We visit cities largely to see our connection to the past, not the present. Venice is very modern, outside of the old city. But nobody goes to see the new stuff. Same for Rome. The colosseum is surrounded by modern structures that no one cares about.
In America we are less inclined to build the new in and around the old. We bulldoze the old. It's in our way. As we bulldoze the buildings, we also bulldoze our sense of who we are and how we got here.
That does much to explain our collective sense of dissociation.
Yet sometimes we learn lessons. Manhattan learned when Penn(sylvania) Station was torn down and hauled away to landfills. Grand Central Station speaks to what was learned by that colossal mistake. A beautiful site to stand in. It inspires hope.
Yes, I miss Portland Oregon too (back when it did the civilization thing in pluralistic harmony).
What is the "sign of the devil"? Haha! Like, "rock on!" index & pinky horns?
I'm glad I got to experience the old world decades ago as well but since covid I've not traveled at all – basically melded Thoreau's backyard asceticism mixed with Sagan's "spaceship of the imagination" (also a kind of transcendentalism). It's not bad – there is serendipity and unexpected experiences to be had for sure!
A classmate invited me to Valencia last year, but rescinded it when she saw I voted for Trump. Another friend in Madrid said my vote "made sense" and invited me – a Spanish door closes, a Spanish door opens! So perhaps I'll get over to the Iberian Peninsula soon as well.
Thanks for the excellent essay Heather. "Throngers" 🤘🤘 lol! I like how you talk about Schrödinger's cat as a metaphor for tourism blight, and then encounter a beautiful unexpected waterwheel full of feral cats that seemed unchanged by visitors. Did you leap the paradox?
I can remember how magical Portland was when I was living there. We used to go and play in the fountains in the middle of the night. It was peaceful, clean and safe. Every time I visit now my heart hurts.
Heather - this column took me forever to read - searching out all the sights and stories you mentioned - an enjoyable hour at the computer, ignoring the strum and drang of today's world. David Lodge wrote an interesting book that involved tourism to some extent: Paradise News alerted me to how much tourism physically changes the landscape of tourist sites, something that (back in my halcyon youth living in a summer tourist spot in New England) never occurred to me. On a much later trip to Barcelona with a very small group from Tufts University - tour guide and all, one of our members decided to forego the Thursday visit to our scheduled destination because "she wanted to know what it was like to be a person in Barcelona on a Thursday." Granted, she couldn't really know how Catalans felt, but I admired her decision. On another trip - this one to Paris - unchaperoned except by good friend from my home town who'd been born in Nancy and knew Paris well - we went to the Musée d'Orsay where I witnessed an intrepid young gentleman with a video cam on his shoulder, going through pictures in gallery after gallery, never once looking at the art with his own eyes, just filming everything, row by row, room by room. I wondered then (still do) if he ever watched it all - or if he bored family and friends with a long "tour" of the museum. Thanks so much for a delightful, informative, and curiosity-provoking read.
It's so peculiar that our different personalities appreciate vastly different things. A friend is a native of the Ivory Coast. She immigrated to France, as did some of her family members; (some went on to the UK) and lived outside of Paris for quite a few years. Then she came here to the US and became a citizen. Of all things she's seen, she (and her mother, who comes to visit from Paris a few times a year) is CRAZY about the White House. She and her mother will visit Washington just to see the White House again every time her mother is in the US. I'm actually hoping they can go inside on a tour again now that they've resumed. If it makes her happy, who am I to say. ;)
My friend's husband is dying of cancer. I have promised her that after he passes we will go to Italy. She went to Europe with her family and they ran from spot to spot, never taking a breath, and she wants to just sit and be. What a wonderful place to go grieve. I promised we would go places no one goes and just relax. She wants to see Paris too, but the last time I was there, in 2011, it had already changed so much that I struggled. I could remember a fresh new Pompidou Center you just explored and walked into; now it is like airport security.
Here in Florida we call the bitter oranges "rootstock citrus." If your tree that bears such delicious fruit dies in a freeze, it will often come back to life -- but in the form of the much more hardy tree onto which the toothsome variety has been grafted.
All is not lost, however. In addition to marmalade, one can make very good "lemonade" from rootstock fruit.
As one who lives in Mickey's Backyard, I know well the love 'em and hate 'em attitude toward tourists. Our theme parks are essential to our thriving economy, but I cannot imagine why so many people spend so much money to visit them. Certainly such tourists see nothing of the real, wild, wonderful state that is Florida.
I can steelman the tourist industry a bit, however. In places we visited in Europe, notably along the Rhine, there are beautiful, historical small towns that depend on tourists for their survival. That experience provides nothing of the value of experiencing what a culture is really like -- but if the alternative is that the small towns, their historical sites, and what is left of their culture totally disappear, surface-level tourism is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Also, I've found in my own life a very pleasant cycle emerges: I'll know little about a certain city, state, or country, and be not particularly motivated to learn more about any one place over another. Then I visit the area, even at a very superficial level, and suddenly it's on my radar, and my ears perk up at every mention. I get much more out of books and videos about it. If I am fortunate enough to return, I go fortified with a lot more knowledge and interest, and can enjoy the experience at a much more important level. And I return home even more knowledgeable and interested.
I think the ideal tourist visit is one taken with someone who knows the culture from the inside, someone who lives there, or at least has lived there in the past. I was greatly blessed by being able to do that in Brazil, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand, and the Gambia. Absent that opportunity, however, I'm glad that tourist-lite is still available.
I sometimes hire local guides just for myself so I can see what I like and talk to them. I had a 12 hour layover in Bogota and hired a guide. It was wonderful as he was a biologist so he could understand why I would want to stop and just watch a beautiful insect or spend lots of time with the produce. They had the best produce I have seen in my life.
Love this line: "...there is no way to visit a place as an outsider without bringing the outside in with you, no matter how hard you try not to."
I live in a rural area with surrounding towns that also need the income from hordes of tourists, so I really get this. Years ago I saw a very Alaskan bumper sticker for sale that I nearly put on my car, but I couldn't because I owned an art gallery and frame shop in town, with my business car parked right in front. It said WHY DO THEY CALL IT TOURIST SEASON IF YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO SHOOT THEM???
Also, interesting altercation between the Muslim men considered the word Islam means "peace", right?
There are still plenty of places to go which are uncrowded. By the Rome Airport in Fiumicino, is Ostia Antica, a huge Roman ruin which is rarely touristed and quite spectacular. During Covid I went to Italy and it was still busy, but I went to Pompeii on a very rainy day. As I was originally from the Northwest, this did not bother me. I was in the archaeological park for hours in heavy rain with only a handful of other people, most of the time I saw none, it was magical. Paestum is rarely busy. There are thousands upon thousands of lesser known areas. Orvieto mid week and off season is mostly locals. Same for Mexico, I have never run into another American tourist in the Sierra Gorda.
I have lived and worked in tourist areas and we hated them too. They did not respect our space. I remember a girl I worked with who had a t-shirt that said, "Vermont, where the flakes come in winter".
I live in the Southwest now. Getting designated as a monument or protected area is the kiss of death unless the roads are bad. Grand Staircase Escalante used to be only used by people in the know, now it is being trashed and the Natives are not allowed to use it for their traditional gathering of herbs. People who had lived in the area for generations had to leave.
Once again, there are lesser known parts of the southwest that are not touristed and still wonderful to visit. Near where I live in Nevada we have a new monument, but it cannot be accessed without good clearance and the dirt road gets terrible after rain. It is still nice. Other areas are barely visited at all. We went on a hike to petroglyphs on Thanksgiving day and saw no other people.
Tell me about it ... presently traveling through southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) for a couple of months - haven't been back since 1980-82 when I spent years traveling thru SEAsia, India, Nepal, the Pacific etc.
In a nutshell: it is overrun, utterly overrun.
And the recent fast train from China through Laos is just one addition to the throngs upon throngs of Chinese tourists, vying for space with the domestic tourists, Aussies, Koreans, Europeans & a handful of Americans. Deeply dismayed ...
Yet ... yet ... as you wrote - those holy moments when we manage to 'escape the Matrix' and encounter beauty, unsurpassed!
And my own home-sweet-home, partly in French-speaking Switzerland, and a few months of the year on Big Island Hawaii - both bear all the marks of the Throngers as well. One becomes adept at finding the secret spots, though.😅
We visit cities largely to see our connection to the past, not the present. Venice is very modern, outside of the old city. But nobody goes to see the new stuff. Same for Rome. The colosseum is surrounded by modern structures that no one cares about.
In America we are less inclined to build the new in and around the old. We bulldoze the old. It's in our way. As we bulldoze the buildings, we also bulldoze our sense of who we are and how we got here.
That does much to explain our collective sense of dissociation.
Yet sometimes we learn lessons. Manhattan learned when Penn(sylvania) Station was torn down and hauled away to landfills. Grand Central Station speaks to what was learned by that colossal mistake. A beautiful site to stand in. It inspires hope.
Yes, I miss Portland Oregon too (back when it did the civilization thing in pluralistic harmony).
What is the "sign of the devil"? Haha! Like, "rock on!" index & pinky horns?
I'm glad I got to experience the old world decades ago as well but since covid I've not traveled at all – basically melded Thoreau's backyard asceticism mixed with Sagan's "spaceship of the imagination" (also a kind of transcendentalism). It's not bad – there is serendipity and unexpected experiences to be had for sure!
A classmate invited me to Valencia last year, but rescinded it when she saw I voted for Trump. Another friend in Madrid said my vote "made sense" and invited me – a Spanish door closes, a Spanish door opens! So perhaps I'll get over to the Iberian Peninsula soon as well.
Thanks for the excellent essay Heather. "Throngers" 🤘🤘 lol! I like how you talk about Schrödinger's cat as a metaphor for tourism blight, and then encounter a beautiful unexpected waterwheel full of feral cats that seemed unchanged by visitors. Did you leap the paradox?
I can remember how magical Portland was when I was living there. We used to go and play in the fountains in the middle of the night. It was peaceful, clean and safe. Every time I visit now my heart hurts.
Jason... I love this comment in its entirety. :)
Thank you so much Heather. I’m so grateful for you and your writing.
Heather - this column took me forever to read - searching out all the sights and stories you mentioned - an enjoyable hour at the computer, ignoring the strum and drang of today's world. David Lodge wrote an interesting book that involved tourism to some extent: Paradise News alerted me to how much tourism physically changes the landscape of tourist sites, something that (back in my halcyon youth living in a summer tourist spot in New England) never occurred to me. On a much later trip to Barcelona with a very small group from Tufts University - tour guide and all, one of our members decided to forego the Thursday visit to our scheduled destination because "she wanted to know what it was like to be a person in Barcelona on a Thursday." Granted, she couldn't really know how Catalans felt, but I admired her decision. On another trip - this one to Paris - unchaperoned except by good friend from my home town who'd been born in Nancy and knew Paris well - we went to the Musée d'Orsay where I witnessed an intrepid young gentleman with a video cam on his shoulder, going through pictures in gallery after gallery, never once looking at the art with his own eyes, just filming everything, row by row, room by room. I wondered then (still do) if he ever watched it all - or if he bored family and friends with a long "tour" of the museum. Thanks so much for a delightful, informative, and curiosity-provoking read.
It's so peculiar that our different personalities appreciate vastly different things. A friend is a native of the Ivory Coast. She immigrated to France, as did some of her family members; (some went on to the UK) and lived outside of Paris for quite a few years. Then she came here to the US and became a citizen. Of all things she's seen, she (and her mother, who comes to visit from Paris a few times a year) is CRAZY about the White House. She and her mother will visit Washington just to see the White House again every time her mother is in the US. I'm actually hoping they can go inside on a tour again now that they've resumed. If it makes her happy, who am I to say. ;)
My friend's husband is dying of cancer. I have promised her that after he passes we will go to Italy. She went to Europe with her family and they ran from spot to spot, never taking a breath, and she wants to just sit and be. What a wonderful place to go grieve. I promised we would go places no one goes and just relax. She wants to see Paris too, but the last time I was there, in 2011, it had already changed so much that I struggled. I could remember a fresh new Pompidou Center you just explored and walked into; now it is like airport security.
Here in Florida we call the bitter oranges "rootstock citrus." If your tree that bears such delicious fruit dies in a freeze, it will often come back to life -- but in the form of the much more hardy tree onto which the toothsome variety has been grafted.
All is not lost, however. In addition to marmalade, one can make very good "lemonade" from rootstock fruit.
As one who lives in Mickey's Backyard, I know well the love 'em and hate 'em attitude toward tourists. Our theme parks are essential to our thriving economy, but I cannot imagine why so many people spend so much money to visit them. Certainly such tourists see nothing of the real, wild, wonderful state that is Florida.
I can steelman the tourist industry a bit, however. In places we visited in Europe, notably along the Rhine, there are beautiful, historical small towns that depend on tourists for their survival. That experience provides nothing of the value of experiencing what a culture is really like -- but if the alternative is that the small towns, their historical sites, and what is left of their culture totally disappear, surface-level tourism is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Also, I've found in my own life a very pleasant cycle emerges: I'll know little about a certain city, state, or country, and be not particularly motivated to learn more about any one place over another. Then I visit the area, even at a very superficial level, and suddenly it's on my radar, and my ears perk up at every mention. I get much more out of books and videos about it. If I am fortunate enough to return, I go fortified with a lot more knowledge and interest, and can enjoy the experience at a much more important level. And I return home even more knowledgeable and interested.
I think the ideal tourist visit is one taken with someone who knows the culture from the inside, someone who lives there, or at least has lived there in the past. I was greatly blessed by being able to do that in Brazil, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand, and the Gambia. Absent that opportunity, however, I'm glad that tourist-lite is still available.
I sometimes hire local guides just for myself so I can see what I like and talk to them. I had a 12 hour layover in Bogota and hired a guide. It was wonderful as he was a biologist so he could understand why I would want to stop and just watch a beautiful insect or spend lots of time with the produce. They had the best produce I have seen in my life.
Love this line: "...there is no way to visit a place as an outsider without bringing the outside in with you, no matter how hard you try not to."
I live in a rural area with surrounding towns that also need the income from hordes of tourists, so I really get this. Years ago I saw a very Alaskan bumper sticker for sale that I nearly put on my car, but I couldn't because I owned an art gallery and frame shop in town, with my business car parked right in front. It said WHY DO THEY CALL IT TOURIST SEASON IF YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO SHOOT THEM???
Also, interesting altercation between the Muslim men considered the word Islam means "peace", right?
There are still plenty of places to go which are uncrowded. By the Rome Airport in Fiumicino, is Ostia Antica, a huge Roman ruin which is rarely touristed and quite spectacular. During Covid I went to Italy and it was still busy, but I went to Pompeii on a very rainy day. As I was originally from the Northwest, this did not bother me. I was in the archaeological park for hours in heavy rain with only a handful of other people, most of the time I saw none, it was magical. Paestum is rarely busy. There are thousands upon thousands of lesser known areas. Orvieto mid week and off season is mostly locals. Same for Mexico, I have never run into another American tourist in the Sierra Gorda.
I have lived and worked in tourist areas and we hated them too. They did not respect our space. I remember a girl I worked with who had a t-shirt that said, "Vermont, where the flakes come in winter".
I live in the Southwest now. Getting designated as a monument or protected area is the kiss of death unless the roads are bad. Grand Staircase Escalante used to be only used by people in the know, now it is being trashed and the Natives are not allowed to use it for their traditional gathering of herbs. People who had lived in the area for generations had to leave.
Once again, there are lesser known parts of the southwest that are not touristed and still wonderful to visit. Near where I live in Nevada we have a new monument, but it cannot be accessed without good clearance and the dirt road gets terrible after rain. It is still nice. Other areas are barely visited at all. We went on a hike to petroglyphs on Thanksgiving day and saw no other people.
Fantastic article.
Tell me about it ... presently traveling through southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) for a couple of months - haven't been back since 1980-82 when I spent years traveling thru SEAsia, India, Nepal, the Pacific etc.
In a nutshell: it is overrun, utterly overrun.
And the recent fast train from China through Laos is just one addition to the throngs upon throngs of Chinese tourists, vying for space with the domestic tourists, Aussies, Koreans, Europeans & a handful of Americans. Deeply dismayed ...
Yet ... yet ... as you wrote - those holy moments when we manage to 'escape the Matrix' and encounter beauty, unsurpassed!
And my own home-sweet-home, partly in French-speaking Switzerland, and a few months of the year on Big Island Hawaii - both bear all the marks of the Throngers as well. One becomes adept at finding the secret spots, though.😅