Posted on 09/07/2020 9:58:26 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Bruges mayor Dirk De fauw first realized something was desperately wrong with European tourism when on a brisk March morning he crossed the Burg square in front of the Gothic city hall and there was nothing but silence.
“There are always people. Always,” De fauw said. That morning?
“Nothing. Nobody is on that large square” at the heart of one of Europe’s most picturesque cities, he said.
Six months later, as Europe’s leanest tourist summer season in recent history is starting to draw to a close, COVID-19 is yet to loosen its suffocating grip on the continent.
If anything the pandemic might tighten it over the coming months, with losses piling up in the tens of billions of euros across the 27-nation European Union, and the continent’s vaunted government support and social security system under increasing strain to prop up the sector. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
I read that in Cyprus, tourism is down by about 90% this year. I think the only tourists allowed in are from Greece.
Cyprus is a popular tourist destination for Israelis, for civil marriages if nothing else.
Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people are lining the roads, especially on the mountains for the postponed Tour de France. Maybe not the millions that happened in previous years because no one is allowed to drive up the mountains, maybe even camp ahead of time. Everyone has to walk up. At one of the first high mountain stages there were not enough officials near the summit because they had no idea that tens of thousands of people would walk up that mountain. I’m sure after the first one they had more.
Brugge (Flemish spelling) is a wonderful beautiful living museum. This is such a shame. The Chinese need to be held accountable. Never forget! If China gets away with this, just imagine how bad the next attack will be?
Pandemic plus religion of peace is why I’ll never go to Europe again. More religion of peace, than pandemic.
Every day I watch the Venice Live Cams, still hardly anyone there. Normally it would have been jammed with people this time of year.
We were supposed to be in Venice on August 17th. The travel company cancelled our vacation months ago.
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