With an outdoor tour, there is always a sense of energy and kinetic movement, no matter what. You’re sure to stay entertained and learn a lot at the same time!

by Max Fisher

Happy campers with the Vitamin D on a Buffalo Food Tour

We’ve All Been There

Let’s be frank: tours can be boring. I want you to reach deep into the inner recesses of your mind for a moment and remember all the times you barely stayed awake during a class field trip to a museum or a historical building. It got to the point that despite your best efforts to pay attention, the guide’s words just turned into wah wah wah wah like you were Charlie Brown. I know you can relate because everyone’s been there, but believe it or not, tours don’t have to be boring. I’ll give you a moment to process that shocking statement… Ok, you good? Let me continue then. Yes indeed, you can actually enjoy the experience of guided learning. What’s the trick you ask? It’s really pretty simple. Go on an outdoor tour! So if you have a little time to spare, I’d like to highlight precisely why outdoor tours can be so great!

Explore Buffalo Tours: See Buffalo in a New Light

First off, there’s the aspect of well… they’re outside (captain obvious strikes again), and although that is an obnoxiously obvious point (I’m well aware, ok? I am Captain Obvious after all) it adds more than you might initially think to the overall enjoyment of the tour. Learning something new amongst the open sky with fresh air in your lungs — people walking by — the honking of cars — all the different sights and sounds of everyday life makes whatever site or place your tour is focused on all the more alive and vibrant because that place feels as if it’s part of a bigger whole. Almost like it’s alive and not merely some relic of the past that the occasional group of people pays an x amount of dollars every once in a while to go (“oh, that’s nice I can’t believe that’s still around”) and take annoying selfies in front of it so they can post them on social media where no one will care. It’s the fact of being outside that gives everything a certain freshness, even if what you’re looking at is 100 years old or a few months old. If this sounds enticing, you’re next stop should be a tour with our friends, Explore Buffalo.

Shark Girl having an amazing time during an Explore Buffalo tour

I get it if you are still not convinced because all those nap-inducing tours from your youth still have a strong grip on your psyche, but you do know the city of Buffalo does have tours where you don’t just walk around and listen to a guide rattle on and on about this or that right? You do know that there are bike tours available where you not only get more than a day’s worth of good cardio but also get the chance to eat delicious wings? Do I have your attention now? It’s called The Wing tour, and you’ll get the opportunity to sample some of Buffalo’s best chicken wings while also exploring how race dynamics shaped the city, from the city’s working-class origins to its present-day resurgence.

The duration of the tour is 3 hours, and you’ll be doing 10 miles total. Some highlights include Mumbo wings by Lina Brown Young, Buffalo hot wings and beef on weck at Lenox Grill, The Imperial Consort Chicken Wing prepared by Tiny Thai Chicken, and themed songs performed on the ukulele. The Wing Tour is a great way to see some of the cities most important spots and enjoy some of the best food the city has to offer as well.

Discover Hidden Histories

Perhaps burning a ton of calories and eating food isn’t really your thing. Maybe you’d like a tour service that’s a bit more sedentary where you can still be technically outside and see many of the great sites the city has to offer, but you’re being driven around instead of peddling. If this piques your interest in any way, I have one question for you: Do you like double-decker busses? They’re not strictly used in the land of tea and crumpets, you know. In fact, Buffalo has excellent tours that use the old double-decker bus to increase your effect in viewing some of the most interesting places in Buffalo.

Take the Old and New Buffalo Tour, for example, where you’ll be able to experience Buffalo’s grand homes, such as some in Allentown, the stunning Richardson Complex that is formerly known as the Buffalo Asylum for the Insane, along with mansions of the city’s rich and famous. Learn about how whiskey saved the Hotel Lafayette, secrets of the Psych Center, how Allentown got its name, and Buffalo’s hanging sheriff. See craftsmen build a real canal boat.

Buffalo Double Decker Bus Tours

Or you could take the Best of Buffalo Tour, where your guide is Officer O’Connor, an Irish cop from 1860 who brings to life all the hidden stories of the Queen City. Which include such places and topics of interest as How Buffalo Got its Name, Plight of the Irish Grain Scoopers, Pirates and Portuguese Fisherman of Buffalo’s Secret Beach Community, How Booze and a Buffalo Dentist Helped Create the Electric Chair, The Triple Hanging at City Hall, The Naval Park and America’s Most Famous Photo Canalside Secrets of Downtown Architecture. If you like learning history with a bit of a dinner theatre flourish, you should definitely check this one out.

Outdoors is Where it’s At

Tours, in general, can be a very tricky thing. Generally, most are indoors and chances are even if it’s a tour that you were initially ecstatic about, once you get in there and notice how old everything tends to be and how drool a presentation of information most guides give you tend to either drift in and out of attention with what’s being presented or head for the exit the second the tour is over. Yet with an outdoor tour, there is always a sense of energy and kinetic movement no matter what the subject being presented is, because it’s outside. Plus a sense of even the slightest movement has a way of better focusing you on what’s being presented.

Lewiston

The Roaming Table

Lewiston

What do you think of our guide to outdoor touring companies in Buffalo Niagara? Know a great one that we missed? Have a favorite? What’s the best tour you’ve taken ’round town? Let us know.

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