It might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
Summertime is when many tourists travel to European hotspots like Italy and Greece — but oftentimes the experience people encounter there during the busy season is anything but relaxing.
According to Jam Press, 27-year-old Gabriella Barras spent close to $3,000 on a four-day trip to Santorini — an extremely popular Greek island many vacationers flock to for its picturesque villages and stunning beaches.
She went into her trip with undoubtedly high expectations, but Barras was unfortunately anything but impressed due to the island being overrun by eager tourists.
“I expected Santorini to be a picturesque, relaxing and gorgeous holiday,” Barras told Luxury Travel Daily.
“The overflow of tourists at every given spot we went to was overwhelming and definitely not the gorgeous, relaxing retreat I was expecting. There were hundreds of people trying to see the sunset at once.”
While it’s hard to deny that travel hotspots like Santorini are stunning — sometimes the influx of pushy tourists can take away from the place’s charm and history.
“While it was indeed picturesque and the views were phenomenal, I didn’t think that there was much old school tradition and culture. It’s so commercialised to the point where I didn’t necessarily find it relaxing at all.”
And Barras isn’t the only one who was disappointed by her European summer vacation.
It’s one thing to be in a crowd of people, feeling like a herd of cows in a popular island town — but trying to travel from one place to another using public transportation is another frustrating feat.
Traveler, Claire, also stayed in Santorini and struggled fighting the crowds to board a bus to visit another part of the island.
“Trying to get on a bus was animalistic mayhem,” she told Luxury Travel Daily.
“We were getting the bus back from Kamari to Fira, and the bus stop had heaps of people all scrambling to get on it. “There was no line at the bus stop to make it orderly, so it was a free-for-all.”
The overcrowding of summer tourists in European countries has gotten out of hand over the past several months.
Earlier this summer, thousands of tourists caused a “gridlock” of both traffic and people to access Sirmione, a resort town situated on the scenic shores of Lake Garda in northern Italy.
Dramatic footage of the rowdy scene was posted to X with the caption: “Overrun by tourists — chaos, gridlock and hours of waiting. A crisis that must be urgently addressed and regulated. It damages our heritage and turns the experience into a negative one…”
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