Is it worth doing city tours? Whenever I arrive in a new city, it's the first thing I do

Guidebooks are all well and good for background, but when you're in a city for the first time nothing beats a guided walking tour with a human who lives, loves and breathes the air in the city they call home.

A good guide will animate a city, they'll feed you tasty morsels that stick in your memory, tell you some local gossip and the best place to go for gelato or pinxtos or whatever the local specialty happens to be, and that's why I always look for a guided walking tour as a first step in a new city.

In most cities you're spoiled for choice, starting with free walking tours, often conducted by students who want to buff their language skills, with a request for a tip at the end of the tour. One drawback – free tours tend to draw large numbers. You can't hear if you're at the back of a group of 20, and you probably can't ask questions.

Better to dig into your wallet and look for a tour with a maximum of 10. Rather than a general city tour, I prefer one with a theme, which might be art, history, architecture or photography, depending on the location. One of my most memorable tours was a walk around Venice with a remer, a skilled craftsman who hand carves the complicated oarlocks for the city's gondoliers. Your guided tour should include food.

In many cities – Marrakesh, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Palermo to name just a few – the standalone food tour is a deep dive into local culture. To those in the know, each mouthful carries with it a story. If it's not a theme tour, choose one that focuses on a particular area. You can't possibly take in all a city has to offer so shrink your view to manageable size. It might be a night tour of the geisha district in Kyoto, or Paris' Jewish quarter. Even on a repeat visit, a new tour adds another layer to what you already know. I've just done an early morning cycle tour of Old Delhi, a city I've visited more than a dozen times, and I can now say "Watch out, no brakes" in Urdu.