Fantastic. A bank holiday weekend. Four days off work. Where shall we go? New York, Berlin, Brighton? How much can we pack in? Whiz around the Metropolitan; marvel at the Reichstag; queue up to get into the Pavilion? Why, why, why do we do this to ourselves?

Buy the guidebook, read up on all the 'must-do' attractions and so starts the frenzy of sightseeing and peering over other tourists' shoulders in museums and art galleries winding your way around the roped-off bits.

When you get home on Monday evening your parents ring: 'So how was Berlin?'

'Er, nice thanks.'

'Did you visit the Museum Island; how about the Reichstag? What about Checkpoint Charlie?'

'Er, we didn't do any of that sort of stuff...' Guilt sets in.

You see, if you want to get under the skin of a place, surely you don't have much chance of doing so joining hundreds of other foreign visitors craning their necks in art galleries. The pressure to tick the 'musts' off a list when you visit a new city has to be one of the silliest forms of stress known to tourists. Isn't your leisure time too precious to spend parking, queueing and peering over the tops of other people's heads? Why do we all feel this terrible guilt if we visit a new place and don't tick off the clichés on the tourist circuit when, in fact, the quality of those experiences can be so dull?

How many of these 'must do' cultural experiences live up to expectations? The Prado - yes, lovely, but all that Spanish art is very gloomy. After a day in there, you're aching for sunlight. And the Pompidou Centre? Personally I prefer the jugglers outside.

So instead, when travelling, I try to do ordinary things rather than scan every square foot of art and sculptures. One of my favourite experiences on my last trip to Berlin was getting an impromptu haircut in the Mitte district in a salon tucked under the railway arches by a 'stylist' with tattoos and a penchant for cutting hair without talking.

I also love poking around flea markets on a Sunday morning in east Berlin where you can happen upon relics of GDR life - the standard salt and pepper pots which used to furnish every east German tablecloth, or seeking out funny utilitarian lighting.

When foreign friends come to London for the weekend and ask: 'What do you recommend we see?', we make a point of not suggesting museums and art galleries. Go to Borough market on a Saturday and try a fried Chorizo bap from the Spanish stall. Walk over the wobbly bridge and soak up the atmosphere outside Tate Modern (but don't go in). Take a ride on the Docklands Light Railway and get a space-agey view of London, we say.

But whatever you do, don't feel guilty about missing museums, we tell them. You can always do them when you've more time... and it's not a bank holiday weekend.