Letters to the Editor: 'The charm has vanished' — a travel filmmaker laments over tourism

To the editor: I too was a part of the overtourism problem. ("Tourists have made Europe a nightmare. I was part of the problem but won't be again," Opinion, July 26)

For 45 years I produced travelogue movies. Like Rick Steves, my message was to just get on the plane and go. But I never could have imagined the explosion of travel.

In 1985, I made a film on an Alaska cruise that two ships with 600 passengers apiece made each week. Even then, the small port towns were crowded. Today, at least 20 ships make the journey weekly, many with passenger capacities of 3,000. The charm has vanished.

In 1974, I spent eight weeks in Venice, Italy, making a film. To say it was magical is an understatement. Today, Saint Mark's Square is more like Times Square.

But the saddest thing is nobody is looking at what they came to see. On my first trip to Paris in 1968, I stood in front of the Mona Lisa and reveled in the moment. Today nobody looks at the Mona Lisa — they are too busy taking selfies, never spending a moment looking at the painting itself.

Yes, the Mona Lisa is Instagram ready. But what did you see? What did you learn? How were you moved?

Doug Jones, Los Angeles

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To the editor: We are octogenarians who have traveled internationally, as tourists, for most of our lives. Last month we were on a tour of Scandinavia, a place where neither of us had been.

We started in Bergen, Norway, and arrived two days before the tour began. We like to explore destinations by ourselves for a few days and get over jet lag, so we walked all over Bergen.

We like to see how people live in whatever cities we visit. We ate at local restaurants, talked with the locals and wandered around, discovering what life is like "off the grid."

The rest of our trip, an organized tour that included Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Estonia, gave us a great exposure to life and culture in that part of the world. Yes, there were lots of tourists in the usual places, but going out by ourselves on foot gave us marvelous experiences in places we never knew.

When we can no longer do these far-away trips, we will always adventure to learn something new — even in our own wonderful city.

Frima and Michael Telerant, Westwood

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.