Tourist experiences

The big trend nowadays is to do tourism without doing “touristy stuff”. What counts for social currency is to do “authentic stuff” and to avoid things that are “made for tourists”. So tourists try to not visit places with too many other tourists, and go out of their way to find “authentic experiences”.

However, our recent holiday in Lisbon showed us that not all “touristy things” are the same. There were  tourist experiences we liked, and those that we abhorred. Marginal differences made a huge difference in how we experienced places, and not all “tourist experiences” were bad.

For example, on each of the three days we had breakfast in restaurants that seemed to almost wholly cater to tourists. It was possibly a function of living in a part of town (Alfama) that is now host to a lot of tourists. Each day we would check on google for places to have breakfast at, pick one and go.

All of these places had brunch menus, which were pretty good. All of them seemed overpriced given what I’d heard of Lisbon’s price levels. Waiters all spoke very good English. And people at other tables seemed to be tourists. But the food was generally of a good quality, though coffee was bad.

On the other hand, there were these restaurants where we ended up for lunch at clearly touristy places, where you knew very quickly that the food wasn’t up to the mark. One Asian restaurant we went to (we’d been walking for a while and went in desperation) served Indian Chinese food – not something you’d expect in Europe. The pork belly was cooked excellently, but then slathered with sriracha! The previous day, a restaurant close to the Cathedral had charged a fortune for a bottle of water after denying tap water. The food there was rather ordinary as well.

The contrast in tourist experiences wasn’t just about food. As I mentioned earlier, we were in a touristy part of town called Alfama, but it was a nice touristy part of town. Lines (at the castle, for example) were never too long. No place was that crowded (admittedly we went in the off season, and on weekdays). You never got intimidated. And there was the occasional smile or nod to people you came across.

On the middle day of our trip, though, we headed to Belem (another touristy part of town), to Jeronimo’s Monastery. The tourist experience there was something else. The crowds were massive everywhere. Lines to buy tickets were long. The feeling one got was that if we weren’t careful we might be robbed. There were lots of beggars around. The entire atmosphere was intimidating. It was as if we were longing for “our touristy places”. And in very quick time we had made our way back towards Alfama.

So through the trip I decided that avoiding “touristy places” isn’t a good strategy during holidays – touristy places are touristy for a reason, and the effort to avoid them can be significant. Instead, what we should avoid are tourist traps. We need to do some research and go to places that are well rated. There is nothing wrong in doing touristy stuff. All we need to do is to do the “good touristy stuff”.

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