Same situation for visitors to the UK. I've given up trying to tell tourists to get out of London, they never listen.
I’d tell tourists to start with and stay in London unless they’re on an unusually long trip. It’s the second greatest city in world history and all, the rest of the country is pretty drab by comparison.
Assuming we are talking about England. Scotland and Ireland are another story.
I appreciate that it's an important city, has many cultural attractions and many people love the place. But for me it's too big, too chaotic and, as I say above, too weird, and I would prefer to stay away from it entirely.
Traveling should be about experience the local reality, not cherry picking.
It's like going to London and Paris and claiming you have seen „real“ Europe. No, it was just few cherry picked non-representative bits.
It would be like going to most of Europe, and then someone complaining you didn't see the "real" Europe because you skipped Portugal and Croatia.
And visiting a one-sided 50% is still missing a big portion. That's like saying that if you visit Germany/France/UK, you've seen all the europe. Nordics and East be damned because it's less than 50% of population so who cares. But then you end up with very skewed view of what europe is.
The ones with a skewed view of the US are the ones that think small towns are representative of the country in any major way.
Sorry, but I hate this when people claim they „travelled europe“ but turns out they've seen the usual Paris/Rome/London/etc central areas. No, that means you visited those cities. Getting to know a region requires visiting diverse places.
I’d happily spend a week in Denver. Looks pretty nice.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g33388-Activities-De...
There's a nice cities that are forgotten by international tourists. New Orleans, Nashville, Chicago to name a few. But imo you can skip pretty much anything west of the Mississippi without missing out on much until you get to the coast. I'm not saying all those places suck, just that they're not tourism friendly.
And I have more examples: Cinqueterre is out of this world. In same cases it's true though: Florence left me unimpressed, but I think it was the fault of the huge influx of tourists and peddlers that ruined everything.
In some cities, like London, the rule applies fractally. Avoid anywhere listed in tourist guides and there are lots of great suburbs to explore.
Whereas a city like Paris, great as it is to lay eyes on the Eiffel Tower and the Arch de Triumph, the city is ultimately a dilution of its former self. These days most major cities are very same-same.