Some cities cost a fortune just to breathe in. A hotel breakfast in Zurich runs $40. A cocktail in Singapore can top $25. A round of drinks in Tokyo's tourist bars will drain your wallet before midnight. Yet these same cities are packed with free experiences that rival (and sometimes beat) anything you'd pay for — you just have to know where to look.
Here's how to spend almost nothing in some of the world's priciest destinations without feeling like you're missing out.
Tokyo, Japan
Tokyo has a reputation for being expensive. It's mostly undeserved. The city is remarkably free-friendly if you skip the tourist-trap experiences and dig into how locals actually spend weekends.
Free Museums and Galleries
- Tokyo National Museum (free Sundays) — Japan's largest museum has permanent galleries open free on the last Sunday of each month. The collection spans 117,000 artifacts spanning 600,000 years of Asian history.
- Intermediatheque — A genuinely bizarre and wonderful natural history + art museum in the KITTE building near Tokyo Station. Free every day, housed in a renovated postwar postal building. Skeletons, fossils, curiosities.
- 21_21 Design Sight Plaza — The outdoor plaza and garden around this Tadao Ando-designed building in Roppongi is free, even when exhibitions inside cost money.
Free Parks and Neighborhoods
- Shinjuku Gyoen costs ¥500 ($3.40) — but the East Garden of the Imperial Palace is free and stunning, with traditional Japanese landscaping, moats, and old stone walls.
- Yanaka is an old Shitamachi neighborhood that survived WWII bombing intact. Walk the shotengai (old shopping street), peek into tiny temples, eat cheap at century-old shops.
- Harajuku Takeshita Street — absolutely free to walk and watch.
Tokyo Skyline Views (Free)
The classic tip: skip Tokyo Skytree (¥2,100+) and go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building observation deck in Shinjuku. Both North and South towers have 202m views. Free. Open until 11pm most nights.
Zurich, Switzerland
Switzerland is notoriously expensive, but Zurich residents don't pay for everything. Here's how to do Zurich on almost nothing.
Free Swimming
Zurich's lakes and rivers are its best free asset. In summer (June–September):
- Flussbad Oberer Letten — the city's most popular river pool, built on a former industrial site along the Limmat River. Free entry, changing rooms, diving platforms.
- Lake Zurich — multiple free entry points and bathing areas (Mythenquai and Tiefenbrunnen are the best).
Free Museums
Switzerland has a lesser-known cultural fact: many cantonal museums offer free entry on the first Sunday of each month, or permanently. In Zurich:
- Museum für Gestaltung — permanent collection of design and graphic arts, free with Zurich Card or on specific free days
- Kunsthaus Zurich — the new wing opened in 2021 but the old building's permanent collection has free hours
- Swiss National Museum — free every day for the permanent collection
Free Walking
Zurich's Altstadt (Old Town) is best explored on foot. Climb to Lindenhügel (Linden Hill) for rooftop views over the old city. Walk across the medieval Rathausbrücke bridge. Visit any of the dozen guild houses dating from the 1300s–1700s without paying a cent.
Singapore
Singapore's reputation as an expensive city is real — hotel rooms regularly exceed $300/night, and hawker meals that seem cheap ($5 laksa) quickly add up. But Singapore has spent decades building world-class free public infrastructure.
Free Nature
- Gardens by the Bay Supertrees — The famous grove of vertical gardens is free to walk through any time. Only the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest conservatories cost money ($S32). Watching the Garden Rhapsody light show at 7:45pm and 8:45pm nightly costs nothing.
- MacRitchie Reservoir — The best jungle hiking in Southeast Asia happens to be free and inside Singapore. The 11km reservoir trail plus the HSBC TreeTop Walk (a 250m suspension bridge at 25m height) costs nothing.
- Southern Ridges Trail — 9km of parks, ridges, and bridges connecting HortPark to Mount Faber. Free, accessible by MRT, spectacular city views.
Free Museums and Culture
- National Museum of Singapore — Permanent galleries on Singapore's history are free
- Asian Civilisations Museum — Free on Friday evenings (6–9pm)
- Malay Heritage Centre — Free permanent collection
- Chinatown Heritage Centre — Free on select days
Singapore's Best Free View
Skip the Marina Bay Sands SkyPark ($S26+). Instead, take the free elevator to the Marina Bay Sands Casino lobby floor (ground level), walk to the outdoor promenade along Marina Bay, and watch the Spectra light show at Marina Bay Sands every Friday and Saturday night at 9pm and 10pm. Free, spectacular, and Singapore at its most cinematic.
New York City, USA
NYC is legendary for expense, but it's also the city with more genuinely free world-class institutions than almost anywhere on Earth.
Free World-Class Museums
| Museum | Free Access |
|---|---|
| The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Pay what you wish (suggested $30) |
| Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) | Free Fridays 5:30–9pm |
| Brooklyn Museum | Pay what you wish; Free 1st Saturdays |
| The Frick Collection | Free for under-10s; PWYW Sundays |
| The American Museum of Natural History | Pay what you wish |
| The Whitney Museum | Free Fridays 7–10pm |
| The Guggenheim | Pay what you wish Saturdays 5–8pm |
| New York Public Library | Always free |
Free NYC Experiences
- The High Line — Free elevated park, always
- Brooklyn Bridge Walk — Cross on foot from either side. The best urban walk in America, free
- Staten Island Ferry — 25-minute ferry ride across New York Harbor with Statue of Liberty views. Free. Every 30 minutes
- Governors Island — A car-free island with parks, art, hammocks, and forts. $3 ferry (free weekdays before noon)
- Prospect Park and Central Park — Concerts, Shakespeare in the Park (free tickets via lottery), and the Delacorte Theater all summer
NYC Skyline Views (Free)
- One Police Plaza area / Brooklyn Bridge Park — Ground-level Manhattan skyline views across the East River. Free, anytime.
- Roosevelt Island Tram — Technically costs an MTA fare ($2.90), but the aerial tramway ride above the East River with Manhattan views is one of the city's most underrated experiences.
Comparing Free Options Across Cities
| City | Best Free Museum | Best Free View | Best Free Nature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tokyo | Intermediatheque | Tokyo Metropolitan Govt Bldg | Imperial Palace East Garden |
| Zurich | Swiss National Museum | Lindenhügel | Flussbad Oberer Letten |
| Singapore | National Museum (permanent) | Marina Bay Promenade | MacRitchie Reservoir |
| New York | Metropolitan Museum of Art | Brooklyn Bridge Park | The High Line |
Pro Tips for Doing Expensive Cities Cheap
1. Go first thing in the morning. Popular parks, beaches, and public spaces are emptier and more enjoyable. The free Zurich swimming spots get crowded by 11am in summer.
2. Use city museum cards selectively. Singapore's TourPass and NYC's Explorer Pass cost money upfront but unlock paid experiences. Run the math before buying — sometimes free individual options beat bundle deals.
3. Find the local lunch. Tokyo's salaryman lunch specials run ¥800–1,200 ($5.50–$8.50) for a full set meal. Singapore's hawker centers average S$4–8 ($3–6) per dish. The expensive restaurants are for dinner with a reason.
3. Follow the student crowds. University neighborhoods in every city have cheap food, free gallery openings, and parks where locals actually hang out. In Zurich, the ETH/University of Zurich area has the best cheap cafes and free views. In Tokyo, Waseda and Koenji neighborhoods are excellent.
4. Check what's free by day. Most cities structure free museum access by day of week or time of day. A bit of research before your trip eliminates the disappointment of showing up on the wrong day.
Planning Your Free City Itinerary
Free experiences require more planning than paid ones — you need to know which days things are actually free, which parks close at dusk, and how to sequence neighborhoods efficiently to avoid backtracking.
Faroway is an AI trip planner that builds fully personalized daily itineraries accounting for budget constraints. Tell it you're doing Tokyo on $50/day and it'll build you a full itinerary around free museums, cheap ramen spots, and free neighborhood walks — sequenced by neighborhood so you're not crossing the city twice.
The most expensive mistake travelers make in expensive cities isn't paying for too many things. It's poor planning that wastes half a day in transit or ends up at a paid museum on a day it could have been free. Get the plan right first.
The best experiences in expensive cities are rarely the ones you pay the most for. Zurich's river swimming at sunset is better than any rooftop bar. Tokyo's Imperial Palace Garden is more peaceful than any temple admission queue. Singapore's MacRitchie jungle trails are wilder than most national parks in Southeast Asia.
You just have to know they're there.
Head to faroway.ai to build your budget-optimized itinerary — free experiences and all.
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Written by
Faroway Team
The Faroway team is passionate about making travel planning effortless with AI. We combine travel expertise with cutting-edge technology to help you explore the world.
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