DarrenBarefoot.com

My former g/f and I did a lot of travel and we tended to dress reasonably well for it–no blue jeans, no t-shirts, nothing shabby. It paid off handsomely: we got treated like real people and not as tourists (even though we patently >weremust be Germans! I still smile 8 years later as I write this now.

FWIW, we did see a number of American tourists in Venice while we were there. You could spot ‘em at a distance: mostly couples in their 60s with t-shirts, fanny packs, bill-caps, and the women wore slacks in unnatural colors. They also didn’t speak Italian nor did they try. It was embarrassing.

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I’m in Vegas right now for work and was thinking about this exact thing today. You’ll never be able to “dress like a local” because you won’t know what locals dress like until you get there.

What I find works is just to walk down the street looking rushed and annoyed. It sounds silly, but its worked for me a lot and I’ve even had people stop me and ask me for directions in Europe and New York numerous times. Even if you don’t know where you’re going, look like you do and you’ll be fine.

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Jes: I think you’ve got an isolated incident there. The article I linked to puts Germans at the top of the list, and my experience tends to confirm that as well. I found the German tourists I met humble, interested in the outdoors and generally inoffensive.

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i like to think i have some experience in this area, after living for a year in paris (you haven’t felt underdressed until you’ve been a woman living in paris with no shopping budget). note that all this is europe-specific.

here are my rules:
clothes are important. dress neutrally, and whenever possible wear black. it’s dressy, but it blends in. no jeans, and NEVER EVER wear tennis shoes (this is hard as a tourist in a walking city). NO FLIP-FLOPS. no backpacks and absolutely no fanny packs. don’t give in to wearing a money belt or one of those passport holders you hang around your neck. they are a giveaway. dress they way you would to go to a nice museum in your own city. carry a purse or a messenger bag. avoid logos. avoid tshirts. you can carry a camera, but you have to do it as you would in your own city, and unselfconsciously. women should wear dresses and skirts, men should generally not wear shorts.

behavior is next. tourists stand out in part because they are looking at things that locals don’t — architecture, parks, general window shopping. if you don’t look like a tourist, look like you know where you’re going and you’re in a little bit of a hurry to get there. look as if you’re late to a meeting and can’t be bothered with all those chocolate eclairs in the window you just passed or the amazing steeple up ahead. you will note that this will somewhat defeat the purpose of being a tourist, which is to see things, but you can’t have it all ways.

contact with people is next big problem. for north americans, eye contact with strangers is entirely appropriate and in fact desirable. this is not true in most of europe. you should be avoiding eye contact unless you’re standing in front of a counter or having a conversation. don’t make eye contact with people on the street, don’t smile at strangers, don’t greet people who are walking by. it’ll feel rude, but it’s just life as usual. (this doesn’t apply everyone in europe, but it’s definitely generally true.)

it goes without saying that observing what locals do will help, but keep in mind that if you’re heading for highly touristed areas you won’t see many of those. head for the grocery store and check out what people are wearing, or for a department store. watch for other tourists and identify for yourself why you know they are tourists. then don’t do that.

when you get stopped and asked for directions by a local on the street you’ve achieved the nirvana of not looking like a tourist — congratulations. now you have to figure out how to answer them ;)

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I don’t think you can place Canadians
accurately on any list of qualities
when traveling abroad as so many Americans and others are fond of sewing a Canadian flag onto their backpacks.
As though it were some kind
of universal message to locals “I am bland and unremarkable, ignore me.”

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I don’t get it. Why would you NOT want to look like a tourist, if thats what you are ?? The reason you’re visiting a city if you’re a tourist, is so that you absorb the art, history and culture of the place (hopefully), so what so wrong about advertising that ? S’long as you respect the ’see and do not touch’ policy i.e BEHAVE yourselves and conduct yourselves appropriately, there really shouldn’t be a problem in standing out in a crowd of locals, should there ? ‘Sides, most locals welcome tourists quite warmly… it is after all a cultural imperative in most cultures to make guests feel comfortable. And, I quite disagree with the British standing in the tourist chart… in my experience, Americans are the worst tourists. They’re loud and brash, and couldn’t care less about the traditions of another country, coz hell… they could always invade us. Yeesh!! Germans are nice. I like Germans. Indians are also bad tourists, in my opinion. But then, they’re bad locals too… they spoil their own country and then do the same outside as well, unless of course they know they’re going to be flogged, like in Singapore. I’m Indian. I’m ashamed of it, usually.

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Wearing sneakers isn’t exactly the point. I to, want my feet to be comfortable. But big clunky athletic shoes the were made for just that, athletics, can be replaced with sleek, chic stylish sneaker. I hate to see tourist in Rome, dressed like they are going to Disney World.

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