Only a fool judges a place they haven’t seen
Some countries use up all the tourism oxygen, when the world is full of in-between destinations that also deserve our attention.
During the Covid hiatus, many of us spent hours (if not weeks or months) doing online searches, dusting off guidebooks and watching TV documentaries about places that were so out of reach as to feel like shimmering mirages. I wrote lists of destinations I wanted to go to as soon as borders opened. Some were old favourites, many were on a new “must-see” list, yet more under the heading of “take another look”.
It’s long interested me how some countries use up all the tourism oxygen simply because they’re famous and well-promoted. Did anyone ever say they weren’t interested in seeing, say, France, Italy, Spain or Canada? But the world is full of in-between places that deserve our attention, too. Travellers often zip through itineraries and I am guilty as charged. Trips can easily become mere reconnaissance in which we mentally tick YES or NO boxes, based on cursory encounters. But who among us can definitively damn a destination after just one look. Well, OK, I can get on fine without China, to be honest.
Conversely, I have sometimes been the type of fool who damns places in advance, my disdain based purely on narky comments from friends who’ve been there or satirical writers who’ve decided to be especially unfair (yes, I mean you, PJ O’Rourke, although you’re blinking brilliant, nonetheless). All that changed the first time I went to Malta. Once I’d got over the WH Smith and Marks & Spencer stores on the high street and the Dr Who Tardis-style phone boxes (official British “currant” red, not blue), I had one of those moments of awful realisation that all my preconceived notions were wrong. The grandiose architecture of Valletta, the fairytale fortifications, the almost casual discovery of two Caravaggio paintings at St John’s Co-Cathedral … it’s been three visits now, and counting.
I’ve experienced similar jolts of surprise, and regret at how long I’d been misguided, at St Lucia in the Caribbean, the Dalmatian coastline of Croatia and the island of Elba in the Tyrrhenian Sea. That trio was first visited on a cruise ship, which can be a fine form of instant introduction. The seeds are sown, lengthier visits planned (or not). Nature documentaries have that effect, too. David Attenborough’s three-part series on Madagascar is to blame for my fixation with lemurs (and catfish that swim upside down), although my five-year-old granddaughter, Mia, prefers the cartoon version. “There’s more than one type of lemur, Nonna!” And she’s right. Mia has lived in three countries (so far) and paddled with sea turtles (safely supervised) in The Maldives. Like all inquisitive children, she believes the world is hers for the taking. I hope she’ll allow me along for the ride.