1 hour ago
4 
Dana Kaplan has an unpopular opinion: she regrets visiting some of the most iconic places on Earth.
The travel writer, 52, ruffled feathers with a viral Instagram post about destinations that she says are just ‘famous for being famous’.
These ‘over-hyped’ locations include Rome, Mykonos, Cannes, and the Grand Canyon, along with Miami, Bourbon Street in New Orleans and Paris’ most storied museum: the Louvre.
As far as she’s concerned, Dana would ‘rather spend an afternoon in a town nobody’s heard of than race through a checklist of landmarks’.
But for travellers looking for lesser-visited places that aren’t totally off the beaten track, she has suggestions.
Instead of Mykonos, for instance, go to Milos or Naxos. Instead of Rome, Bologna or smaller towns in Emilia-Romagna.
Her take drew criticism (‘if I followed this account, I would unfollow just for the Grand Canyon comment…clueless’), but Dana doesn’t care.
She’s using the attention to talk about responsible tourism.
‘When I suggest skipping Rome, I don’t mean never see Rome if it’s some place you want to go,’ she tells Metro.
‘It’s like walking through a living museum, but the same is true for so many other places in Italy, and they’re not as crowded.’
Same goes for the Grand Canyon. ‘There are so many amazing parts of the American southwest where there’s not a line just to get through the gate, or 100 people at the same lookout point.
‘We need to stop checking off the list just to post that we went there.’
Dana has a point. Europe’s cities are crammed with tourists, armies of ants crawling over historic sites and jamming streets from Paris to Barcelona.
Litter is a problem. Traffic is a problem. Just about everything you can think of has of late, become a problem.
There is nowhere to park, nowhere to eat or drink on the cheap, and nowhere to walk without squeezing your way through deafening hordes.
In 2025, Europe hosted more than half of the world’s 1.5 billion international arrivals.
And with global travel projected to hit 1.8 billion arrivals by 2030, governments are scrambling to manage the pressure.
In Rome, visitors must now pay a fee to see the Trevi Fountain, the latest in a series of measures that critics say are a greater nuisance than the crowds themselves.
Denmark, meanwhile, is experimenting with incentives that let visitors ‘pay’ for experiences through sustainable actions like kayaking while collecting canal litter, or going to museums by bike.
Mallorca, which has seen some of Europe’s most full-throated anti-tourism protests, is betting on artificial intelligence to solve its problems.
Later this year, it plans to integrate an AI-powered platform into its new website that will guide travellers on the quietest times to visit popular sites while suggesting off-the-beaten-track alternatives.
There’s no reason to wait for AI, though. Dana says she has the secret to being a responsible traveller who still gets the most from each trip.
And the way to achieve that, apparently, is ‘white space’.
‘People send me their itinerary and ask me what I think. It’s colour coded, and there’s no white space. You know, they’re going to the Louvre from nine to 12, lunch is 12 to one, then the Eiffel Tower one to four and the Sun Cruise starts at four….the only white space they’ve given themselves is eight hours for sleep,’ Dana explains.
‘So you’ve ‘done’ Paris, but have you really seen it?’
You learn about a place not by visiting the main attractions, she says, but by walking down an alleyway and finding a restaurant filled with people speaking the local language, Anthony Bourdain-style.
Yula Safutdinova, travel writer and founder of Miss Tourist travel blog, agrees, but says swapping destinations is not always the answer.
‘Most ‘go here instead’ picks are smaller places with less hotel stock, thinner transport and fewer staff than the place you’re avoiding,’ she tells Metro.
According to Yulia, how you structure your visit matters more than where you go.
Stay the night (ideally three): ‘This is the big one. Day trippers and cruise passengers use a city’s transport, streets and bins and leave almost nothing behind. Sleep somewhere for a few nights, eat dinner there, buy your coffee there, and you’ve stopped being a cost and started being income. A small town is far better served by fifty people staying a week than five thousand passing through in an afternoon.’ Move your dates before your destination: ‘Same city, six weeks either side of peak. Most people can shift when they travel far more easily than they can give up where. Shoulder season is when you finally get to see the thing you came for instead of the back of someone’s head.’ Sleep and eat outside the postcard: ‘Historic centres are where short-term holiday lets have pushed residents out. One or two stops out is cheaper, quieter, and your money reaches a neighbourhood that still has people living in it. You can still go to the Colosseum, you just don’t sleep next to it.’ Go at opening: ‘The Trevi Fountain at 7am is a completely different place from the Trevi Fountain at 2pm. See things early, then give the rest of your day to the parts of the city nobody photographs.’
Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·