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Comment by 8draco8 | Hacker News Reader

When I was going to Venice for the first time one of my co-workers gave me one little advice "when you will go out of train station, go right not left" and it was a fantastic advice. Route to the left is main route to Piazza San Marco, it's almost always overcrowded, with a lot of shady sellers, lots of shops selling cheap, china made souvenirs etc. pretty much all the things that you most likely want to avoid. On top of that advice I am also adding my own: "get lost in Venice", just go in the other direction and I will guarantee you that in 5 minutes you will end up alone in a beautiful place with some small restaurant, seemingly waiting just for you. Venice is still beautiful and worth visiting, just don't spent so much time on visiting places from the guides, get lost and you will find gems that you wouldn't find otherwise.

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Absolutely, and if you just wander around without a map, you will get lost very quickly. But you will not regret it.

My tips for anyone who wants to visit Venice: please don't support the cruise ships destroying this beautiful city, just use the train. Come for at least 5 days. Try to slowly walk through every quarter of the city (you will need 5-10 days for that). Buy a week ticket for the vaporettos and ride the vaporetto up and down canal grande in the evening. Don't dress like a stereotypical tourist. Please behave. If you are American or Chinese, actively try to lower your voice. Leave your smartphone and/or your camera at your apartment / hotel, everything you will be photographing has been photographed, painted or drawn at least a million times already. And, most importantly: don't ride the gondolas, you will get screwed financially.

I find the tourist snobbery amusing. If you’re a tourist, what are you going to dress like apart from like a tourist? As to your smart phone, are you saying that the locals don’t have their nose buried in a smart phone, like everyone else? Are the different quarters of Venice sufficiently different from each other (and from other european cities) to be worth visiting? As to gondolas—if you don’t ride one, what’s the point of going to Venice? You can get great Italian food and ride a ferry through filthy water in New York—if you’re taking the trouble to go to Venice, you’re there for the gondolas.

I used to think like lqet, and my travel habits reflected that, traveling to obscure places (at least for an American) to "get away from the crowds."

But the more I thought about it, the less comfortable I was with that line of thinking. What IS wrong with taking a picture that isn't 100% original? Is taking a picture of Piazza San Marco just as bad as a landscape photographer getting that "perfect shot" of Antelope Canyon? or Mesa Arch? [1][2]

What if you are an American with very limited vacation time each year? Or you just want an "easy" vacation? Why is one style of travel better than the other? Does a place having a ton of visitors make it worse to visit? Or is there still value to going?

I'm just rambling at this point, but I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts since I'm not sure what to feel.

[1] https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0f/1b/ec/c6/... [2] https://www.johntrotto.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/IMG_27...

> I used to think like lqet, and my travel habits reflected that, traveling to obscure places (at least for an American) to "get away from the crowds."

that seems odd to say the least. it seems highly probable to me that popular tourist attractions are popular because they're desirable to go to. sure, there's some marketing drum up in there but there's something seriously weird about going to less desirable places solely to get away from the crowds. it's almost as if you're signaling you're somehow superior or better by doing something other people aren't doing, even if that thing is objectively worse. value signaling made manifest via tourism or something.

Famous/extremely popular sights are often less rewarding because they are so famous/popular: for example, it's highly unlikely you'll be genuinely astonished by the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, because a) you've already seen it a million times and b) there's a jostling mob of other tourists five rows deep around it, so you can barely see the damned thing.

This is why the "traveller" (vs tourist) holy grail is to find places that are genuinely impressive and spacious enough to still be enjoyable.

that's fair, but i'm thinking more things like machu picchu which, while uber popular, are probably pretty hard to find in less amazing versions.

so yeah, while certainly only limited to a few places, i think there's a class of spots that one cannot necessarily reproduce in a lite version. so especially if one has limited travel opportunities, i think they're worth going to. venice is probably one of those although admittedly i haven't been.

La Ciudad Perdida, a not inca-version (for the amazing part I am not sure about that).

There are plenty of good things that haven’t been made attractions and put on the tourist map. See this a fair bit where places in Australia will have big car parks with tourist busses coming in and out all day, setup with foreign language signs. But then have similar places nearby with none of that.

I don't really think I understand the question. I usually make an effort on trips to avoid crowds. Why? Because I want to. It's not better. I don't like crowds.

I also drink coffee without milk. I drink matcha with milk. I wear a garish array of brightly-colored button-down shirts. I cross my z's when writing. None of these choices is correct. They are my choices.

No version of tourism is wrong unless it's contributing to a documented problem in which case it's obviously wrong. Tourism is recreation, no matter how eagerly it pretends to be education.

Well, since you asked... My thoughts are, feel what you feel. Nothing wrong with any feelings. It’s what you do with them that counts.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking the same picture other people took. If you liked it, you like it. You’re not harming anyone by taking a damn picture. Obviously as a tourist I try to be respectful and to learn a subset of the language while I’m there.

But hey, if you only have a week off there’s nothing wrong with going to the same place in Antelope Canyon as others went. It’s popular for a reason!

> I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts since I'm not sure what to feel

Do whatever makes you happy.

Agree and scientifically we remember by remembering. A photo on my phone is enough to remember the feeling of being there. Even if it was over crowded and i ended up paying 14 euro for a espresso.

In Florian, the oldest European cafe, you're sitting where Casanova was and you can't expect to pay 1.5 € for a Cappuccino. https://www.caffeflorian.com/en/heritage/venice-triumphantto... In other places it's a rip off.

14 euros for an espresso, seriously...?

Man, they are taking the piss. If they did that to an Italian, there would be fisticuffs.

Agreed. An expresso is <= 1 Euro in Italy. Cappuccino 1.50.

Yeah, you can stretch it to 2 or 2.50 in very nice places, but 14 is just fraud.

Definitely agree on the snobbery - it is amusing that some tourists think they'll fool someone into thinking they're a local by dressing less comfortably. You're not fooling anyone. Just be yourself and dress 'politely' and comfortably.

As for the gondolas, that's a hard pass for me. I've been to Venice twice, and was definitely not there for the gondolas. Not even for 'great Italian food' - it's not really that great at my price point, unless I travel 15-20 min away from the usual tourist sights. I'm simply there for Venice. For the canals, for the layout, for the architecture, for the history. Canal-side, I can see all I need to see from the vaporettos.

Yeah, it's strange. People think that tourists from cruise ships are destroying the city because they visit for several hours, but then they recommend that tourists should stay in the city for several days?

What's always funny to me is that tourists who are part of the derided "masses" always seem to have a lot more common with locals than the "elite traveler" types who preoccupy themselves with finding an "authentic local experience." It's hard to truly connect with the common people when you look down on the common people in your own culture.

This is an amazing point.

> As to your smart phone, are you saying that the locals don’t have their nose buried in a smart phone, like everyone else?

You're in town for just a few days, specifically to see the scenery, the locals aren't. This is the part where you're best off being more like a tourist.

Gondolas seemed like a tourist trap to me. Super expensive and you end up with bored drivers that are mostly just sitting and their phone and chatting to each other.

> Don't dress like a tourist.

One of these things is not like the others! I think better advice to the advisor would be to not judge people for how they are dressed.

> I think better advice to the advisor would be to not judge people for how they are dressed.

This would be strange advice, because you clearly would judge someone going to a high-end restaurant in a bathing suit, to a funeral in nothing but underpants or to a wedding wearing a SS uniform. These are ridiculous examples, of course, but they appear so ridiculous because one of the fabrics of any society is that on certain occasions, you should try to tune down your individuality as best as possible and try to blend in with others. In my opinion, visiting a foreign country as a guest is one of these occasions.

IDK, I feel like it's a lack of respect for the culture you're going to to not try to respect the dress code of the place you are in. In France, Americans are usually the worst offenders, wearing sweatpants and pool shorts in public.

Reversing that argument, you'd probably feel that French tourists wearing monokinis (or kids not having a full on bathsuit) on the beach in the US don't respect your culture, even though that's perfectly acceptable back home.

I feel like one of the nice things about the US, at least the urban areas, is you can present yourself however you'd like. There is no dress code. This may be why Americans sometimes fail to present themselves properly in other countries - we can get away with virtually anything here. Though I may be biased to the West Coast.

Well, it’s sort of conservative, right? You can present any way you like so long as you’re not topless, for instance.

Usually the weird rules we have for ourselves are never visible to us so I’d be somewhat hesitant to make the claim of being open to things.

In fact, if I think about it, you’d probably be stared at and feel like a spectacle and probably unwelcome with a toga, a kilt, or a lungi (even the formal variant). I don’t even think you could wear the top end of some of those clothing varieties and go to many places in SF (generally a downmarket place for clothes).

If someone wears a kilt or a toga, people here might say to their friend "hey, that person is wearing a kilt/toga". That's about the extent of it. I see people wearing such things semi-frequently and think very little of it. Same with burkas, bathing suits, pretty much everything except "nudity", but even that is acceptable at large events in SF.

This is one of those things you've got to do to experience, mate. I don't know what to tell you. I live in SF and have lived in a few places in the world.

The other guy put it really well. It will increase the friction you experience.

The gamut might be wider but "however you'd like" is a bit of a stretch. Wearing traditional Arabian dress -- for men or women -- would almost certainly increase the amount of friction you experience in a day. Also, a frivolous example; women are pretty rarely topless on mainstream beaches even in CA.

> you'd probably feel

Actually, I'm purely merit based in my judgments. You can wear a leaf on a string and water wings for all I care. Then again, I also don't much care what prejudiced people think of me. I just go about my business feeling sorry for them.

The issue is that pickpockets and others looking to target more "naive" tourists will be less likely to target you if you're dressed less like a tourist.

Good luck convincing a town of people to not recognize a tourist by their clothing. What does that even mean anyway?

It's not about being recognized as a tourist. It's about judging people by their actions, instead of how they look. All the other things mentioned are actions that could be considered rude or abrasive. Someone should not have to dress like you for you to treat them well, for that is the fault of the prejudiced.

Might be more pragmatic to not dress like a tourist rather than to convert the entire population to your philosophy about not ever judging by appearance.

I'll also add that the reason that you wouldn't want to dress like a tourist is to mislead locals about what you actually are, which is a tourist. Judging you substantively would mean judging you as one of the tourists that makes them want to leave the town they grew up in.

While ultimately true, the problem is that you can't control how other people think or judge, but you can control what you wear.

I love Venice and I love taking photos of things. It isn't about the thing. It's about capturing the feeling. One photo I have brings to mind a rainy day where I got lost there, soaked through my jacket, and my umbrella inverted. I can still remember the wind whipping through my hair before the storm, and the feeling of pleasant dryness when I got home. And all I need for that is a half-assed non-horizontal-horizon photo.

> Don't dress like a tourist.

What does this mean? How do tourists dress? How would it differ from a non-tourist?

Fanny pack, ugly shirt, shorts with too many pockets, shoes (which look silly with shorts). Can spot the typical American tourist from a mile away. Euro tourists look a bit different, but still almost always dress the same as each other.

The gist of it is, tourists typically are carrying way more shit than they need and look silly more often than not. It's also nice to just walk around with the same amount of shit as you would if you were walking around your home city.

You can always spot German tourists when traveling abroad. They are the ones with the extremely technical hiking clothing wandering around the museum.

I’m only kind of kidding. That is to say tourists look like tourists everywhere because they are different. The better advice than “don’t dress like a tourist” is “don’t expect where you are traveling to be the same as where you are from. Take some time to see if you can pick out what they are.”

Fanny packs aren’t really an American thing. Actually, you’ve basically described Australian tourists in Bali in my experience.

In Europe at least, nine times out of ten, that tourist is not American. We just aren’t very numerous compared to Europeans in Europe (don’t you know most of us don’t even have passports). Russians on the other hand....

Are you sure this description of an American tourist didn't come from a 1990s newspaper cartoon? Fanny pack? Really?

I changed that to "stereotypical" tourist above, but I agree that this is still a bit harsh.

What I meant was that: if you are visiting a town in a foreign country, it would at least be polite to research beforehand how locals dress and what is considered rude, inappropriate or simply tasteless.

Not what I was expecting at all, I wish people dressed that well on vacation. I thought you were going to link to someting more like https://goo.gl/maps/AnzFYfXAuCDt2rDD8

That said, all of these measures you describe are a bit much. There are a million ways to tell that somebody's a tourist, are you going to pretend you're there to raise VC?

Edit: Parent's editing their comments a lot so mine makes no sense now, but they linked to https://img.budgettravel.com/_facebookShare/tourists-in-spai... as an example of tourist attire.

So...comfortable and practical?

People don't want to do laundry on their vacation. And unless you're rich and have porters lugging around massive luggage with carefully packed fashionable clothes, people are also space-constrained

So, they optimize for comfortable, quick-dry, wrinkle-free clothes so they can maximize exploration and energy.

That's......what you have to do when you are spending your limited vacation time to see the world.

Part of this is definitely a snobby european mindset. Europeans get 5-6 weeks of vacation a year, and burn 4 of those on August so they are used to LOONG consecutive getaways, and structure their lives accordingly.

The rest of the world (And I don't mean America, I mean the entire rest of the non-European world) doesn't have that luxury.

Maybe it is just you who doesn't have long vacations.

My relatives from Canada are constantly complaining how they have only 10 days of vacation per year yet every year entire family takes road trips that last 5-6 weeks. Every second year they come to visit Europe.

Your relatives are retired, or are taking unpaid leave.

I'm not speaking for myself, I'm speaking for the vast majority of the world.

Do you seriously think that tourists from China, Japan, India, and the US have 5-6 weeks of vacation every year?

To be so blind to your own privilege...befuddling..

If they take unpaid leave that means they are compensated well enough so they can afford to take unpaid leave. What is the difference between having paid vacation days or having a salary so high that you can afford unpaid leave?

Also, this is a nice indicator as well... https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/china/ https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/japan/ https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/india/

compared to this: https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/croatia/

I don't have any problem with the usual tourist attire, but still appreciate if people are dressed nicely. Parent may have a stronger view.

I don't see why research is necessary for most destinations. The key factor is just wearing pants. Unless you're actually near a beach. That seems really hard for a lot of tourists, but I think just wearing jeans instead of cargo shorts or board shorts resolves most of the problem with tourist garb.

There is actually a public gondola that you can take across the canal grande for just a few euros, which is a cool way to at least say you've been in one without getting screwed.

> If you are American or Chinese, actively try to lower your voice.

Only American and Chinese? If you're Dutch, you can still talk as loudly as you want to?

I am living in a fairly touristic European town and have visited plenty of the main tourist towns across Europe over the last decade. Without any intention to be judgmental, I can safely say that in general, Americans and middle-aged Chinese tourist don't keep their voice down intuitively. This is not their fault, of course. For example, both inner cities and living quarters are much more spacious in the US than in Europe, simply because the population density is much higher (117 per km² in the EU compared to 34 per km² in the US). In a typical European living quarter, if you are too loud on your porch or balcony, you are disturbing dozens of people or waking up babies. In the US, the next house may be so far away the neighbors won't even hear you. Add to this that around 77% of people in the US live in houses [0], compared to ~42% of Europeans who live in flats [1] (in countries like Switzerland or Germany, more than 60% of the population lives in flats, in Italy it's still over 50% [2]). In a flat, if you are too loud or if you don't walk quietly (especially in pre-WWII buildings), you are disturbing your neighbors. For that reason, in Europe (and I am sure in other parts of the world with similar population densities) children are reminded from an extremely early age that they have to keep their voice down and walk quietly when in a flat.

Again, I am not saying this applies to every American or Chinese, and of course there are German / British / French / Italian / Indian / Arabic / [...] tourists who do this.

[0] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-American-popula...

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Europe

I certainly try to teach my kids to keep their voice down, but I'm having little success so far.

But from what I understand, Dutch tourists also have a reputation for being loud and/or rude. Maybe more rude than loud, but I tend to see them as going together.

Eh, it really depends who is hard of hearing or not. Those younger Americans who travel are likely not living in detached homes, while maybe the older ones are.

Curious, as an American who lived in Lausanne (kind of touristic town) for a couple of years and China for ten, I rarely encountered American tourists at all. I’m sure they exist, but they don’t travel in huge groups like Chinese do, so are pretty impossible to pick out.

If you do get lost in Venice, you will discover that Google maps often can't tell you exactly where you are because the streets are too narrow and the walls too thick. Funny enough Apple maps on my iPhone does a better job navigating in Venice. It's easy to get lost in Venice when walking through the dark alleys that you find everywhere.

Venice late at night can be a pretty cool experience too. I had the place almost entirely to myself (this was December)

I'll summarise your advice as "Get off the beaten track and explore."

This is good advice and it applies to any touristy destination.

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