Mass tourism has become a taxing and ugly thing for many countries, cities, and famous sites around the world. With the advent of the Internet, they say the world has become a smaller place. Add the ease of air travel and other modes of transportation along with human curiosity, and one can see why the masses have ventured out from their own backyards to seek out unique and fantastic places to visit.

Cathryn and I were ‘travellers’ long before we met each other. She was lucky enough to do several trips with her family. Mine was larger without the money for that kind of thing but my brother and I managed a trip to Florida with my mother and her boyfriend once we had a job and were able to pay our own way. After securing my career as a police officer, I used my pay cheque for a motorcycle trip back down to the sunshine state.

My wanderlust and thirst for travel continued with trips throughout Canada, the U.S., Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean Islands. I did one cruise because of the unique ports of call but didn’t like scheduled meals and events on board, as well as the process of trying to get hundreds of people on and off the ship every time it docked. We relied on travel agents and ‘packaged’ tours back then, with our absence from work limited by allotted vacation time.

Retirement rewarded me with unlimited time to travel. One or two-week vacations became a month or more, allowing me to venture further abroad for longer. Changing with age and the times, I went from backpacking around Europe to flashpacking (backpack on wheels) in Southeast Asia and South America. Solo motorcycle trips up, down, and across North America evolved into trips for two, with Cathryn joining me on the Harley.

I’d found my life partner, with similar tastes in music, food, travel and life itself. Once Cathryn retired, the world was ours to discover. And at that we’re doing our best. For us, seeing new places and experiencing different cuisine and culture is what life in is all about. Being financially secure, our only travel limitation seem to be there as so many places to visit and not enough time to see them all.

I have a travelling friend who emigrated from Canada to Cambodia, where he settled and started a family. As a fellow traveller, he often sought out places off the beaten path that hadn’t been discovered by the masses or had fallen victim to overtourism. Up until about twenty years ago, I hadn’t found crowds to be a problem in my travels to other countries around the world. For the most part, tourists seemed to be happy sticking with the tried and true destinations where everyone else had been or was going.

But the world truly has gotten smaller, with more people venturing further away from home, seeking out exotic places they’ve seen on television or on the Internet. Places that were once considered off the beaten path or undiscovered by the masses. Hoards of vacationers and travellers alike have taken to road, rail and air, in search of cool places they had only previously dreamed of.

Now that the masses have converged on those very places, destinations have become overcrowded and almost unbearable to travellers and locals alike. For us it means higher prices or limited availability for transportation and lodging. For them it means hoards of travellers invading their home towns and neighborhoods. Where tourism was once good for local economies, it is now taxing public services and infrastructure.

Cathryn and I witnessed such a mass invasion firsthand in Dubrovnik, Croatia, a once small fishing village made famous by the Game of Thrones tv series. We were enjoying a quiet stroll along the top of the city walls when we saw a cruise ship pull into the harbour. By the time we came down from the wall, the small medieval town had been invaded by five thousand tourists, all trying to find famous sites they’s seen on the tube.

People from the cruise ships pay good money for those types of excursions. I had to laugh when I saw hungry tourists scouring the old town trying to discover the magical places they saw on their favorite show. The group was disappointed when their tour guide explained how almost every backdrop they’d seen on tv was computer generated.

We are currently in Italy where crowds have varied from town to town. We chose the shoulder season – September and October, purposely to avoid the masses. But that wasn’t the case in Verona, where we’d considered seeing the famous ‘Juliette’ balcony. Although the character and story are fictional, it doesn’t stop thousands of tourists from reserving a spot online in advance to visit the site and have a chance at rubbing a breast on her statue for good luck.

We did not see the balcony or broze-breasted statue, but did manage a peak at the alley leading to it from our city tour bus, surrounded by thousands of tourists. What’s really funny, besides the love story being fictional, is that Shakespeare basically plagiarized the tale from other poets. It’s also never been proven he actually set foot in Verona, let alone Italy.

So, if you plan to travel, beware of mass tourism. Venice doesn’t allow cruise ships in the harbour anymore and charges by the day to enter the city. Locals have complained their neighborhoods are now full of foreigners staying in rentals. Santorini, Greece becomes gridlocked when several thousand cruise ship tourists try to cram into the tiny fishing village to get that perfect selfie.

Barcelona and Malaga, Spain, are now passing bylaws to limit the number of vacation rentals in heavily travelled tourist destinations. Perhaps this comes as a result of post Covid travellers trying to make up for lost time, but I think not. It seems to me more and more people in the world now have itchy feet and have discovered their dreams and wanderlust can become reality.