The urge to rush around seeing as many sites as possible can leave tourists exhausted. Veronica Stivala asks would it be better to stay put and really explore one town?

Not too long ago, one of the joys of travelling was sharing your photos with your friends once you got back home.

Whether they enjoyed looking at your endless shots of gorgeous sunsets, exotic meals and different angles of the Eiffel Tower is another matter entirely.

But nowadays, we don’t need to wait for people to come back from holiday to be bombarded with photos of what they ate, saw, drank and bought.

Thanks to social media, we practically get live coverage of every step our friends take on foreign soil.

This can mean that the next time we go on holiday, we feel the need to cover as many fabulous places as our friends did, or try to outdo them.

There are many reasons our holidays have become such a race against time, one notable one being the rushed lives we lead and, thanks to the online bombardment of ‘new and now’, we constantly crave something new, and instantaneously.

As tourists, we rush to see as many landmarks, monuments and parks to tick them off the must-see list and let the world know we have done so without really taking the time to savour a city and get to know it and its people better.

Thanks to cheap flights and low-cost accommodation, it is easy for us to take a short break, as opposed to the time when travelling cost more and we tended to stay put in a city or area for longer.

Of course, no one can compare getting to know a city as well as someone who actually lives there, but as we rush from one hotspot to another, are we missing out on proper travelling and properly getting to explore a city?

Mike Sowden, who writes the popular travel blog Fevered Mutterings ( http://mikesowden.org/feveredmutterings ), says we are. And it all boils down to rhythms.

“Everywhere has a daily human cycle of life,” he says.

“If you want to truly get a feel for a place and the people in it, you need to experience it 24 hours, from start to finish: to watch the markets being set up, the crowds gathering, the shops opening, the workers getting their lunch and going home for the day.

“Everywhere has a rhythm of life that’s at least 24 hours long, and if you just pass through quickly, you miss those changes and you miss the rhythm itself.

You can ask 10 local people and be shown 10 different Londons

“And beyond that? There are weekday and weekend rhythms, and weekly ones, and monthly and yearly ones...”

And there’s exploring. Exploring also takes time, and when you’re fretting about bus schedules or about when your train leaves, it’s hard to explore in the truest sense, because exploration involves improvisation, Sowden points out.

“To really explore, you need to be open to getting lost. That needs to be a real possibility. And yet you cannot afford to get lost if you’re on a tight schedule, because what if you missed your connection?”

But, he says, it’s only by exploring that you really understand a place with all your senses (maybe because you get lost and need every scrap of sensory data to find out where you are).

“Exploring lands you firmly in the moment, thrillingly in the present.”In reality, everywhere is worth visiting more than once. So where to begin? Read on, for some inspiration.

London, England

Author and biographer Peter Ackroyd wrote that in London: “The past is a form of occluded memory, in which the presence of earlier generations is felt rather than seen. It is an echoic city, filled with shadows.”

However many times you visit London, it continues to surprise you, with new passageways, new people, new discoveries.

“The city’s history is woven into its modern fabric, and it’s almost impossible to understand, except in pieces,” explains Sowden.

There’s just so much to know about London, and you can ask 10 local people and be shown 10 different Londons. His advice is to stick around to have time to ask every single one of those people.

Berlin, Germany

There are so many events going on in Germany’s capital throughout the year that you’ll never be bored of things to do, but more than that, the city has an alluring character.

American blogger couple Dan Noll and Audrey Scott (www.uncorneredmarket.com) say: “Berlin draws us in, like the schoolkid who may not be the best looking in the class but has the magnetic personality that everyone wants to be around.”

Sowden’s experience offers a convincing argument to really spend time in a city and get to know it well:

“The first time I went for a travel trade show, I was supremely unimpressed with the food I had, thinking it bland and expensive.

“The next time I went, my friends showed me the thriving Turkish food scene, all of which is incredibly cheap by my (British) standards – and incredibly tasty.

“If my experience of Berlin’s food was based on my first visit, the city would be a disappointment for me.

“It’s only going back again, and allowing that assumption inside my head to be rewritten with the help of local experts, that I came to see another facet to it.”

Buenos Aires, Argentina

This is a city of cafes and enjoying mornings and afternoons of people watching over a coffee.

Dan and Audrey explored the city in depth and discovered many wonderful restaurants (and some mediocre places too), including football shrine diners, a mansion converted into a bar and restaurant and the best places to eat gelato.

This is a city in which to spend your evenings enjoying a beautifully-grilled steak with a glass of Malbec.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Jodi Ettenberg (www.legalnomads.com) says out-of-the-way local markets are a great way to get a snapshot of life on the ground.

If you want to truly get a feel for a place and the people in it, you need to experience it 24 hours, from start to finish

“Each country’s food, language and culture differ and a great way to experience it all at once is to head to morning markets and watch people as they go about their errands.”

Many markets also house attached food stalls, which Ettenberg frequents for breakfast.

Morning markets here are particularly worth a visit, especially in the Mekong region.

While floating boat markets used to be the norm, cheaper motorcycle costs plus new bridges linking towns mean the action lies on the wet markets on land. Visiting the Mekong market at dawn left her with “a deliciously overwhelming, unique feeling of standing in the middle of what seems like total chaos and watching it move around you unperturbed”.

Although these markets are a normal part of life for people in the Mekong, no matter how many times Ettenberg ventures there at dawn, she always finds herself “with a silly grin on my face, spinning in all directions to take in as much as I can”.

Yogyakarta and the Gili islands

So many people go to Indonesia just for Bali, which is nothing in comparison to the rest of the country, claims avid traveller Lana Micallef.

Indonesia is one of the most diverse countries in the world and has some of the most beautiful islands.

“Indonesia can be an amazing cultural experience if you’re willing… areas like Yogyakarta in northern Bali, away from the party scene, and the Gili islands are gems,” she says.

Yogyakarta is a truly spiritual and enchanting place and the spectacular rooftops of Prambanan’s ancient temples are a must to experience when the sun is rising.

The Gili islands are absolute paradise where you will find locals playing guitar on the beach, the sun all year round and some dive sites to boast about.

Northern Bali is cultural and artsy. Places like Ubud – made famous by the book and film Eat, Pray, Love – boast a certain, more peaceful style that is unique to this area.