Beautiful Cities Overcrowding with Tourists

You are so excited to finally visit (fill in the blank) for that European luxury vacation.
Insert: Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Venice, Florence, Prague…

You arrive in, let’s say, Venice, with grand expectations for viewing ancient architecture, tasting time-honored traditional cuisine, and meeting locals, deciphering their native language – only to discover buses, boatloads of waddling cruise-shippers, throngs of foreign tourists cramming the centuries’ old piazzas and museums, not a local in sight. Unfortunately, you also spot Dominos and McDonalds, along with Asians clamoring for selfies in front of magnificent monuments and landmarks. Let’s talk about Paris, the City of Lights has transformed to the city of lines… long lines at Paris’ Louvre just to get a glimpse of Mona Lisa – that’s it, in and out in mobs.

This tourist-overrun phenomenon, we have encountered in too many extraordinary European destinations for it to be coincidental or post-Covid travel boom. We’ve witnessed the trashiness of Amsterdam, the barrage on Barcelona, the busloads of “bucket listers” in Paris, the cruiseshippers clogging the canal alleys of Venice, the packed plazas of Prague. Even the cutest canal-lined Dutch village of Giethorn was bogged down with hundreds of bumper boats jamming the narrow waterways (rental boats crashing into 16^th century wooden canal bridges) and buses of day trippers creating a conga-line on otherwise pretty pedestrian walkways. These “bucket list” tourists come for a few hours, snap their photos of thatched roof Netherlands cottages, grab a quick cheap snack, and leave a mess in their wake. I sympathize with the locals…

Our suggestion, visit these gateway cities and capitals as your entry to Italy, France, Spain, Austria, The Netherlands, then get out into the quieter countryside as soon as possible for a more authentic travel experience. Our best travel in recent years has been exploring on bicycle the Loire Valley of France, and biking North and South Holland – not just the bustling hub of Amsterdam. From Prague, we loved traveling beyond to the authentic villages of Karlovy Vary, Telc and České Budejovice where we were the minority as visitors amongst Czech locals.

In Portugal, we quickly departed the busy city of Lisbon, to drive north to beautiful Porto for a few days, then travelled east up the splendid Douro River toward Spain and witnessed the 13th-century Schist Villages made entirely of stone, and see the ancient castle towns of Evora, and Sintra.

When a city or destination is acclaimed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, that’s the beginning of the end of its charm and colloquialism. We’ve witnessed the Jungfrau Region of Switzerland altered from the most spectacular region of the Swiss Alps to now a very busy, crowded valley. Same goes for Zermatt Switzerland, still a car-free ski town, but so crowded with photo-snapping bucket-listers.

The UNESCO designation is a blessing and a curse, you have been warned here, as it becomes a “must-visit” for many tourists just bagging the photo, without investing time to explore the region, or purchase lodging to spend a few nights and truly get to know the area, its cultures and traditions.

Next travel, be sure to respect local traditions, purchase meals at authentic restaurants, stay in generational family-owned lodging, invest time in learning and living within the cultures you are visiting. Be gracious and friendly to locals, make an effort to learn a few expressions of their language (hello, please and thank you are a great start). Buy some handcrafted items native to the region.