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Comment by jen729w | Hacker News Reader

At this point I don't understand why anybody would even bother trying to visit any of the popular spots.

For example we were in Madrid in 2019. The queue to the Prado was round the block. It was hundreds of metres long.

I don't care what's in the Prado, but it's not that good. The Mona Lisa can't be that good. The Sistine isn't that good.

Find another chapel. Find a smaller gallery. Find a lesser-known work. And actually enjoy it, rather than just seeing it so you can take your photo and tick the box.

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> The Sistine isn't that good.

Say, rather, that the poor experience of seeing it so hastily with so many other tourists is not that good. But the Sistine itself is that good. The popularity is warranted by the quality of the work.

It's a classic prisoners' dilemma.

it's not really a prisoners dilemma, as there's no opportunity for mutual reward through cooperation. there aren't enough hours in the year for everyone to get the chance to properly appreciate it. you can either set it up as a speedrun where everyone gets a five minute peek, or a lottery where most people don't see it at all.

But then tourists go and ruin the lesser known places. Tourists by and large suck, and while they may bump the economy, their "this is MY vacation" attitude drives everyone nuts. Not to mention the ecological aspect.

Best form of tourism you can do is with a VR headset.

Tourism is fine. There are plenty of paintings in the world, most of which rarely even see the light of day, and more being made every day. I recently went to a couple of local galleries in a place we were visiting (the Fukuhara Memorial Museum and the Hokkaido Landscape Museum) - absolutely stunning, and almost completely empty; they would absolutely have welcomed 10x the visitors they had. It's only the name brand places that have a problem.

But... They are that good. The David was the one for me. First time I waited in line for well over an hour. That was two decades ago. And it is still one of the best works of art I've seen. Made it back once more. Last time the line was still long so I decided to skip it. But I'd go again. There are some things that aren't really worth the long wait, but there are some things that are. And get there is still a ton of things out there to see

I visited the Vatican just a few months ago and it was wonderful.

The Mona Lisa maybe not, but Sainte-Chapelle? Yes, it's that good.

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