Where to Wander: How to Explore Safely While Traveling

Not every ‘bad’ neighborhood is as dangerous as its reputation suggests, and a few precautions can create space for great memories.
Where to Wander: How to Explore Safely While Traveling
Oia, Greece, is a popular cliffside village, but visitors need to be wary of slippery pathways and pickpocketing. Oleh_Slobodeniuk/Getty Images
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Frequent travelers have all heard it before: That city is a beautiful, wonderful place filled with magnificent treasures, but don’t venture into that neighborhood. Especially after dark.

This kind of advice is entirely well-intentioned and has certainly kept me out of trouble in many situations. But here’s the thing: I’ve found some of my very best travel tales on the “wrong” side of the tracks. How can we balance this?

Tim Johnson
Tim Johnson
Author
Toronto-based writer Tim Johnson is always traveling in search of the next great story. Having visited 140 countries across all seven continents, he’s tracked lions on foot in Botswana, dug for dinosaur bones in Mongolia, and walked among a half-million penguins on South Georgia Island. He contributes to some of North America’s largest publications, including CNN Travel, Bloomberg, and The Globe and Mail.