Foot care is important to a happy travel experience. If your feet hurt or are cold and wet you will be miserable and curtail your activities.
My Rules of Toe:
Walk three miles in your shoes.
I only travel with shoes I have walked three miles in without hot spots or blisters. There are lots of cute practical shoes available today so there are no excuses. Even if the shoe looks comfy you have to actually walk in them: sometimes they rub here or there, or the sole is too soft to protect your feet. I have sometimes had shoes that made my knees hurt because they were too spongy.
This rule is the result of pain: I wore a comfortable, but too spongy pair to the Forebidden City the first time I went and crawled on hands and knees around the hotel room that night because I wouldn’t put my feet on the ground they hurt so bad.
Always carry an extra pair of shoes
Because…
Sometimes it rains, very hard, all day.
Many people advise traveling with only one pair of shoes along to save on weight and volume in your bag. I strongly disagree with this philosophy.
After the water logged kite festival in 2016 it took my shoes two days to get dry. There is not much nastier than putting on a cold, soggy pair of shoes to go out and about.
A pair of soft wool socks is a really good idea
For the reason above it is also a good idea to always carry one pair of nice wool socks. Arriving back from a torrential downpour experience wash your feet with warm water, dry them thoroughly and put on a pair of wool socks. If you follow this with a glass of half-way decent wine and some hot dumplings you will recover quickly.
You might not need the socks for foot care, but they are light, you can use them to protect fragile things and, if you do get a cold wet foot day, you will be ever-so glad you have them.