections of the Wall were much more challenging for me than we had expected.
We managed, and we are very glad we did. But today we would research the whole experience before arriving — not to find reasons not to go, but to know our options before we have to make the decision standing at the entrance.
That experience changed something about the way we plan our travels. We still love famous places, but these days, must-see attractions don’t automatically make it onto our itinerary. Instead, we ask a simple question: must-see for whom?
Almost every destination comes with an unofficial checklist. Rome has one, Paris has one, and Dubai, Barcelona and New York have theirs. Search for things to do and the language quickly becomes familiar: essential, unmissable, bucket-list, must-see.
Guidebooks repeat famous attractions because travellers expect them. Tourism boards promote signature landmarks, social media rewards places that are instantly recognisable, and travel websites — including ours — add another layer of recommendations.
None of this means the recommendations are wrong. The Colosseum really is extraordinary, the Sagrada Família deserves its reputation, and the Grand Canyon hardly needs marketing. But somewhere along the way, famous and essential can begin to sound like the same thing. They aren’t.
Nobody forces us to visit these places, yet skipping one can feel strangely wrong. Return from Paris without going up the Eiffel Tower and someone will probably ask, “You were there and you didn’t go?”
Sometimes we stop choosing experiences and start collecting proof that we visited a destination properly. The problem begins when “I want to see it” becomes “I suppose I have to see it.”
A place can be historically important, architecturally extraordinary and loved by millions — and still not deserve half a day of your trip. We have learned to separate two questions: Is this an interesting or important place? And is this how we want to spend our time?
Someone fascinated by engineering may happily spend hours inside a car factory, while a football supporter may consider a stadium tour the highlight of a city break. Their partners may have very different ideas, and neither is travelling incorrectly.
A good itinerary should reflect the people actually taking the trip. It shouldn’t feel like preparation for an imaginary examination at the end of the holiday.
Admission prices are easy to compare, but time is harder. We learned that very clearly at Beijing’s Forbidden City. We expected a queue, but certainly did not expect to spend almost three hours waiting in the blazing sun before getting inside.
By then, turning back hardly felt like an option, and at one point simply getting out of the queue was difficult. Was the Forbidden City worth seeing? For us, yes. We would have regretted missing it.
But those three hours were part of the price. The wait changed the rest of our plans, left us far more tired than expected and took time we could have spent somewhere else.
That is the cost that never appears beside the ticket price. Transport, queues, security checks and timed entry can turn a seemingly short attraction into a half-day commitment. On a three-day city break, four hours is expensive, so it is worth spending those hours deliberately.
Beautiful travel photographs show us what we will see, but they rarely show us what seeing it requires. The photograph shows the monument but not the queue, the viewpoint but not the climb, and the historic centre but not the cobblestones.
None of these things makes an attraction bad, but they are part of the experience. So now we try to research more than the attraction itself: how we get there, how much walking is involved, whether there are difficult stairs or terrain, how crowded it becomes, whether we need to book ahead, whether alternative routes exist and whether there is somewhere to sit. Official visitor information can reveal options you might otherwise miss — exactly as we discovered at the Great Wall.
Accessibility matters here too. An accessibility symbol tells only part of the story; what matters is whether the actual journey from the entrance to the places we want to see works for us. This is also why we look beyond simple “accessible/not accessible” labels in our Wheelchair Accessible Travel guides.
When accessibility or mobility could affect a visit, it is always worth checking the attraction’s current official information before travelling. Conditions, routes and available assistance can change, and individual needs are different.
Good planning isn’t about eliminating every surprise. It is about avoiding the surprises that could unnecessarily spoil an experience.
You can visit Paris without going up the Eiffel Tower, and you can go up twice if it genuinely excites you. The point isn’t to reject famous attractions because they are popular, because that’s just another way of letting other people dictate how we travel.
The point is to choose them deliberately. There is a big difference between standing somewhere because you have dreamed of seeing it for twenty years and standing there because an online list told you that you should.
Sometimes, absolutely. There are famous places that exceed their reputation, experiences worth booking months ahead and sights we would happily visit again.
But must-see is not a verdict. For us, it has become a reason to investigate: what will we actually experience, how much of our limited time will it take, is it practical for us, and what will we give up to make room for it? Most importantly, we ask ourselves whether we actually want to go. Because there is no universal must-see — there is only what is worth seeing to you.
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