The co-founder of Spotted by Locals discovered lots of great places ? and the odd drunk ? during his Europe-wide search for bloggers. To read some of the Spotters' tips, click hereBeing the son of an airline pilot and a stewardess, I was fortunate to travel a lot when I was young. After turning 21, the airline stopped sponsoring my tickets, but I did not stop travelling at every chance I got. Luckily, I infected my girlfriend Sanne with the travel bug too.In 2008, Sanne (by then my wife) and I decided to quit our jobs to embark on a new mission in life: convincing people it is so much more fulfilling to experience destinations like a local, instead of going from one tourist highlight to another. We started travel blog network Spotted by Locals. One of the things we were certain of from the start: we wanted to meet all our bloggers in their own city, in their all-time favourite local spot. Of course we wanted to make sure they are really locals who are passionate about their city, but maybe an even more important reason was that it would be our perfect life to travel all around Europe, meet locals and experience real local tips all the time.My favourite travel experience started a few months after we launched our website. In April 2008, we packed up our old but trustworthy Opel Astra, and hit the road for a six-month trip across Europe. We travelled for 12,000 miles to meet hundreds of locals in 23 cities during what seemed to us like the longest and sunniest summer we had ever experienced.Our first meeting in our first stop, Antwerp, was a nightmare: we met a smelly, drunk guy who did not really remember why he signed up to become a Spotter in the first place. We now knew we had made a wise decision to meet all potential Spotters in person, but did not really know how in the world we would find people in all these cities in Europe we were going to visit.Luckily, after we launched our first blog (Amsterdam), we were overwhelmed by applications via email. We were fortunate enough to be able to make a selection of people we wanted to meet in their favourite spots. We experienced more local culture in those six months then we had on all our city trips combined.In Ljubljana, locals recommended we should buy a bottle of wine and some snacks at the market, and have a picnic at "The Beach" ? nothing more than a few steps down to the river. Many of the people having their picnics there were surprised to see tourists join them. An hour later, we heard some jazz tunes. A local band had started to play music on a floating stage a few hundred metres down river. It was a magic night.In Zagreb, our Spotter-to-be, Krunoslav, suggested we should go to his favourite place to eat meat. He wrote down a few of the best dishes on a piece of paper. After walking around in circles for half an hour, we decided to walk into what looked to us like a local football club canteen, to ask for directions to Bistro MZ. The canteen turned out to be Bistro MZ. When we showed the waiter the note Krunoslav had written, he went to his colleague and started laughing out loud. They had never seen a tourist here, and certainly not tourists who ordered things that were not even on the menu! We ate the most wonderful and unhealthy dishes (sausages with cheese, steaks with lard ?), and had a lot of fun with the waiters and customers. Two years later, when we were in Zagreb again, we drove straight to Bistro MZ!I could go on and on.? Bart van Poll is co-founder of Spotted by Locals (spottedbylocals.com), a series of blogs, PDF city guides and (just launched) iPhone apps with up-to-date tips by local bloggers in 33 cities in EuropeAntwerpBelgiumEuropeLjubljanaSloveniaZagrebCroatiaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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