As someone interested in travel, I tend to run across a lot of advice around that subject. I dig through pieces looking for something new, even though most of it is repetitive, or of little use to me personally.

One common example is all the advice around systems for stuffing everything into one small carry-on bag, regardless of the trip length. That’s just not something that works for me.

But I did enjoy this recent collection from Kevin Kelly,¹ who has been “seriously traveling for more than 50 years”. In it he offers quite a few pieces of unique advice, mixed in with some good ideas that I adopted long ago.

To begin, Kelly divides travel into two modes, retreat or engage. Retreat is usually referred to as taking a vacation, or R&R. Getting away from your everyday routine, “ideally to do fun things instead of work things”.

The other mode is engagement and experience, or E&E. In this mode you travel to discover new things, to have new experiences, to lean into an adventure whose outcome is not certain, to meet otherness. You move to find yourself by encountering pleasures and challenges you don’t encounter at home. This kind of travel is a type of learning, and of the two modes, it is the one I favor in these tips.

Since I’m not very good at vacationing, Kelly’s E&E mode is also much more my style of travel.

I won’t, however, be embracing Kelly’s advice to have a cab driver take me home to meet their mother. Or to crash a wedding. I can see the unique engagement in such activities. I’m just not quite as adventurous as he is.

Although, as you can see from the photo topping this post, I have no problem capturing a wedding (or other ceremonies) when I find them. This one was at the cathedral in Amalfi, Italy and, being June, we ran into quite a few other wedding activities on the streets of small towns in the area.

Anyway, here are a few other travel tips from Kelly that I strongly support.

When visiting a foreign city for the first time, take a street food tour. Or just find an area where the locals are eating and join them. You’ll get a far more authentic taste of the culture than at any Michelin-starred restaurant.

Go to a cemetery. Look for sacred places. People live authentically there. Also go to food markets, hardware stores, laundromats, and other places where the non-tourists go during their daily life.

Getting an inside tour is the ultimate travel treat. I especially like to find photographers who lead local walks and pay them to show me the places they go to get great images. It’s often not the usual tourist stops.

The list of most coveted cities to visit have one striking thing in common—they are pedestrian centric. They reward walking. By all means walk but also use public transit. Take trams, trains, ferries, subways, rent a bike, and find new neighborhoods to explore.

Even if you never go to McDonalds at home, visit the McDonalds on your travels. One of my favorites. Take advantage of the free wifi and try something that’s not on the menu back home.

And finally, this bit of wisdom: “The hard-to-accept truth is that it is far better to spend more time in a few places than a little time in a bunch of places.” In other words, slow down and don’t be in a rush to tick boxes on a list.

There’s so much more to Kelly’s list, so go read the whole thing.

You have my permission to ignore his advice to pack everything into one carry-on bag.

1. Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired. I’ve been a subscriber to the magazine since the second issue. I bought the first issue at an airport newsstand in the days when you carried paper for entertainment on a flight and, if you got a movie, everyone viewed the same film on screens hung from the ceiling. Primitive times.