A "tourism experience" can be whatever you want it to be. If it's a cliche maybe you're doing it wrong. As a tourist I always enjoy getting the "local" experien

A "tourism experience" can be whatever you want it to be. If it's a cliche maybe you're doing it wrong. As a tourist I always enjoy getting the "local" experience, I take the regular buses or the subway, I visit the "regular" parts of the city, sometimes I take the bus and ride it to the end of the line and back. I take long walks through residential neighborhoods that are never on any tourist map to see how those people live and organize things. I walk on side streets to see what's behind the curtains of the touristic city. I go off the beaten path because that's where I find the most interesting things. The one thing I try to avoid is testing the rush hour traffic as a driver. This doesn't mean I don't pay attention to see what that city/country has done about it and how they're tackling it. Many people just hop on the tourist bus, go straight from the hotel to visit the handful of famous attractions and call it a vacation. Good for them I guess, although I find that just marginally better than Google Street View. Any experience can be a let down or a cliche if that's what you planned and executed. You get to experience more or less exactly what you bargained for.