I mean, sure, it’s not as population dense as the USA, or Mexico, but Canada is huge, your people are nice, you have some of the best entertainment companies on the planet (namely Cirque du Soleil and Pornhub), your natural resources and attractions are unbelievable and your actors are the best (especially the BSG/Chronicles of Riddick cast).
And yet, as an Italian with an international perspective (lived abroad for the last 16 years and visited the USA and South America repeatedly), I have been not “Canada-aware” for most of my life.
I get it that you are not boasting like your neighbors (and that alone makes you better than them imho), but how come that I was left to realize only today that the Manitoba flour I used to make pizza all my life takes its name from one of your provinces, while I know about all the shitty pizzas the US made up in a century.
Same thing goes for Latin American countries, even the ones I never visited, like Mexico or Argentina.
I shall visit soon and I hope you can take the chance to teach me more in the meanwhile.
I preferred being out of sight out of mind actually, especially the lack of tourists. Hell is other people.
When I visited Scotland, I felt the city core of Edinburgh wasn’t for the locals anymore and it turned me off tourist reliant locations entirely for context.
It’s a big country, that’s definitely not the case coast to coast.
You can do tourism wrong (as Italian cities do), and do it right, like Amsterdam started to do now. I was there in April last year and I was able to take pictures of the canals with no one in them but me effortlessly. They literally paid ads to tell British low cost flight tourists not to come visit.
It’s called self-care.
Yeah, Portugal also has a really big problem with tourism - we back here need a wakeup call fast.
Santorini is feeling the impacts of that over-tourism big time.
I’d agree, with my limited experience anyways. I’ve only left Canada once and it was a trip to Scotland, Netherlands, Austria, Czech Republic.
All in one trip? That sounds like a fantastic holiday!
Sounds like hell to me, not being able to settle your mind in one city is something I abhor in tourism. Bringing that to country level is just criminal.
It was spread over 3 months. I agree anyways, it’s very stressful.
This was aging mother’s bucket list not really mine.
Wait … did you just say that all the tourists in Edinburgh spoiled it for … you, as a tourist?
No, more like what tourism did to Edinburgh.
Which you discovered because you were a tourist there?
You’re really gonna do the “and yet you participate in society, curious” thing?
I have only been on that singular trip in my entire life, if that helps you.
It’s just kind of weird to lament that a place is touristy as a tourist of that place. Kind of like driving a car and lamenting the traffic that you’re in.
What better way to grasp the impact of an activity than by doing it? Of course this can be harmful - if every visitor to a natural reserve picked a flower, eventually that reserve would have no more flowers. But it can certainly bring that impact home when you’re in the midst of the results of many insignificant actions.
I like travelling, but I’m occasionally very aware at how Touristy I am. Seeing other places after growing up bare-floor poor is just such an experience that I want to see everything while I can – and that makes me rushed, hyper-focused, interested in the marquee landmark places, etc. SUCH a tourist.
If we get more travel to new places - all our plans are for a second, longer visit to the favourites - then I hope I can be relaxed and less likely to forget my manners or to act stressed based on all this goal-focused travel.