City Viking publishes practical, attraction-by-attraction travel guides for cities and destinations across the United States and beyond. This page explains how those guides are researched, ordered, illustrated and kept accurate, so you can judge for yourself how much to trust what you read here.
How we choose what makes a list
Our “best things to do” lists are not personal opinion dressed up as fact. Each guide starts from a data-led shortlist: we combine a broad brainstorm of candidate places with live listings data (including public review counts and ratings from Google Places), then rank candidates primarily by the volume of real visitor reviews they have earned. We apply category limits and floors so a single type of attraction — museums, parks, restaurants — can’t crowd out a balanced itinerary, and we hand-pick a small “editor’s choice” set of the places most distinctive to each destination. The result is a list weighted toward the places real visitors actually rate highly, not the ones that paid to appear.
How we write each entry
Every entry is written to help you decide whether a place is worth your time: what it is, what to expect, and the practical context you need to plan a visit. Where a place has an official website or authoritative source, we link to it directly so you can check hours, prices and booking details at the source. Our guides are produced by a team of writers, researchers, proofreaders and editors, and many also draw on guest contributions from travel bloggers and local residents who write from first-hand experience. Every submission — staff or guest — is edited to meet these standards before it goes live.
How we source and licence images
The photographs in our guides come from licensed and openly-licensed sources — Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons and openly-licensed Flickr — and every image carries a credit naming the photographer, the platform and, where the licence requires it, a link to the specific licence deed. We keep a private master record of the provenance and licence of every image on the site, and we do not use images we cannot attribute correctly.
How we keep guides accurate
Attractions close, prices change and seasons shift, so a travel guide is only useful if it is kept current. Our published articles are reviewed for accuracy roughly every three months. When a guide has been through a verification pass — where we re-check that every external link still resolves, that each named place is still open and not closed, renamed or demolished, and that our superlative claims still hold — we stamp it with a dated “Last verified” line so you can see exactly how fresh it is. Guides awaiting their next check keep our standing commitment to review roughly quarterly.
Corrections
We’d rather be told when we’re wrong than leave a mistake standing. If you spot something that’s out of date, closed, or simply incorrect, please tell us — reader corrections are one of the ways we keep every guide trustworthy. You can also read more about who we are.