Obviously, there are some parts of the world where a professional guide is pretty much mandatory for reasons of the preservation of life and limb. You don’t want to take yourself on a safari unsupervised, go wandering on your lonesome through a mine-strewn war zone, or up and then precipitously downwards across the slopes of Everest.
There are a lot of other locations where a little local knowledge can add enormously to your experience, but you may not even get a chance to realize what you are missing:
Edinburgh
A very popular tourist destination and a fabulous place to visit, Edinburgh is both packed with history and stories, and extremely exhausting to wander randomly around with no real plan as to your destination. Taking advantage of one of the many professionally guided tours allows you to get the history from the people that know it best, and most importantly know the most efficient way to visit it all before your poor legs give out on you.
London
Far too big to be accessible to a single guided tour, London nevertheless has dozens of locations where knowledge can pay dividends. The Tower of London is famous for its guided tours from the Yeoman Warder’s or ‘Beefeaters’ as they are more popularly termed. You’d be wise not to use the less respectful term to their faces. They are part of the Yeomen of the Guard, the monarch’s traditional bodyguards, and one of the requirements is at least 22 years service in any of the UK armed services barring the Navy (who take their oaths to the admiralty rather than the crown).
