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being a tourist isn't trendy anymore
I find these WPA guides very ironic looking at it from today’s point of view. Travel books in a sense tell people what to value in a specific location. What they should eat, where they should stay, and what they should do. Who makes these decisions? At the time, people needed this travel guidance and government was there to tell them what to do. Today we don’t need the government to tell us where to go, in fact, everyone is trying to get away from travel books. They have tourist books with names like a locals guide or a not so touristy tour book. People now are going out of the way to not be touristy. It’s not trendy to got to Rome and see the coliseum. Non-touristy people want to blend. God forbid they walked around with a cameras and fanny packs. They want eat, speak, and live like the people they are visiting. When you only go to touristy places everything to too planned, artificial, and non-authentic. When visiting famous sites abroad you may hear your own language spoken, and in a way, you are not immersing yourself in the culture. This being said, going to see the most famous tourist sites has value too.
tourists There are reasons why these sites are touristy in the first place. Tourist places can be divided into two categories for me. The first are places that are planned for tourist to come visit like an amusement park or beach. The other category has places that existed for other reasons, and are now turned into a tourist sites such as the pyramids in Egypt. The coliseum in Rome was built to entertain the ancient Romans and the pyramids in Egypt were to honor the dead. They were not built for the intention of tourism. These are amazing places that should not be passed up just because one is skeptical of tourist books. These places became popular for a good reason. I do not understand this idea only wanting to see non-touristy things. I think there is value in both. When I travel, I like to see the touristy things as well as the local things. People want to see places for different reasons. Some want to see sites, others want to see how people live, and I want to see both. Why skip the coliseum? Why skip the residential area? As they say “when in Rome do as the Romans do.” and I do believe that the Romans went from their houses to the coliseum.
So true. All of this, really.
So true. All of this, really. Let's be honest, we live in a tourist spot. I get stopped on the street all the time by tourists who don't know where they are or can't catch a cab or read the subway map in their hands. I'm glad to help, I really am, but I'm always annoyed by the demeanor of tourists. I also don't like how travel guides tell you what to see and what to do. Like you said, they tell you what you should value. It is in my personal experience that the coolest stores and restaurants in other locations aren't the ones that the tourists are at - they're the ones that the locals are at. I won't eat at an Italian restaurant in Italy if I can read the menu. It makes it so much more authentic to go in and just pick something or get a recommendation from a waiter. I think when traveling people need to experience things from themselves and not just experience what a guide book tells them to.
untrendy tourism
I have to agree with you and say that most people I know who travel abroad tend not to rely on books so much as the opinions of people who actually live there. You have to take into consideration that when these guides first came out, not a lot of people were tourists. As we discussed in class, a lot of the working people who received paid vacations didn't really know what to do with it. They were completely in the dark with how to take a vacation. I feel like now that we are in an age where transportation and traveling has become much more common, tourism has evolved as well. We no longer just want to experience/look at the overexploited tourist traps because it has been overdone (through films, literature, photos, acquaintances) but rather something new and richer in the real culture.