Re:Tourism Is Overwhelming the World's Top Destinations
by UncleOxidant on Monday August 12, 2019 @12:59PM
(#20677354)
> There will soon not even be any actual Native French people in Paris at the rate things are going
I visited Venice in December '04. We stayed at a proto-Air-BnB (Air BnB didn't exist yet, but it was something very similar). Talking to the host we learned that she was from Moldova. The owners of the apartment lived elsewhere in Italy and only visited rarely. We went out to a restaurant and again, the people running it were not Italians - Eastern Europeans. It seemed very similar wherever we went in Venice.
The whole Venice experience seemed a lot like a sort of ancient Disney Land. It was the real old stuff, but somehow it just didn't seem real. Drunk tourists stumbling about getting their pics taken with people dressed up as masquaraders. It was kind of a bizarre experience. I much preferred the other out-of-the way, small Italian villages we visited on that trip.
I visited Venice in December '04. We stayed at a proto-Air-BnB (Air BnB didn't exist yet, but it was something very similar). Talking to the host we learned that she was from Moldova. The owners of the apartment lived elsewhere in Italy and only visited rarely. We went out to a restaurant and again, the people running it were not Italians - Eastern Europeans. It seemed very similar wherever we went in Venice.
The whole Venice experience seemed a lot like a sort of ancient Disney Land. It was the real old stuff, but somehow it just didn't seem real. Drunk tourists stumbling about getting their pics taken with people dressed up as masquaraders. It was kind of a bizarre experience. I much preferred the other out-of-the way, small Italian villages we visited on that trip.