Tourists: A Thick Despriction

In my time here, I have rediscovered the existence of two contradictory Venices: one inhabited by locals that have often spent their entire lives here and another by a constantly changing flux of tourists that spent only a couple of days here. I find the latter to be a particularly interesting group. Venice is of course extraordinarily unique, but this group is completely indistinct for tourists mobbing any other famous location anywhere else in the world. The tourists in Venice, as well as anywhere else, are incredibly homogeneous in their habits, and the services catering to them are roughly the same everywhere as well.

 The tourists come to Venice from all corners of the world, and arrive there by many different means. Their paths almost all seem to converge when they step off the vaporetto at the San Zaccharia stop just a short walk from Piazza San Marco. They wander off the boat, wander out of the station, and wander onto the island. They are greeting immediately by a vendors from an incredibly varied mix of nationalities. Some of them may sell souvenirs specific to Venice, but often times, their wares consist of products that could come from anywhere, such as knock-off sunglasses and purses and t-shirts that display mildly crass messages . The tourists eyes wander from stall to stall, and among all of the magic of a city floating in a lagoon, they decide that their first order of business will be to buy a fake pair of Ray-bans.

This business taken care of, they set off to undertake the mission they came to Venice to accomplish: to take pictures of everything they are told is famous to proudly display to jealous family and friends. They move in mob with a sinusoidal velocity. The mob clusters together in a slow crawl as it passes the Bridge of Sighs, the Doge's Palace, the columns guarding the entrance to the piazza, the campanile, and the Bascilia San Marco as the tourists frantically take pictures of these famous landmarks from at least twenty-seven different angles. They take so many photos many of them probably don't ever see the city except through a camera lens. This accomplished, they move quickly to collect their photo of the next destination, and the mobs thins out for a while. This succession of points of interest mark a path follow by every tourist in Venice. 

  

After taking a respectable number of photos of all of the critical famous landmarks, the tourists set out to find a restaurant selling "real" Italian food. These restaurants conveniently line the streets immediately bordering the Piazza San Marco with a safe view of the escape route back to the tourist's hotel. The tourist can be certain that these restaurants are authentic as they proudly display "Real Italian Food" in twenty languages other than Italian on their menus outside, which also offer several languages. After having an Italian hamburger for lunch, its time for authentic, British-made gelato at the gelataria next door for the low price of five euros. 

When you are in the heart of one of these tourist mobs, you feel as if all of Venice must be a sea of tourists with no trace of actual Venetians. Then, you turn off onto a side street, and you almost instantly find yourself in a different world. Signs are suddenly only in Italian. People walk as if they are going somewhere, and they don't point cameras at everything. Gelato is now a euro fifty. This is the local Venice. It exists merely feet from tourist Venice, but it is a separate world. It seems hard to justify the coexistence of the two, but, paradoxically, one cannot exist the other. Venice's economy relies heavily on the money the tourists bring in, and the tourists would not have a city to visit if the Venetians weren't there to care for it. When one considers this, it seems a little less like the presence of the tourists doesn't violate the traditions of the locals. Indeed, as a center of trade, Venice has been a place that outsiders have passed through frequently for its entire history. 

The tourist world of Venice is exactly the same as the tourist world of any other destination. It might be the Eiffel Tower instead of the campanile of San Marco, or the Vatican instead of the basilica, but there are invariably things to take pictures of and a mob of people attacking them with cameras. There is always the same vendor selling the same cheap sunglasses. All these other worlds are just like that of Venice's in that they are easy to escape. One wrong turn, and you just might actually experience another culture. It's lucky for us that such mistakes are easy to make.