Somebody else pours. You just book the night.
Which canal cruise really means unlimited. What a Shinjuku bar hop costs before the second round. Whether a beer spa is worth an afternoon. Reviews of the drinks-led tours you can book anywhere in the world.
A flight of four, to start
01The boatUnlimited Prosecco, Beer and Aperol Spritz CruiseUnlimited prosecco, beer and Aperol, poured while the Danube goes past.
02The crawlGeneration Pub CrawlFive Dublin pubs and a guide who knows which back rooms are worth it.
03The breweryPilsner Urquell Brewery Tour with Beer TastingDown into the cellar for unfiltered Pilsner straight out of the barrel.
04The bar hopTokyo Bar Hopping Tour in Shinjuku (All-You-Can-Drink + Dinner)Shinjuku izakayas with the drinks counted in and dinner along the way.
Six cities where a drinks tour is the whole itinerary.
A canal with a bar on board, a cellar selling Pilsner cheaper than water, ruin bars in bombed-out courtyards, izakaya counters six deep, pubs with four hundred years on the licence, and vermut before lunch. Six places to start, and the best night out in each.
The American drinks tour runs on pedal bars, taprooms and honky tonks.
Nowhere else sells a bar crawl you pedal yourself. Four kinds of American night, what it costs to get on each one, and which town does it best.
Open bar means the tab is closed before you step aboard.
The best-selling drinks tour on the planet is the one where nobody reaches for a wallet. Read the small print anyway: house beer, wine and one spirit is the usual deal, and cocktails are usually extra.
The drinks tours more travellers book than any others.
Every drinks tour review →Boats, cellars and crawls that shift thousands of tickets a season, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Unlimited Prosecco, Beer and Aperol Spritz Cruise
See Budapest lit up from the Danube with 75 minutes of unlimited Prosecco, beer, Aperol Spritz, music, and landmark views for $29.
From · $29
Read our review →
2
Amsterdam Luxury Canal Cruise + Unlimited Drinks & Bites option
from $18
3
Heated Canal Cruise with Unlimited Drinks & Bite
from $18
4
Medieval Dinner with Unlimited Drinks
from $75
5
London Small Group Tour of Historical Pubs
from $40
6
Sunset Boat Party Cruise with DJ and Open Bar
from $27
7
Sunset or Dinner Cruise with Live Music & Open Bar
from $51
8
Luxury Saloon Boat Cruise with Cocktails & Waffle
from $21
A booze cruise is the cheapest good night on any waterfront.
Two hours, a hull, a bar that does not stop and someone else steering. Canal boats through Amsterdam, party catamarans off Cancun, a DJ deck out of Lisbon at sunset. It is the format that travels furthest.
A pub crawl buys the queue-jump and someone who knows which door.
Four or five bars, a wristband, shots included and club entry at the end. Worth it on a first night in a city where you have no idea which street is the good one.
Every pub crawl →
Brewery tours end in the tasting room, which is the entire point.
Twenty minutes of mash tuns buys you an hour of unfiltered beer poured by the person who made it. Cologne pours Kolsch in 200ml glasses until you say stop, Pilsen taps from the barrel underground, and Munich just hands you a litre.
- 1Guided Tour & Boat Ride with Optional Beer Tastingfrom $36
- 2Pilsner Urquell Experience & Beer Tastingfrom $25
- 3Brewery Tour with 3 Kölsch Beer Tastingsfrom $32
What a drinks tour actually costs, band by band.
Every tour on the site, grouped by the price on the ticket. Plenty of the best nights come in under the cost of the round you would have bought anyway.
Canal cruises, guided crawls, brewery tastings and entry tickets with a drink thrown in.
The full evenings: party catamarans, dinner cruises, bar hops with the food included.
Private boats, chauffeured tasting days and the once-a-trip nights that earn it.
Three drinking traditions that only work where they were invented.
Every city has bars. A brewery that has been feeding rice into the same tanks for two centuries, a cemetery crawl with a cup in your hand, and a door with no sign on it are harder to copy.
Sake at the Brewery Gate
Sake is brewed in the cold months, so a working kura runs its visits around the mash rather than around you. The tasting is served in small cups poured from the tank, graded by polish and by how much of the rice has been ground away, and the brewer will tell you which one to drink warm. Tokyo and Kyoto both have counters where a flight of six costs less than two cocktails, and the good ones cap numbers at a handful of people.
- 1Best of Shinjuku: Izakaya Food Tour (4 Stops, 14+ Tastings)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,863 reviews
- 2Shinjuku Local Bar and Izakaya Guided Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,794 reviews
- 31-Day Snow Monkeys, Zenko-ji Temple & Sake in Nagano★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,020 reviews
Booze and Boos
Savannah and New Orleans both allow an open container on the street, which is how the ghost walk and the pub crawl ended up as the same tour. You get the yellow-fever graveyards, the duelling grounds and the haunted taverns, with a to-go cup between stops. It runs after dark, it lasts about two hours, and the guides are usually working actors.
- 1Adults Only Haunted Pub Crawl in New Orleans★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,158 reviews
- 2Charleston Haunted Booze and Boos Ghost Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,569 reviews
- 3Haunted Savannah Booze and Boos Ghost Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,186 reviews
The Bar With No Sign
The hidden bar is a real format now: a bookshop that opens into a cocktail room, a fridge door in a hot-dog shop, a lift with one unlabelled button. You cannot find them from the street and half of them will not seat a walk-in, so the tour is the door policy. Expect three or four rooms, a made-to-order drink in each, and a guide who has to text ahead.
- 1Highline Warsaw Entry With 360° Views & Rooftop Bar★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 1,297 reviews
- 2Sofia’s Hidden Bars: 4-Hour Pub Crawl★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 884 reviews
- 3Barcelona Old Town Tapas Night: Hidden Bars, Cava & Vermut★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 454 reviews
Four drinks bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this can be sorted from a bar stool the night before. These four run on fixed sittings, timed slots and rooms that hold a set number of people.
- 01Medieval Dinner with Unlimited DrinksOne sitting an evening in one cellar. When the tables are gone, they are gone.
- 02Bernard Beer Spa with Beer and Massage OptionThe tubs are sold by the hour and there are only a few of them in the building.
- 03Entry ticket to Ice Pub Prague with Nightclub OptionEntry runs on timed slots, because the cold room holds a fixed number of coats.
- 043-Hour Kyoto Insider Sake Brewery Tour with Tastings & PairingsSmall breweries take a handful of visitors at a time, and many shut their doors during the winter brewing run.
What unlimited drinks really means, and who is going to check your ID.
Three things decide whether the night works. The drinking age, which is 21 everywhere in the United States and 18 or 20 almost everywhere else, and the photo ID that proves it. What the operator counts as unlimited, which is normally house beer, wine and one spirit, with cocktails charged separately. And whether anybody is driving, because a tasting trail with a minibus is a completely different day out from one with your own car.
By city: where the good bars are
By kind of night: tasting room, deck, crawl or club
How a drinking night runs, from the first pour to the morning after.
Aperitivo
Dinner walk
On the water
The crawl
The club
The morning afterThe newest drinks tour reviews.
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St. John PiZZA Pi Snorkel Sail with Beach Stop, Lunch & Open Bar – Westin
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Shanghai Authentic Dinner and Night River Cruise with Rooftop Bar Hopping Option
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