See a City by Public Bus: The Better Hop-On Hop-Off

The open-top tourist bus is one of the most durable products in travel, and the reason is not that it is good. It is that it answers a question nobody else answers on arrival: I am tired, I do not know where anything is, and I would like the city explained to me while sitting down.

That is a completely reasonable thing to want. The tourist bus is just an expensive way to get it, and in a lot of cities a worse one.

The arithmetic

A 24-hour hop-on hop-off ticket in a major European city typically runs €25 to €40 per person. A single ride on the city’s own network is usually somewhere around €1.50 to €3, and a day pass €5 to €10 — check the local operator, because this is the one number that moves.

So for two people, the tourist bus is a €60 to €80 decision and the public one is a €10 to €20 decision. That gap buys a very good dinner, and what you give up for it is a recorded commentary and a roof you can take photographs through.

The commentary is the part worth taking seriously, and it is solvable — see below. The roof is a real loss on a good day and an irrelevance in the rain.

What the local line does better

Cost is the obvious argument and it is not the strongest one.

• Frequency. Tourist buses run every 15 to 30 minutes. A city trunk route runs every 5 to 10 in the daytime. Over a day of getting on and off, that difference is an hour of your life.
• Hours. The tourist circuit typically stops in the early evening, which is when the light gets good and the squares fill up. The public network runs into the night.
• No queue and no tout. You board with the ticket you already have.
• It goes where people actually go. The tourist loop connects the twelve places on the poster. The local line connects the places people need to get to, which in an old city are largely the same places, plus the market, plus the neighbourhood where you would have eaten better.
• It is the city. You are on public transport with people going to work. This is not a small thing — it is most of what makes the ride feel like somewhere rather than like a product.

Finding the right line

Not every bus is a sightseeing bus. You are looking for one specific thing: a line that crosses the historic centre along its long axis. Pull up the network map and look for the route that runs through the middle rather than around it.

Two useful heuristics. Low route numbers are often the oldest lines, and the oldest lines were drawn when the centre was the whole city. And any line whose terminus is a major station at one end and a monument, castle or park at the other is almost certainly worth riding.

Here is what that looks like in practice, using lines that are genuinely worth the fare:

• Berlin 100 — the classic. Alexanderplatz to Zoologischer Garten, past the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate and the length of Unter den Linden. It is on the standard ticket and it is better than the tour.
• Lisbon 728 — runs the riverfront, which is the flat part of a city that is otherwise all hills, and gives you the Tagus on one side for most of it.
• Madrid 001 — Atocha to Moncloa across the centre: Edificio España, Callao, the Metrópolis building, Cibeles. About 4.8 km of city with roughly eighteen things worth knowing about along it.
• Barcelona 120 — not a trunk route at all but a tiny minibus that threads the Gothic Quarter’s lanes, which is the opposite trick: it goes where a full-size bus cannot.
• Budapest 16 — up to the Castle District, which saves you the climb and hands you the view.
• Florence C1, Edinburgh 35, Kraków 124, Hamburg 111 — same principle, four different cities. The 111 in Hamburg runs the harbour.

Riding it well

Pick your side. This is the single highest-value decision on the whole trip and it takes two seconds. On a riverside route, sit river-side. On the Lisbon 728, that is the right-hand side heading east. Work it out before you board, because on a full bus you will not be moving.

Sit upstairs if there is an upstairs, and at the front. In Britain and Ireland this is most of the fleet, and the front upstairs seat of an ordinary double-decker is a better view than the tourist bus offers at a tenth of the price.

Know how ticketing works before you get on, because it varies more than anything else: buy-before-boarding, validate on board, tap a card, exact change only, front door only. Get this wrong in Germany or Italy and the fine is real.

Avoid the peak. A trunk route at 8am is a commuting tube with no windows available. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon are yours.

Watch your pockets. The lines that are useful to visitors are, for exactly the same reason, the lines that get worked. Bag in front, phone not in a back pocket, and be especially awake at the doors when the bus is packed.

Know your stop. This is the genuine disadvantage of the public bus and it is worth naming plainly: nothing announces that the thing you came for is out of the left window in thirty seconds. Miss it and you are three stops on with a walk back.

Where the bus beats walking

Not everywhere, and not most of the time. But specifically:

• Heat. In southern Europe in July, a twenty-minute ride in the middle of the day is not laziness, it is planning.
• Hills. Ride up, walk down. This is the correct way to use public transport in any city built on a slope, and it is why the Budapest 16 exists on this list.
• Long-axis cities. Where the good things are strung out over 8 km rather than packed into 3, feet alone will not do it.
• The last hour. When the legs are gone but the light is good, a ride is the difference between seeing the city and going back to the hotel.
• Rain. Obviously.

And where it does not: a dense medieval core with no bus access, and stop-start traffic that is genuinely slower than walking. In central Rome at five in the afternoon, your feet win.

Trams, where you have the choice

If there is a tram on the same corridor, take the tram. Bigger windows, a fixed rail route you cannot get lost on, a smoother ride for listening or reading, and usually an older alignment through the older part of town. The tram is the bus’s better-looking sibling and it costs the same.

The commentary problem

Everything above gives you a cheap, frequent, well-placed ride and takes away the one thing the tourist bus actually sells: someone telling you what you are looking at.

That is the gap rides are built for. It is the same narrated places as a walking guide, sequenced for a vehicle instead of for feet: a short teaser plays as you come up to each place — enough to know to look out of the right window — and it counts you down to the stop you want. Because you are moving at bus speed rather than walking speed, the stories are deliberately shorter; the full one waits on that place’s own page if you decide to get off and stay.

Thirty-three of these are published so far across twenty cities — twenty-three bus lines and ten cycle routes, including every line named above. It runs on your ordinary ticket, because it is an ordinary bus.

If you would rather hear what that sounds like before committing a day to it, there are real clips with transcripts, and how it works covers the rest.

The short version

A tourist bus sells you a route, a roof and a recording for €30. The city sells you the same route for €2, more often and later into the evening. Bring your own recording, sit on the correct side, and spend the difference on lunch.

Then get off and walk — which is, in the end, what the ride is for. If you want the walking version of the same city, start here, or read how to plan a route you will actually finish.