Venice, Italy Is A Shoulder-To-Shoulder Hellscape Right Now

Do you hate crowds? You might want to take Venice, Italy off your bucket list. 

In a wild TikTok video posted over the weekend, Venice looks like Walt Disney World in your nightmares minus the kids in strollers screaming for Mickey. Imagine being shoulder-to-shoulder, ass-to-ass with a bunch of smelly Europeans who are no doubt crop dusting each other and reek of cigs and body odor. 

Why is this place that has a history of being crowded, so crowded right now? 

There are a couple of things going on. First, it's Carnival season, which started on Valentine's Day and will run all the way until March 4. Tourists rolled into town on the first weekend and clogged up the ancient city. 

The other factor is that Venice will soon implement a tourist fee to visit the city. Between April 18 and July 27, a 5 Euro tourist tax per person goes into effect. The fee is supposed to keep people away. Has it worked? It's hard to tell because the official 2024 tourist numbers aren't in, but we know that in 2023, Venice saw an explosion in tourists. 

Over 5.7 million people visited Venice in 2023 to see the city that is flooding due to rising seas. That number beat 2019's insane year where 5.5 million people visited. 

Last summer, Reuters reported that the 2024 tourist tax wasn't slowing the flow of sightseers and if the hellscape from opening weekend of Carnival is any indication, those of you with Venice on your summer itineraries better not mind overcrowded streets. 

"We need to be able to warn people that if they come on certain days they are not going to have a good time," a city official told the news outlet. 

If discouraging people from coming is the mission, the Venice tourism board should just show the videos coming out of Carnival. 

Does this look like fun?

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