Travel Which Way Decision: Should you go to touristy places?

Featured image above: Iconic Piazza San Marco peaceful late at night, Venice.

Touristy places, by definition, are popular with travelers and yet at many such sites, those very same people complain that the places are overrated. Sometimes they are even called the ultimate put down – a “tourist trap”. So, should you go to these potentially disappointing places?

Pros of going to touristy places:

• Could be a true highlight of a trip (and mass wisdom was right)
• Dispel any nagging feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out)
• Pacify the expectations of friends/family/social media – Imagine all the weird looks you’d get if you went to Paris but didn’t see the Eiffel Tower 

Cons:

• Potentially a crushing sense of disappointment
• Might not be worth the expense (may be high due to the law of supply and demand) and might not be worth the time and energy
• May get a distorted view of the destination: Los Angeles is not Disneyland

(Note that I have a separate article just on whether one should visit observation decks.)

Let’s first discuss the #1 complaint I hear when people discuss “overrated” touristy places: Excessive crowds! Long lines to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, or throngs of people walking the iconic walls of Dubrovnik, where one would be lucky to see something interesting between the heads of other tourists.

I get it – I went to see Xi’an’s terra cotta warriors during the first summer weekend when all the kids got out of school. To make matters worse, this was during the “COVID revenge travel” of 2023, when the vast majority of Chinese chose to travel domestically. Outside of concerts/sporting events, I have never, ever seen so many people in one place! People were struggling to navigate through the crowds to keep up with their tour guide waving a flag in a sea of other flags. Steady streams of presumably crowd-hardened Chinese bailed out the side exits instead of slowly shuffling from one end of the long hall to the other. It’s hard for me to believe that there was a limit of only 65,000 tickets per day!

The warriors themselves were certainly interesting, but spending more than a dozen seconds admiring some of the warriors that were removed from the dig would’ve been nice.

Were these warriors over-rated? No! I understand while the sea of humanity distracted from the experience, the sculptures themselves are no less fascinating. I went with the flow and enjoyed the entire event as an observer as well as a participant. It was fascinating how the attraction was set up to handle the crowds (and to try to extract more money from them – even the official guides kept pushing the on-site jade store…) If I return, I will surely aim for a rainy weekday when all the students are in school. It also helped that I didn’t travel to Xi’an with just this attraction as my main motivation (the city itself is pretty interesting as are its food and the nearby Huashan is great, especially if you like stairs).

Crowds again are responsible for a big difference of opinion on Venice between seasoned travelers. I imagine the situation of some tourists: a few leviathan cruise ships disgorge thousands of people all at roughly the same time, organized into tour groups that follow each other around the town. In such circumstances, yes, the visitor might only remember being surrounded by fellow tourists all day – not unlike my Xi’an experience. However, in both of my Venice visits, I overnighted in Venice instead of visiting on day trips and so was able to explore the smaller maze-like lanes and admire the San Marco square in relative solitude. That is the allure of Venice to me and so it is near the top of my favorite places.

Yes, crowds often diminish the appeal of a place but I try to evaluate the intrinsic appeal (i.e. if there were far less people). Then, if it is somewhere I want to visit, I employ various strategies to mitigate the crowd effect: weekdays, early morning/late night, off-season, finding a different vantage point etc. 

Now, what about the places where crowds are not a problem? I posit that it comes down to your expectations vs. what the place is like in reality. Let me illustrate with four examples.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a ~2km long sidewalk with names of 2600+ stars and occasionally, their handprints. There isn’t really much more than that. But if you are into the entertainment industry, and enjoy comparing your anonymous hands to those more famous, then it’s not overrated. If you are visiting just because it is popular, you might leave a scathing review on TripAdvisor. I had pretty low expectations based on the descriptions so I found it worth an hour of my time.

Another example where I saw complaints on the Internet is the Capilano suspension bridge just north of Vancouver. When I was there many years ago, I remember scratching my head and wondering, “Is this it?”

The bridge doesn’t really lead anywhere, isn’t in a particularly scenic area, and delivers no thrill unless you are quite scared of heights. I regretted not doing much research on this attraction. I suppose if you love suspension bridges and get joy from feeling its sway then more power to you. Eye of the beholder and all that.

The active Bromo volcano in Indonesia has the nice classic cone symmetry of volcanoes (think Mt. Fuji). This one is in a particularly picturesque setting with 4 other nearby volcanoes all in a massive caldera and backed by an even bigger volcano. I read about it online and knew it took 10+ hours from Yogyakarta by train and car, as well as needing to wake up early to catch the often-chilly sunrise.

Sure enough, I was picked up at 3am sharp by a 4×4 jeep which followed a convoy of hundreds of similar jeeps snaking up a mountain overlooking the volcanoes. I waited 1.5 hours for the sunrise in the 12C weather – manageable because I stuffed hotel towels (returned before I checked out) down my light jacket. I was grateful that the clouds cleared sufficiently to have a great view of the volcano cluster. About an hour later, I found the jeep again, which brought me to the foot of Bromo for the steep ~25min climb. Due to the volume of steam/sulfur gases, I couldn’t really see into the crater. I can’t imagine I missed much though – the volcano was pretty quiet anyway (if there was active lava flow, the whole place would have been off limits).

Now I do have an affinity for volcanoes – I’ve hiked on the lava fields of Big Island of Hawaii, marvelled at the night sky of Crater Lake, climbed Pacaya with an armed guard and relaxed at the picture-perfect Santorini (ok, it’s more accurately described as a part of a volcanic caldera). Even from that perspective, considering it took pretty much two full days to get to and from Bromo just for a couple of hours of viewing, I would say it is overrated. It’s the nearby waterfall side trip that made the entire journey to that area of Java worth it.

The Grand Canyon for me is overrated despite being one of the most famous natural wonders in the world. Yes, the place is impressive to look at, but how long do you want to admire the view? Maybe 20 minutes? Then you drive 1/2 hour to another spot where the view, frankly, is pretty similar. I waited until near sunset to see the canyon glow which was indeed pretty, but it was just like all the photos of the canyon I’ve seen over the years. I did enjoy the short steep hike down the canyon’s side. Short because unless one made reservations at the lodge at the canyon bottom, or is extremely fit to do the ~35 km of top-to-bottom-back-to-top hike in 1 day, one is limited to relatively short hikes – you don’t want to hike down until you get tired because you have to turn around and hike straight back up.

A rafting trip through the canyon could be spectacular but I did what 99% of the tourists typically do. If you want to visit Las Vegas or combine with seeing other nearby National Parks, then by all means tack on the Grand Canyon. However, I would find the effort vs reward questionable if flying a long ways just for the canyon. 

Other places that pop up on some of the overrated lists include the Stonehenge and the Leaning Tower of Pisa but since I have not been there myself, I’m just passing on the warning that many “must-see” places deserve scrutiny if you want to get the most of out of your travels.

Oh, I greatly enjoyed Dubrovnik and the Louvre but both were relatively uncrowded during my visit.

Recommendation: Determine whether crowds will be a big problem and whether your interests lines up with the intrinsic attractions of the place enough to bear the cost of money/time/effort. If both are green lights, definitely go. After all, there are often excellent reasons why a place is popular with visitors.