Back from sailing down the Amalfi Coast of Italy, Nigel realizes there are just too many tourists out there.

Vast crowds of tourists have become the bane of many cities. When I travel, I think of myself more as a visitor than a tourist and generally forsake the mass tour route in favour of self guided meanderings.

I’ve seen the crowds trying to get a shot of the Mona Lisa at The Louvre in Paris and I don’t envy them the crush. It was the same problem when the iconic Rijksmuseum in the heart of Amsterdam reopened a few years ago with a massive Rembrandt van Rijn exhibition. Getting close to some of his most famous paintings was impossible. The crowds were standing around, not looking at the works, but listening to their audio guides, all the while blocking the view. My late beloved and I got separated for a while and I finally found her when it occurred to me to check the gift shop. Surprise! We thought we’d look at the Van Gogh Museum nearby, which had also just reopened after years-long renovations. Too many people, we decided and repaired to a nearby café.

That’s the problem with the world’s most popular sites: everyone wants the same view.  In the news recently was one Japanese spot where residents have erected a screen to block the much-vaunted panorama of Mount Fuji. Last week, in Majorca, locals angrily swarmed a beach to prevent tourists getting a favourite Instagram shot. Venice has decided to charge tourists just to get into the city. I’m sure others will adopt similar schemes.

José, the National Geographic photographer accompanying our recent Italian voyage aboard Sea Cloud II and on shore expeditions, gave us some very useful tips on how to take the best photos on our iPhones. One of them was to always include some humans into the shot when photographing buildings and monuments, to give them scale. Curiously, while I agree with him intellectually, I disagree in principle. I go to great lengths, in busy tourist areas where there might be a thousand or more people around a popular site, to get a shot with very few people. Even better, none.

At the Piazza dei Miracoli site of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, there were probably ten thousand tourists during our visit. I managed to get shots of the baptistery and cathedral without a single soul in my shot. Sometimes it was luck. Sometimes just a question of waiting for that split second when one crowd walked out one side of the frame and before another crowd walked in the other side. Sometimes I hid them behind pillars or statues. When you have a keen focus and a mission there’s always a way. In the giant hall where hundreds of Pisa’s aristocracy are interred, I had to get rid of both the crowds and some annoying signage in the middle of the space. Somehow, with patience and positioning, I succeeded.

Setting up for our entry in the expedition’s funny photo of Pisa competition, we enlisted the aid of Expedition Leader David. He was great fun in helping us work out the best angle to get the forced perspective needed to make it look as though we’re trying to straighten the tower. First, we had to find an angle from which the tower looked almost vertical. Then he got down to ground level to help get the shot we wanted. I’ve been walking with a cane during these tiring tours so our idea was to use the handle of the cane to straighten the tower, with Megan given the extra pull from behind. The shot worked… and we won the photo contest.

In Amalfi, I almost despaired of getting rid of people, the Piazza Duomo is so tiny and crowded. By getting in close, I managed to photograph scenes in a different manner. I was quite amused by a strikingly dressed woman posing all around the square. She’s an ‘influencer’ my daughter told me. Looks more like a ‘poseur’ I thought. But it’s a cute photo.

In Pompeii, we arrived before 10 am and there were still more than 100 buses in the parking lot ahead of us. Fortunately, the site is huge and our guide had a way of wiggling us into the right spots or taking us via a back way. Result: some fantastic shots of silent ruins. Getting close ups of stunning (and often vulgar) murals was harder, but patience usually paid off. I wanted to photograph a particular statue in a very busy courtyard. By remaining still for 10 minutes, while the rest of the party moved on, the requisite shot was achieved. It’s outstanding, in more ways than one.

At the famous Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, The famous statue of Hercules was surrounded by tour groups and their guides, but for about 20 seconds, I had the guy to myself, took my shot and was happy. I could have sworn he winked at me.

In Portofino, on the Italian Riviera, I’m told there is a fine for anyone who lingers to take a selfie. In Niagara-on-the-Lake recently, A friend and I stopped in his car to take a pretty sunset shot and were immediately pounced upon by a parking Nazi. The fact that we were driving in a restored 1937 open Rolls Royce had no effect on the lady. “Move on,” She said, “It’s a $150 fine for stopping.”

We love them and hate them in NOTL. In summer the residents simply stay away from the main street in the historic Old Town area, where there are far too many touristy trinkets and trash shops and ice cream parlours. The sidewalks are packed so it’s almost impossible to see the beauty of the town we love. The Parks Department does such a wonderful job beautifying the area that people wander around as if it’s a pedestrian precinct, without a thought for traffic. Polite Canadians that we are, we generally stop for them.

Try that in the Centro storico in Naples, a World Heritage Site since 1995, where scooters and motorbikes ignore the pedestrian only rules.

I doubt that any number-limiting deterrents will work. The fact is just too many people want to travel and see the sights. And at the other end, the sights and those who manage them encourage the ‘tourist industry.’ They rely on the money to such a great degree that to stop the cash flow would be unthinkable.

As the world of tourism recovers from the pandemic years, the problem is only going to get worse, I fear. There’s a whole new class of people getting passports and travelling. A few years ago, there seemed to be tourists from Japan everywhere. Now, the largest group to become world travellers are middle-class people from China, who suddenly have more cash and leisure time than before. Can people from India, now the world’s most populous country, be far behind? At our peril, we forget that just a few generations ago it was the Brit, American and German tourists everyone despised.

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This is Nigel’s 420th blog on Gentleman’s Portion. The SEARCH function at the top works really well if you want to look back and see some of his previous stories, or check under CATEGORIES.