[pizzabearman]

Travelling doesn't mean having to visit all the tourist sites. You can travel anywhere and get a much more genuine experience by not going every tourists destination. You will have such a better experience. Especially like in your case if you studied/know the local language.

[nexuist]

Yes, I feel like it's a bit selfish (no malice intended towards the parent poster) to complain about tourists being everywhere when you yourself are a tourist who also wants to see the sights. Obviously you're not going to be the only person in the world who wants to see something cool in a foreign country.

I think you're spot on. Consider the tourist-y American cities - New York, Boston, LA, Chicago, SF, etc. - most of the city dwellers have no care for the tourists because they don't spend all of their time next to attractions. They go to work, they go to school, they go to parks, etc. All of these are different in different places, and worth looking at themselves! It doesn't need to be on a brochure or part of a guided tour to be rich with history and purpose. And often, venturing out from the "golden path" leads to a healthy dose of reality (valuable!) when you see how normal people operate outside of the tourists spots.

[CPLX]

I have lived in downtown Brooklyn for about 20 years. I live in Brooklyn Heights and my company is in Dumbo, and I walk by the Brooklyn Bridge on the way to work every day.

There used to be a handful of adventurous tourists who would walk across from Manhattan and look around. Now the Brooklyn waterfront is on every single visitor’s wish list and it’s packed with people and selfie-taking nonstop, and almost overwhelming during busy summer periods.

I think it’s great. The Brooklyn Bridge and the skyline are stunning and I feel lucky to have this view every day and I’m glad more people are getting to see it. When I go visit the places they live and look at their great views I don’t feel bad about that either.

[usrusr]

That's pretty much how I do tourism: go to a high tourism city/region (where the local culture has already learnt how to deal with it), then ruthlessly demote every popular "must see" to a "might see" and see what else is there. Some "must sees" will still be visited, but in a purely opportunistic manner. Turns out the colosseum isn't a complete waste of time if you randomly passed by at a time when there wasn't any queue at all, but if that does not happen there's no shortage of other things to see.

[2sk21]

We have a Jeffrey Koons original in the lobby of my office building in New York so I'm very used to winding my way through tourists to get to the elevators :-)