The attractions and landmark's are necessary to take in. There's time for both. Trust me, even the locals love the "touristy" stuff. The Londoner's I worked with were surprised that I knew more about London than they did & were envious that I did so much. They even wanted to do touristy things with me like go on a Jack the Ripper walk. There's plenty of time were I'm gonna just be putting up my feet in a pub next to the fire with quiet pint. But trust me.. even locals do things like go on a pub crawl tho. I think the things I picked out to do are necessary in getting to know the cities anyway.