The body heat remains far more vivid than any of the books. If I spent too much time at any particular shelf, someone from the swarm of other tourists would bump by and spread their warmth, and so I kept moving, vainly trying to find my own space within that crowded bookstore. I had thought the Livraria Lello in Porto would be a cool little find, a travel suggestion I'd come across in a random article about the most beautiful bookstores in Europe. Bookstores are fun! Never did it cross my mind that so many people might be interested in reading.
But they weren't interested in reading per se. The Livraria made the list because of its ornate cladding, the elegant gold accentuating its shelves, the central spiral staircase that branches and merges and branches back out, and its association with Harry Potter - JK Rowling once lived in Porto and reportedly frequented the bookstore. As a result, the Livraria Lello fame has skyrocketed, transforming it essentially into a small museum. Entering the store/museum now requires pre-purchasing a $5 ticket and still queuing for a long while. Once inside, all the tourists mill around undertaking the Herculean challenge of trying to photograph the bookstore's glory with as few human distractions as possible.
The Livraria is emblematic of Porto as a whole. Portugal's second largest city located in the country's north, Porto has contributed much to the world in its two thousand years of history, notably port wine. The Ribeira, the beautiful medieval square along the river caters entirely to tourists, is teeming with hotels, restaurants, bars, street performers and vendors. With bright orange tiled roofs, sweeping arching bridges and overelaborate gold-gilded clock towers, Porto might be the most beautiful city I've ever visited. But as I watched groups of Italians and French taking selfies, I pondered about how this charm came about. It must have originally evolved naturally as commerce grew along the square, but it was clear that today's neighborhood is artificially maintained to look beautiful and to encourage travelers to part with their money. The economic activity that spawned the Ribeira can ironically no longer continue, displaced by its own success.
Tourism as an economic driver has been called the devil's bargain. As the Ribeira neighborhood of Porto attracted more and more tourists, it became more profitable for businesses to cater towards tourists rather than residents. Another store, the Casa Oriental, encompasses this change. Founded in 1910, its storefront plaque depicts a "native" serving something to his colonial master and yeah somehow they've neither changed that nor its name. What they have changed is what the Casa sells, originally stocking groceries and meats but now peddling factory-made chocolate bars, canned sardines and kitschy trinkets. Tourists got a place to bring back souvenirs - locals lost their source for cooking dinner. This precipitates a feedback loop, causing locals to move out and clearing space for more hotels and tourism-based businesses. Eventually the area becomes so filled with out-of-towners ambling slowly, taking photos, not speaking your language and getting so rowdy late at night that no one wants to live there year-round. Additionally, the place becomes generically touristy, no longer displaying the daily culture of the Portuguese.
As I admired the river and soaked in the Portuguese summer, I felt a pang of guilt at contributing towards this devil's bargain. Was this an inevitable economic evolution, or was it a result of a fixable human flaw? I think there is a bit of both.
Porto, and the Livraria in particular, are extremely photogenic. Photos have become the dominant way of sharing information through our society. Facilitated by Instagram, cool photos are how tourist sites effectively market themselves and how travelers share their trips. I don't find this alone intrinsically bad, and I personally love taking interesting pictures and sharing them on Instagram. But after arriving at the bookstore and getting the best shots I could, I was left wondering "what now?" I had little tangible interest in the Livraria other than its superficial beauty, and now I was bothered by all the other people in that cramped space. The photos ironically portrayed a special experience, belying my annoyance and discomfort at the time. I realized that the popularity in sites like the Livraria had blown up in recent years precisely because of Instagram and targeted advertising. Photogenic places that successfully attracted tourists then organically got more social media attention, thereby attracting more interest and more Instagram posts.
Planning for Instagram has taken a disproportionate role in my travels. There are many great reasons to travel, and visual pleasure is only one of them. Sounds, smells, conversations and discovering different customs make traveling to new places so fulfilling, yet these are so difficult to share. There are even beautiful sights that don't fit neatly within a camera frame. Videos and stories can do their part, but most of the best aspects of travel cannot be truly shared.
Part of the virtue of travel is growth by going far outside one's comfort zone, whether it's developing villages in Myanmar, rural Idaho, or Fort Lauderdale. I've found great joy in traveling to places to learn more about their history, with no clearer example than my Bosnia trip. Going there a week after Porto, the types and numbers of tourists I met in Sarajevo was juxtaposing. It seems everyone there was curious to know more about the unique history and present, not just to capture great photos. Furthermore, there's joy in simply satisfying the curiosity of what an unknown place is like. Sometimes, the joys of traveling manifest only after the trip. Now when I meet someone from Bosnia, we can more meaningfully connect. I'd likely have a less interesting conversation with someone from Porto because I only learned superficial things about the city.
If we are all collectively over-emphasizing shareable photos, we will find ourselves rubbing elbows with strangers and over-taxing a local ecosystem. Beautiful places are certainly worth visiting - I don't regret going to the Livraria bookstore, and it's likely that I would have regretted not going. The crowd was an experience in itself, and it ultimately inspired this post. My main takeaway is that anything pretty is likely to be popular, and it's worth counterbalancing these with other places that pique your interest. A little genuine curiosity and research can go a long way towards making a trip more distinctive and memorable.
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