Hidden gems of a city are right up my alley
It’s almost city-breaks season. Schools are back, summer is behind us, Christmas is still some way off and all those accessible cities all over Europe are beckoning. Once September arrives, it’s time to start booking that weekend in Prague or Paris, or wherever.
The downside, of course, is that the usual-suspect cities are overrun with tourists nowadays. To the point where those who live there simply don’t want us any more. Not so many of us, anyway.
And that’s the problem. How do you gauge what’s acceptable when it comes to tourist numbers, and what isn’t? At what point do the inhabitants of Florence or Rome or Seville decide that enough is enough?
I know that in my 20-odd years of visiting Venice two or three times every year I had never – until a year ago – seen anti-tourist graffiti around the city.
And, as the tourists have piled in, so have the make-a-quick-buck merchants. A lovely old shoe shop where I’ve often bought shoes in the past had closed down when I was there in April.
When I returned in June it was a souvenir shop, selling all manner of ‘Murano’ glass items. For €3 or €4 a pop? I don’t think Murano – or Italy, indeed – had any part to play in the provenance of such trinkets.
As a local printer, Gianni Basso, said to me earlier this year, pointing to the ground under his feet in the part of Venice where he works (a small street on the border of the Cannaregio and Castello districts): ‘Here, it is Venice. Over there (pointing in the direction of the Rialto Bridge), it is Taiwan!’
He’s right, of course. Twenty years ago, even 10 years ago, if you went looking for a leather handbag in Venice you had a choice. There weren’t leather shops on every street corner but those that were there were all offering different styles and from a variety of Venetian (or, at least, Italian) workshops. Now, practically every leather shop is run by nonItalians and stocks exactly the same bags.
So what does all this mean when you’re planning your city break? That you don’t book a flight to Venice or Barcelona or Prague?
Well, actually, it’s the flights that play such a big part here. If there weren’t cheap flights, these cities wouldn’t be overrun. But there ARE cheap flights and we have to be grateful for that in the overall context.
Some cities don’t feature on the winter schedules and are inevitably quieter because they are harder to reach. They are definitely worth a shot. You will also only go then to somewhere that you REALLY want to see. Which is also a plus.
So maybe we all just need to make a bit more effort and try a few ‘different’ cities. I’m going to Genoa this November, for example. And I’m pondering Beirut. Neither are on direct routes from Ireland – but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth seeing. There’s always excitement in the unknown.
And if we are genuinely concerned about how cities are being exploited and overrun, then we also need to look at our accommodation choices.
Airbnb has come in for criticism in this regard. I’ve never used it, I have to say.
I have a kind of rule when I spend time in Venice. If I’m there for less than a week I stay in a small hotel where I feel I’m contributing to the economy of the city and helping to keep local people employed.
For long stays I do rent but because they are long stays (a month or more) the Venetian owners are not just trying to turn a fast buck.
I have rented an apartment in the Santa Croce district this autumn and I met Tino, the owner, over the summer and was, effectively, ‘interviewed’ to see if I was a suitable tenant who would look after the apartment that has belonged to his family for three generations. Tino, an academic, is working away from Venice for a few months, making the apartment available. And while I’m there, of course, I’ll be shopping in the immediate neighbourhood – at the grocer’s, the pharmacy, the hardware shop.
And I’ll be trying to remember that, as well as I know Venice, and as much as I feel like a local when I’m there, I’m not. I’m a visitor. Someone privileged to be visiting a beautiful city that belongs to other people. If, as tourists, we don’t respect that, then it’s no wonder that those locals – in Florence or Paris or Prague – no longer wish we were there.