Views on Touring in a Time of Covid

A post where we muse on what worked well and what didn’t.

Things that were good:

• No coaches.
• Vastly reduced numbers of people in destinations that coaches visit.
• Other tourists were almost all domestic so it felt like we were the only foreigners in the place.  Except the Dutch, of course, who get everywhere, but their language skills are so great that you can’t tell who they are by listening to them.
• Breakfast buffets, cafes and restaurants had generally taken a very thoughtful and positive Covid approach, so with a mixture of masks, sanitising, social distancing and staff intervention when serving we felt that everything was as safe as it could be and probably a lot cleaner than in “normal” times.
• And of course the weather was warm so we generally ate outside, or in very well-ventilated rooms.
• Everyone loved Hermann (but that is not necessarily Covid-related).
• It really did feel like this was a one-off opportunity to enjoy some of these places in the height of summer.
• The decision to reroute away from Southern Italy towards the Tyrol gave us much more time to explore Germany, which we would recommend, and took us away from the heat which was becoming a bit challenging in an open car.

Things that were not so good:

• Many museums had suspended all their hands-on activities, demonstrations etc so that you could buy the whole ticket but only have half the experience.
• Some places insisted that you had a guided tour but only provided the tours in the local language, leading to an initially interesting but quickly tedious understanding of what it must be like to be deaf.
• Quite a few museums and art galleries were shut completely, but of course the countryside and town walks are always open.
• Continental countries never did the UK’s 2m distancing rule, leading to some uncomfortably close contact in public places.
• The shift in balance from international to domestic tourism meant that the nicest hotels were still booked up, only by different people.
• The UK government’s constant changes to the quarantine rules led to a game of cross-channel Cummings Forfeits as the fine details kept changing.