The best way to visit Sibiu: The Questo Experience

The other day, I invited two enthusiastic and adventurous friends – one a local, the other a German to explore the city of Sibiu in a modern, innovative way.

I figured it was about time to upgrade my approach when showing friends around since I discovered Questo and its super exciting quests.

Having stumbled upon it a while back myself, I became intrigued by its ability to delight my neurons with one dopamine boost after the other. I guess the thirst for adventure has always been close to my heart, and Questo seems to master the recipe of feeding my appetite one quest at a time.

Curious to learn more, I discovered that each route a.k.a. quest is based on a specific theme: a movie, a book, a historical fact, or just a local legend. In London, for instance, travelers can explore the city as Sherlock Holmes or Isaac Newton, while in Paris they can play as Hemingway or Picasso. Don’t know about you out there, but the little Sherlock in my head is jubilating to the prospect of one day going to London and solving its great clues and mysteries.

Coming back to Sibiu, my friends and I had two options to pick from: we could either defend the city’s fortress or discover the 7 towers of Sibiu through a walking tour, which is also a city game. We chose the latter and felt ready to embark on the 3,2 km journey that promised to unveil the stories that shaped the city’s identity.

First, they had to download Questo and create an account. One minute later, they were done and ready to unlock the secrets of Sibiu. And in spite of the angry-looking clouds outside pointing out the obvious – the high probability of us getting really wet – we decided to give it a go nonetheless.

One of my favorite thing about Questo is its flexible approach: you can always pause the game and come back to it later. Exactly the kind of feature that might come in handy when you’re running around with kids, hiding from the sun or the rain, starving or simply looking for a break.

The game was on: venturing on less crowded paths, the girls activated all the sensors that made them aware of their surroundings and started paying attention to the beauty slowly disclosing itself one building at a time.

Touring around the old citadel and exploring hidden passages, Debi and Eva joined the club of the 400.000 explorers who finished at least one quest while walking more than 1.000.000 kilometers all around the globe. Pretty fantastic club to be joining if you consider that circling the earth one time takes about 40.075 km.

Questo has over 1000 available experiences created by a growing network of local content creators and is currently present in 500 cities worldwide.

As the game got more intense, I couldn’t help notice the big smiles and constant laughter of the girls that were thrilled to discover new perspectives of this beautiful city. Apparently, Booking.com and People’ Choice Award knew what they were doing when they choose to reward Questo for its impressive strategy of disrupting the travel industry.

As we were wandering, I stumbled upon a very familiar image: that of bored, exhausted tourists in big groups taking selfies in the exact same locations, waiting for the guide to stop talking so they can all grab a bite and sit down. I smiled as I was observing Debi and Eva’s experience that seemed to be quite different: they stopped to marvel at the great architecture at their own pace, cheering each other’s progress and feeling like an authentic team.

At the end, curious to see whether my observations matched their experience, I’ve asked them to express their feelings and this is what they said:

We’ve all agreed that the proper English translation to this is: Questo is the besto!