Samantha Brown Treats Destinations Like Records And It Helps Her Avoid Crowds. Here's How

Samantha Brown has spent nearly a quarter of a century exploring the world and then telling us about it. With 74 countries (and counting) on her scorecard, she's the kind of travel expert who's seen it all and knows exactly how to avoid the overrated and overrun while still getting the full experience. Her tips are always pure gold, from techniques to outsmarting pickpockets to traveling on a shoestring budget without sacrificing the fun.

When it comes to visiting famous spots, Brown has unique advice (and strategy) for that, too. While the rest of us mindlessly follow TikTok trends straight into the tourist mob, Brown's approach is a bit more refined — she compares visiting popular destinations to spinning vinyl. Rather than just hitting the "A-side" hits that everyone's flocking to, she digs into the "B-side" tracks — the underappreciated spots that are often more rewarding.

The "Places to Love" host explained this analogy in an episode of "The Financial Confessions," sharing that she embraces popular destinations but balances them with lesser-known alternatives nearby. "If you remember records, there was an A-side and a B-side ... The A-side was the hit; the B-side was a good song, a nice song, but it wasn't a hit. And so if you're thinking about, you know, Rome ... Rome is going to be crazy, Florence is going to be crazy ... But Bologna? Maybe not so much," she said. "I always think in terms of what's the greatest hit and what's the lesser-known jewel that I'm going to get ... The entire culture that I want to get, but it's not going to be inundated by everyone around the world." In short, why settle for just the hits when the hidden tracks offer just as much — if not more — without the chaos?

Samantha Brown's take on tackling tourist-heavy hotspots isn't far off Rick Steves' "second cities" strategy, where you skip the big names in favor of more affordable, less crowded alternatives. But if your budget — or time — isn't up for jetting off to those locales, it doesn't mean you're doomed to a cookie-cutter experience. According to Brown, the trick is rethinking how you explore even the most "overrated" spots.

She emphasizes that the key to a fresh experience is all in how you approach it. "Even in the most overrated places... Turning right as opposed to left, then you've got a very different experience. If you are in Saint Mark's Square [in Venice] and it is a mob scene, yes, that's overrated," Brown told Wonderlust. "But if you go 10 minutes in any direction to where people live, you're going to find a much more authentic, more laid-back experience."

She also shared on "The Financial Confessions" podcast that instead of relying on social media for recommendations, you'll collect more valuable insight if you get it from actual locals. All it takes is breaking away from the main drag. "Whatever that main thoroughfare is that everyone's on, you walk the peripheral streets, you walk the side streets. The side streets where the locals are," she noted. "So if you are in Paris, the Champs-Élysées is, you know, of course, all commercial, all tourism. Only one or two streets away, you have where the locals are. It's still the center of town... It's finding those little mom-and-pop shops, those one-woman and dream shops that we're always looking for." And once you find those shops, Brown advises asking them what she deems is the "most important" question of all: "Where do I go next?"