This post comes from a comment that I heard a tourist say to a waiter while I was at a café one morning in Verona, and it really got me thinking about if there is such thing as a “bad” tourist. I know that everybody travels for different reasons and this is largely based on privilege, but I think that there are definite things that tourists should be doing when they are traveling and exploring a country that is not their home country.

First and for most, I think it is so important to embrace the culture and norms of the country that you are in. You are lucky enough to have the opportunity to leave your home country and see other places, don’t exploit this privilege by viewing their culture/norms as inferior to yours. This is not a hard thing to do at all… for example some basics for how to NOT be a bad tourist:

• Make an effort to speak the native language of the country (even if it just saying hello/thank you in their language), which comes from just doing your research ahead of time!
• Don’t expect everyone to just know and understand English.
• Eat the traditional local foods, and just make an overall effort to live like a local.
• Be respectful and kind to the locals.
• Try to avoid traveling in massive groups – nothing is more annoying for a local than having tourists constantly get in the way of their daily lives, just because you are a tourist there does not mean that people do not actually live there.
• Don’t complain that “x” is better at home. You shouldn’t travel to boast about your home, you travel to experience someone else’s.

It’s sad to me that a lot of these are not common knowledge, and people are traveling as tourists in a way that is rude, ignorant and hurtful to the locals. Just remember that traveling (especially long distances) truly is a privilege that MANY people in the world do not have the opportunity to do, so make an effort to be a good and beneficial tourist!

Now that I explained all of my thoughts of this topic, I will explain what the couple of tourists said at a café that I was at. The couple (English speaking) asked the waiter if the café had breakfast and the waiter responded that they didn’t have “English breakfast” but they had “Italian breakfast”, explaining the brioches and espresso drinks they had – considering we are IN Italy, it made perfect sense. The couple looked flustered, not knowing what to order, and then the female asked “do you have any croissants without sugar?” … I kind of stopped listening after that because of how annoyed I was with their ignorance and lack of effort to A. speak Italian and B. eat traditional Italian breakfast foods.

So… if you want to eat a traditional English breakfast… sorry, but you should probably just go home. Did you really travel all the way to Italy to eat food that is the same as what you eat everyday? Italian breakfast is definitely a lot different than from what I’m used to in Canada but that doesn’t mean that I think our way of eating is better, it is just different.

Overall, even if you are privileged (which ultimately you have to be to have the ability and financial freedom to travel), do not use this privilege to make the locals of the country you are in feel inferior to you. Sure, English is a wider spoken language than Italian for example, but that does not mean that it is superior to Italian. Traveling should be about new experiences and often times new experiences come from trying the local foods. Maybe I’m just a huge foodie and everything I’ve just said makes 0 sense, but oh well, I just really don’t want to over hear another convo of a “bad tourist”.