How to be a better traveler

I don’t mean that when you visit a place for the first time you should skip the must-see sites for the sake of feeling cool. I do, however, suggest steering clear of tacky T-shirt shops, television-show-themed bus tours (OMG! This is where Serena and Blair from Gossip Girl hang out!), and the like.

Here are a few strategies for going deeper than the guidebook hit lists and making sure that when you visit a place, you really experience it.

Do your homework Research can make the difference between floundering and frolicking. The more you know, the better off you are. (The point of this is not to plan every minute of every day -- no, no, no -- but to be as aware as possible about your destination. Leave plenty of time to wander, get lost, and discover your own favorites.) Read guidebooks, sure, including the history sections, but keep in mind that they tend to be dated and to lack super-insider stuff, so do more digging. Check good travel blogs and the travel stories on more general websites, like DailyCandy. Scope out recent issues of quality travel magazines (I like Travel + Leisure and National Geographic Adventure) for au courant coverage of your destination. And remember that your best resource is someone who has been there and done that, so ask all your friends if they’ve traveled where you’re going, or if they’ve lived there, or if they know someone who lives there now. It’s easy to cast a wide net -- send a group e-mail, post the question on your Facebook status -- and then get the scoop from anyone whose opinion you trust.

Dress the part No, this doesn’t mean sporting, say, a gho or a kira when you’re in Bhutan. But wherever you are, avoid loud logo T’s and fanny packs that scream “I’m not from here!” Blend in a bit. I felt as if I’d done a good job getting dressed in London when, wearing jeans and a black cashmere sweater and carrying a cool but subdued handbag, I was stopped by a local asking for directions. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to get where she was going. But it was still a satisfying exchange. For me, anyway.

Learn the words If you’re going to a non-English-speaking country, it’s OK not to master Mandarin or Swahili or whatever before you arrive, but do learn as much as you can and at least be able to say “Hello” and “Thank you.” I once had a stopover in Bangkok for two days and hadn’t bothered to learn any Thai before I arrived because it was such a brief stay. Not being able to communicate at all was awful, though, and after I learned how to say a simple “Sawat dii ka” (the feminine form of “Hello”), I got a whole lot more smiles than I did with my blank stares. Pick up as many words as you can while you’re there. And if you already speak the language, practice, practice, practice. It’s good exercise for your brain, and it will make every interaction with a native more enjoyable.

Acknowledge local customs In Madrid, my friend’s girlfriend, a lifelong Madrilena, explained to me that hugging as a greeting (which I’d done to her) was off-putting and that I should really do the double-cheek-kiss thing. In the United States, that might seem pretentious, but there it’s the norm. Keep an eye out for little things like that and try to fit in, respectfully. Note: I’m talking about social niceties here -- there’s no need to pull a Madonna and adopt a British accent while in England.

Be wary of concierge recommendations Here’s the deal: I worked as a concierge at a hotel in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, one summer during college, and I made money when I booked reservations for guests with certain restaurants, rafting companies, or horseback outfitters. I’m not saying it’s all about the cash, but if a concierge has the choice between earning a little kickback from a tourist trap and sending you to a tiny mom-and-pop joint, well, you can guess how that story often ends. Ask the stylish guy at a chic boutique or the bartender at a cozy watering hole instead.

Explore on foot (or bike) Getting out and about on your own power instead of staying locked in a rental car -- or, yikes, in a tour bus -- is the way to go. The first morning in a new place, I like to get up and go for a run. I generally do this with someone else, just in case I jog into dodgy territory, but I always ask around enough before the run to know I’m pretty much sticking to safe zones. Going early in the day means avoiding touristy crowds -- everyone else who’s up and about is a local. My husband and I jogged through Ritan Park in Beijing early one morning and encountered thousands of city residents doing their morning exercises (think tai chi). Also in Beijing, if you’re up at sunrise and stroll to Tiananmen Square, you’ll see a huge crowd of locals gathered to watch the daily flag raising. And then when they all depart for work, you may find yourself practically alone in the vast plaza. No matter what time of day, going on foot or bike means you can see things up close that you could rarely see from a motorized vehicle. Sticking with the Beijing example: If you wander, you can experience the tiny hutongs, narrow alleys where families live, eat, and go to school. They’re hidden behind all the glitzy new buildings that went up for last summer’s Olympic Games, and if you aren’t on foot or bicycle, you can easily miss them.

Eat like a local Eating amazing local food is one of the best reasons to travel. Alas, mainstream tourist restaurants rarely serve authentic native dishes. Before you go: Read the travel stories in good food magazines (such as Food & Wine and Saveur) and the food stories in good local magazines (at a newsstand at your destination, or locate one on the Web before your trip) and find out where the food writer, who hopefully knows the place well, suggests you dine; peruse food-focused websites with candid opinions, like Chowhound. When you get to your destination: Follow the local crowds (if a place is packed with natives, it’s got something good to offer); try street food if the locals are eating it; opt for restaurants with excellent beer and wine lists (my cousin-in-law swears by this method -- “Go where the good beer is!”); and most important, ask locals for recommendations. One of my favorite eating-out nights ever was in Seville, Spain, when a university student I met pointed out a few of his favorite tapas bars and advised me to order only wine, because the free tapas would soon follow. My then-boyfriend and I wandered from place to place, getting drunk on Tempranillo, making friends, and sampling morsels.

Chat with locals I’ve touched on this already but can’t emphasize it enough: Talk to the people who live in the place you are visiting. Do not ignore them. (Unless, of course, they don’t feel like talking to you.) Find out what they do, where they go. This works in Cleveland or Calcutta. Once, on a flight to San Francisco, I sat next to a cool woman who filled me in on her favorite boutiques. We hit it off, and on day three of my trip, no kidding, we went shopping and got pedicures together in places I never would have known about on my own. A little farther from home, in a remote village in Bhutan, my husband and I got to chatting with some local schoolteachers, and they asked us to join their pickup soccer game the next day. We happily accepted the invitation. When the game ended, we were tired and mud-splattered and had really bonded with the guys we had played with. As we got on our mountain bikes to pedal over a rocky dirt road to our hotel, I thought back briefly to my first trip to New York and realized just how far I’d come from Times Square.

Christie Matheson is the author of Discover Rhode Island and Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.