Martha Stewart's 5 Tips For Finding The Best Secret Spots When Traveling Abroad

Martha Stewart is a discerning traveler. She considers travel one of the crucial ingredients for healthy aging and frequently shares details about her adventures on her blog and social media. While she's well-versed in domestic travel – Stewart has named Maine her favorite destination in America – she is also an avid global traveler, having been everywhere from Namibia to the North Pole. Often, she explores hidden corners of the world that don't show up on the typical tourist itinerary. Her travel style is all-encompassing: "We want to see everything we possibly can," Stewart told Parade.

But not everyone has the time or resources to spend weeks or months abroad learning the ins and outs of a destination to uncover its unpublicized, local favorites. At the same time, many travelers want experiences that take them beyond tourist hotspots. The 2026 Global Rescue Traveler Sentiment and Safety Survey found that 52% of travelers favor lesser-known spots over major tourist sites. They want to eat where locals eat, wander streets not thronged with tour groups, and feel as if they're truly discovering something untouched by commercialism. 

Stewart has some insights for finding these under-the-radar spots – even if you're only visiting for a few days.

A common throughline in much of Martha Stewart's advice for international travelers is this: Don't expect to find a place's best secrets entirely on your own. In an interview for Business Insider, Stewart described how she collects newspaper articles about a destination before she goes there. When she travels with her publicist, she said, they bring their compiled research: "When we go someplace together on a trip, we have our travel sections, we have our lists."

Stewart has also noted she regularly consults newspapers and other reading material on her commute to work. "I get in the car, I have my New York Times, my Wall Street Journal, and my New York Post — in paper form," she told The Cut. Travel sections of various publications often provide practical details — when a site is open, why it's worth visiting, and what's in its vicinity — along with lesser-known recommendations that may not appear in generic guidebooks. Doing the necessary homework like Stewart does can help you explore your destination more meaningfully rather than wandering aimlessly.

In the same vein as researching ahead of time, you can also prepare for a destination by crowdsourcing. "I ask everybody," Martha Stewart shared with Business Insider. "I must have had five or six different lists from people I really trust in terms of places to see and places to go to and restaurants to eat in. That's how I do it... It's a network." You might even consider making a shared spreadsheet between friends and fellow travelers to pool travel insights.

If you don't know anyone who's been to the destination you're traveling to, then perhaps you could follow in the footsteps of Stewart herself. She documents her travels extensively on The Martha Stewart Blog. In a post about her trip to Iceland and Greenland, for example, Stewart shared useful details about the places she dined at, the village she stayed in, and her visit to Sky Lagoon, one of Iceland's best geothermal spas. In another blog about the Philippines, she provided exhaustive details about local museums and dishes to try. "I love trying new foods wherever I go," she wrote, highlighting local delicacies like lechon, grilled sea bass, and sauteed squash blossoms.

All in all, though, the key is to build a network of travelers whose preferences align with yours.

Even if you have a large network of well-traveled contacts to source suggestions and tips from, no one knows a place as intimately as someone who lives there. Martha Stewart shared with the New York Post that hiring a local guide is helpful when you're in one place for a short time, but you don't necessarily need one to get the local perspective. "If you decide against hiring a guide, stop in at a popular café in the morning and introduce yourself to locals sipping their cappuccinos; you can usually rely on getting some great advice," she said in the Post.

There are many European countries with deep-rooted café culture, where it's normal to sit around at a table for hours, talk to strangers, and people-watch. In Paris, Stewart has recommended Cédric Grolet Opéra on her blog, the café and patisserie located north of the Louvre. The upstairs level has seated tables for dining and chatting.

Other destinations where the café culture isn't so prevalent can still offer ways to connect with locals. On her trip to a rural village in Namibia, for example, Stewart engaged with the Himba people by shopping for their crafts and learning about their craft-making process, as she described in a post. Starting conversations in small businesses could be a great way to learn about the neighborhood while supporting the local economy.

Martha Stewart skews maximalist when planning her days in a new destination. "You want to spend your time when you're on shore seeing as much as you can see," she told Business Insider. "That's how I travel, anyway. Everyone who travels with me is totally wiped out because we try to see a lot." For example, during her visit to the Philippines, she wrote in her blog that she shopped at the SM Mall of Asia, toured a fort and church in the walled city of Intramuros, visited the National Museum of Natural History, and indulged in a multi-course meal prepared by renowned chefs — all in a single day.

The maximalist approach might be especially beneficial if you're only in a destination for a day or two, since it lets you explore more in less time. That said, Stewart has also advised against obsessing over a checklist. "Wake up very early and stay up late, but don't fret if you miss one site. There are always many more to see," Stewart shared with Deseret News. In that regard, her full-day method pairs well with her advice about collecting suggestions from newspapers, friends, and locals. If, say, a museum you wanted to visit closes before you have time to go, then you can pick out something else from your saved ideas in lieu.

Maybe it goes without saying that if you want to find secret spots, you need to go where others haven not. But Martha Stewart is adamant that some of the best hidden gems you'll find are away from the central tourist corridors. "Try to visit the countryside," Stewart wrote in Deseret News. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to find a rural farmstay and plan to stay far from urban amenities in an unfamiliar place. Rather, Stewart calls these "excursions" from your main travel center, which can unfold in a single day. On her trip to Prague, the timeless central city with lively taverns, for example, Stewart described in Deseret, "[W]e stopped at a medieval castle just outside town and toured interesting limestone quarries sometimes used for movie shoots."

Traveling somewhere where you might not have detailed guidebooks or recognizable landmarks to anchor you implies needing some degree of flexibility. "Fascinating shops and sights are everywhere, and an unexpected stop often turns out to be a pleasant diversion from the itinerary," Stewart added. The same logic applies even if you do stay within the limits of a major city. Take, for example, Stewart's trip to Paris, which she also wrote about. Famed for its art museums, visitors often default to one of its most popular museums, such as the Louvre or the Musée d'Orsay. But Stewart's trip took her to the Musée Marmottan Monet, a lesser-known art museum located in the leafy, residential neighborhood of Passy, away from the touristy core on the Right and Left Banks. Apparently, the most unexpected stops can also become the most memorable.

Martha Stewart has traveled widely and shared helpful details about her experiences in magazine interviews, guest features, and on her blog. We pulled five tips from her travels abroad, specifically on finding secret spots, sourced from her conversations with Business Insider, the New York Post, and Deseret News. We also looked at how Stewart applied her own strategies and how they might be carried out in the real world by reading through her travel recaps on The Martha Stewart Blog.