Also most likely goes at the most crowded time for some reason.
Idk if I'm just lucky but even what are supposed to be super busy touristy things I've mostly been able to see among fairly chill/ no crowds. And this includes Rome, Venice, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Berlin, Amsterdam among others, and in most of these visits to their respective cultural/ architectural/historical hotspots.
Like literally just go in April or early October I guess. Or like at night. Something like this.
I was in Faliraki a few years ago and it was really nice. I was there in late October though, so there were only like 20 other tourists in town and all the penny arcades and tourist shops were already closed.
I'll never understand why people fly to the south in the middle of the summer, when the weather is nice here anyway.
I'm in the US, and everyone seems to flock to Yellowstone, NYC, DC, and maybe SF. We have a lot of other really cool places, and you'd probably have a much better experience if you avoid the top 10 tourist destinations. For example:
63 national parks, and only 2-3 are international destinations
thousands of state parks, and they're basically completely missed by international travelers
tons of fantastic beaches all across the south, no need to go to Hawaii or Miami to get some good beach time
For anything you want to see, I could point to a half dozen places that are way less crowded and would likely get you closer to the type of thing you're looking for. I assume the same is true for any popular destination, so I go out of my way to try to find nuggets of cool stuff (e.g. when I went to BC, CA, we went to Lynn Canyon instead of Capilano Bridge, which was super gorgeous and not crowded at all). Waiting in lines sucks, so I'd rather go to the next best option and spend more quality time there.
That’s why I avoid vacations abroad like the plague. I absolutely loathe being around people, and people on vacation abroad tend to be the worst version of themselves. I’d much rather stay at home than deal with that.
Eh, you can do vacations and largely avoid people, if you do some research ahead of time.
For example, my SO and I visited their home country, and we avoided most of the tourist traps, and hit the one or two we wanted to see during off peak hours. In fact, our whole trip was right after the busy season, so we were able to have good weather w/o all the nonsense from tourists. We visited a national park out of state nearby my family at the start of the season (when weather is the most iffy), and we lucked out and had fantastic weather and almost no crowds (backup plan was to hang out with my family, and they ended up joining us).
The trick isn't to avoid vacations abroad, the trick is to do them on your terms instead of whatever others expect. If you want to see France and hate crowds, don't visit the Eiffel Tower or Versailles, go somewhere in the countryside and get a nice B&B and maybe time it w/ a local festival to enjoy local culture.