If you're looking for a way to retrieve "Popular Times" information for a particular place without using the Google Places API, I recommend checking out this GitHub repository.

This repository provides a tool to directly scrape "Popular Times" data from Google Maps using just the URL of the place. Unlike other solutions, such as the popular times GitHub repository that requires an API key (which can sometimes risk account suspension), this tool is simple to use and does not require an API key.

All you need to do is provide the Google Maps URL for the location, and it will fetch the "Popular Times" data for all days of the week. It’s a lightweight, effective solution for personal or educational use.