717 Gigapixel Image of Rembrandt's Nightwatch

I'm going to be the contrarian: Unless you're getting an exclusive viewing and you wake fresh with a singular goal, seeing the great art of the world is likely to be a compromised experience. When overwhelming beauty and art surrounds you, and a hectic schedule dogs you, everything is dulled and the experience becomes almost a fog. My experience going through the Sistine Chapel was almost an aside to just days of overwhelming artistry, so I gave it barely the respect it deserved. I've enjoyed and experienced it virtually magnitudes more.

A couple of years ago I did a trip to Belgium and France. Saw all of the sights, loads of museums, and did a tonne of wandering. It was a great time, but was overwhelming. I came home and maybe a week later we were browsing YouTube on the TV and came across a channel that just walks around neighbourhoods of Japan (e.g. Shibuya, Tokyo, among others. The channel is Virtual Japan). A couple of hours of walking a stabilized camera through the streets of a Japanese city. My son came in and watched with me while we looked at storefronts, read restaurant menus, walked through malls, virtually participated in pedestrian scrambles, etc). The weirdest thing is that days later my "trip" to Japan felt much more real than my trip to Belgium and France (or any prior trip I'd ever taken). Absent all of the worries and hustle and overwhelming inputs, somehow this completely not real experience felt much more real, and to this day I feel like I've been to Japan, while so many other countries that I've physically been to and experienced for weeks seem like almost a dream. It really was a fascinating experience for me.

It made me wonder if there is a business in on-demand telepresence for this sort of virtual travel. "Uber" someone technologically enabled to walk around an area, look at things you want and follow directions. Add some dystopian elements to it and soon they're getting in fights at your request.

It sounds like you've discovered the secret to travel. You don't have to see all the sights or cram everything into each day. Usually you get more out of it if you take things slowly, be intentional about what you really want to do, and savor each experience. With two small kids now, we usually pick one city per trip and plan (at most) one morning activity and one afternoon/evening activity. Sometimes it's one activity per day, sometimes it's none (maybe we just meander around a neighborhood between meals, like your Virtual Japan experience). Like you said, if you see 10 different Roman churches in one day, the Sistine Chapel becomes just another fresco.

I think you made some really interesting points and did a great job of describing that experience. And I do agree with you about the sort of overwhelming experience that results in a kind of fog. Before I took my family to Europe in 2017, my wife and I planned our trip meticulously. Her instinct was to see and do as much as we possibly could. I relentlessly pulled in the other direction. I argued that choosing fewer things to see and having "down time" was essential. If you try to cram as many experiences as possible into a visit, you get overloaded and burned out and none of them will be as meaningful as they should.

Having said that, before visiting the Sistine Chapel, I had indeed studied the imagery on my computer, poring over many of the details ahead of time. I knew that giving my brain some time to ingest, digest, and comprehend the enormity of what I was about to see would be beneficial. And I suppose in much the same way you studied the streets of a Japanese city, I had a similar experience with the Sistine Chapel.

And perhaps here's my somewhat contrarian point to your contrarian point... :-) Seeing it in person lit up the right side of my brain whereas the virtual tour on the computer was more of a left-brained experience. Standing in the same room Michaelangelo stood (and lay on his back) for four years was indescribable. The light that bounced off that ceiling and into my eyes was different than the light emitted from my computer's LCD monitor. Visually exploring it with my 12-year-old daughter and sharing it through her eyes was great. It was a fantastic experience, one I will always treasure. I hope to see it again someday.

Dating people from other developed nations than the US forced me to never do a rushed vacation.

They have weeks off of work and expect you to as well. They don't save up for 5 day trips across 3 day weekends to rush rush rush. They* just dip out and live in the different place for a while, take classes, get to know locals, etc. (*not everywhere has this privilege, but it is very common)

I’m never going back to the other way I just hang out with richer Americans. More people have been doing something equivalent over the last year, they're usually also richer Americans just still career focused as well, compared to trust funders.

Although I wasn't rushing I never really thought about the Sistine Chapel. I’m reading this like “I’ve been there” and I am generally fascinated by microstates but the significance of this isn't nearly as high as you all are putting it, to me.

Makes me think I should look it up more, because I absolutely did not.

Some parts were crowded, other parts were not, I enjoyed the art but hmmm. To me the Swiss Guard tradition was more interesting and fascinating, and some of the graves had fascinating designs on them.

I know this will get booed but I found the Sistine Chapel underwhelming. Part of it has to do with, like you mentioned, being overwhelmed or maybe touristed out. The previous year I'd spent 4 months in Europe and after the 3rd or 4th city I just got tired of churches and museums. While it was over a year later, when I made it to Rome, the Sistine Chapel just didn't push any buttons for me.

I'm not saying anyone should agree with me. Only that I don't find it shocking if some people say the Sistine Chapel didn't trigger any strong lasting memories.

> not everywhere has this privilege, but it is very common

Lol this is not very common at all. You thinking that's common tells me you don't actually know how normal people from European countries actually live. Might be helpful to actually meet these "locals" that you talk about.

I realize my comment gave perhaps an inaccurate impression, but even with an incredibly sparse itinerary, and bounteous amounts of time (I spent weeks in Italy. I went through Belgium and France over two weeks. I spent a day just wandering around Paris with no itinerary, in addition to days more doing a variety of things), being completely inundated with new and unknown -- even the most benign door or building -- added to staying in a strange places, eating at strange places, and being detached from your normal life, for me at least made the experience far less...persistent.

The Sistine Chapel experience, for instance, aside from being just a mass of people being shuffled through one of the largest tourist draws in the world, was on a day that started with incidentally seeing Pope JP2 give an address, and ended with seeing the Dalai Lama at Tivoli when going there for a dinner (two spiritual leaders in one day! Yet I remain an agnostic). In the end the Chapel got filed away as "neat some stuff painted on a ceiling". That is an extreme example, but for my "a 100 year old is historic" North American sensibilities, virtually everything in places like Belgium, France and Italy is overwhelming, from the weird little waffle shop in Ypres to the sound of bells, the stones on the street, etc, everything just becomes an onslaught of overwhelming experience.

I just didn’t want to write an essay about who does what by country and class

I’m just glad I was exposed to it and was inspired and quickly able to adapt

I spent 3 days in Venice; you can't even scratch the surface in 3 days, but I'd say 3 days is about enough for one visit. If you want to see more, book another visit.

Quite a lot of fine art in Venice isn't in crowded museums; some of it's in little churches, away from the crowds, and some is in smaller private museums, away from the day-tripper trail.

I've never been to Florence. I hear that's overwhelming.

What you refer to is people relocating for work or study. It happens but it's uncommon.

Much more common is boarding a low cost flight on Friday night or Saturday morning, flying between 60 to 120 minutes and coming back on Sunday night. Add to that a two/three weeks vacation once per year.

Same, a few days ago I chanced upon a photo I took of it (you're not supposed to take photos) and I was surprised I didn't remember it basically at all. I do clearly remember being in its fairly small room with a billion other people, though, and only having X minutes to look at it before the next group has to come through.

I also remember being disgusted at the vast, obscene wealth that the Vatican has amassed and regretting giving them more money.

I’m referring to statutory 5 weeks of vacation actually. Narrowing it down to developed nations with that feature.

I visited Paris for a few weeks a couple of years ago. The way I did it, I had a rough schedule that was my fallback for the day. In the morning I'd usually hit one thing but otherwise spent my time mostly wandering around.

Didn't even go up the Eiffel tower because I didn't feel like waiting in line.

I enjoyed travelling this way. But I admit it's probably easier without a family to accommodate.

I realize that I didn't explicitly state that I was writing about my experience in Europe, as a European living there. The data points are me and my friends of multiple countries but mainly Italians.

There are (working) people who move to another place for many weeks but the vast majority of us does weekend tourism and 2 or 3 weeks vacations. Companies are not particularly keen to let one person go for 4 o 5 weeks. My personal experience when I was not self employed is that they don't like even 3 weeks in a single stint. The two longest vacations I had were one month long after I went self employed (hi Australia!)

I expect that working from home will make staying abroad for a long term more common, but it costs more money that staying at home (you're probably still paying a rent or mortgage) and it's usually not for families.

>I've never been to Florence. I hear that's overwhelming.

JFYI, Stendhal Syndrome (the term was born in Florence, by a psychoilogist that observed cases among tourists):

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/stendhal-syndrome-...

Not really-really proved to be an actual illness, and not common, still ...