.jpeg)
I was going to write a post about how Florence had changed since the last time I visited the city.
I'd write about how the price to walk around the roof of Duomo jumped in just a few years from 8 € to 30 €. I'd write about the enormous hordes of tourists descending on the markets, tavernas, and tourist sights. Buying every little knick-knack and drinking the town dry of Aperol spritz.
I'd write about how on my first visit, I bought a wallet for 15 € from the leather market that was made in Florence. And how the same market was choked with tourists perusing suspiciously identical-looking, marked-up leather goods.
I'd write about how the price to walk around the roof of Duomo jumped in just a few years from 8 € to 30 €. I'd write about the enormous hordes of tourists descending on the markets, tavernas, and tourist sights. Buying every little knick-knack and drinking the town dry of Aperol spritz.
I'd write about how on my first visit, I bought a wallet for 15 € from the leather market that was made in Florence. And how the same market was choked with tourists perusing suspiciously identical-looking, marked-up leather goods.
But I'm not writing that post.
I've been thinking more about the impact of my traveling decisions. Especially my purchase decisions while I travel.
Do any of us visit a place like Florence for the cheap magnets, the machine-crafted leather goods, the silly Panama hats, the shot glasses, miniature Davids, cheap sunglasses, or anything else arrived on a super-freighter from a faraway sweatshop?
Yet, we mindlessly buy this shit. Myself included. I bought a same-same machine-made leather wallet to replace that older wallet I bought years earlier from the same market. I instantly regretted buying it.
We can loathe the pushy street sellers and roll our eyes at the ridiculous novelty items, but they're selling them because we're buying them.
Worse, we're buying things we don't need from people who like as though they don't want to be selling these things.
We can lament the death of neighborhoods in Lisbon, Barcelona, or Florence and wonder why Dubrovnik or Venice doesn't feel "authentic."
But, we're the ones staying in cheap Airbnbs, putting our money into souvenir shops, and pretty much avoiding the local businesses that cater to the local and made that neighbourhood in that city worth visiting.
What can we do?
We can stop believing that tired argument that buying garbage from a souvenir shop is putting needed money into the local economy. We can start making purchase decisions that will leave the place we're visiting a little better off than when we left it. Let's use our judgment, before we use our money.