How walkable is your vacation?

When I’m choosing a hotel or hostel, location is important. I tend to pick places that are close to everything, or at least close enough that I can walk to the places I want to go. If I have to take a bus or two, that’s fine but I like being able to walk to restaurants and shops. That’s why I live where I do, near downtown in a big city, close to all the action.

If you’re a walker too, here’s a handy tool that you can use to plan your trip — Walkscore.com. Basically, you type in the address of where you’re staying, and it gives you a score between 1 and 100 of how walkable that location is by taking into account the how far away things are, including shops, restaurants and activities.

It’s not perfect — some of the places that they list as being near my house are either somewhat dodgy or incorrectly mapped — so it’s always a good idea to do a bit of extra research too.