Larvatus Prodeo

San Franscisco is indeed truly marvelous city for the visitor. There are innumerable places to eat, drink, look at, and do. But approximately a metric squillion tourists descend on Fisherman’s Wharf, a truly awful collection of overpriced take-away joints and T-shirt shops (parts of Height-Ashbury are not much better, to be honest). I don’t mind; if they’re happy to spend time there, it means that there’s less tourists crowding the interesting spots. But while I was taken there as part of the conference I attended, I wouldn’t go there voluntarily without a very large financial incentive. It is, perhaps, the nastiest tourist trap I have ever visited, its only redeeming feature being that you catch the ferry to Alcatraz there.

Recalling that, I came across this list of the world’s top tourist traps, which features Fisherman’s Wharf and the Leaning Tower of Pisa amongst a number of others. For what it’s worth, I’m not convinced they distinguish adequately between “places that are interesting, but have been surrounded by so much tourist crap it’s offputting”, and “places where the main attaction itself isn’t that great”. To take two examples I’m familiar with, the tourist paraphernalia surrounding the Forbidden City and Niagara Falls are annoying. But the City, and the Falls, are still great. Take away the souvenir shops from Fisherman’s Wharf, by contrast, and there’s nothing there.

While the parlous state of the Aussie dollar has increased the cost of travel, the way it’s going the collapse in the oil price and the general malaise around the world economy might just about compensate. And Australia has its own nasty tourist traps; the southern bit of Lygon St. Carlton, and the entirety of Surfers Paradise come to mind. I’m curious: what are the nastiest tourist traps the LP readership has come across?