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Cruise tourists overwhelm Europe's ancient resortsThere are places where the surge of global tourism is starting to feel like a tidal wave.Ancient cities around the shores of the Mediterranean and Adriatic are on the front line, their stone streets squeezed full of summer visitors as budget airlines and giant cruise ships unload ever-growing armies of tourists.Take the Croatian city of Dubrovnik: a perfectly preserved historical miniature, carved from honey-coloured stone set in a sea of postcard blue.Around 1,500 people live within the walls of its Old City, custodians of cultural treasures left by everyone from the Romans and the Ostrogoths to the Venetians and the Habsburgs.On a busy day three modern cruise ships, each one the size of a floating apartment building, can disgorge five or six times that number of people into the city.They join the throngs of tourists staying in local hotels and in rooms rented over the internet, in streets where almost every elegant stone house has been converted into a B&B.The overall effect is Disneylandish - a sense that you meet no-one but other tourists or ice-cream sellers, tour guides, waiters, reception clerks and buskers who are there to keep the tourist wheels turning. Dubrovnik is not alone in struggling to balance its need for tourists' money with the need to ensure that those tourists don't end up destroying the beauty they've come to see.The tiny Italian island of Capri has warned that it could "explode" under the pressure of the trade that sees as many as 15,000 visitors a day travelling by boat from the mainland, to visit its once-idyllic streets and squares. Florence, Barcelona and some Greek islands like Santorini have suffered too, and it was perhaps Venice which experienced the problem first. Its population has been falling since the 1950s, effectively forced out by the hordes of cruise-ship visitors. For now, ideas like installing turnstiles on ancient squares and pedestrian traffic lights on crowded streets may sound rather fanciful.But if that tourist tide keeps rising they might start to seem a little more tempting.
Europe-wide police operation busts horsemeat racketA Spanish-led police operation has cracked a racket in horsemeat unfit for human consumption, the EU's police agency Europol says.Police in Spain made 65 arrests for crimes including animal abuse, forgery, money laundering and racketeering.
Dog survives after chasing stone off 150ft cliffA cocker spaniel has survived a 150ft (46m) fall from a cliff in Somerset.The dog, called Indy, plunged off Hurlstone Point, near Porlock, while chasing a stone during a walk with her owners.Minehead's lifeboat crew was scrambled to rescue her and found her among boulders at the foot of the cliff.A spokesman said: "She had a few scratches and bumps and was very shaken up, but it could have been much worse.
IMF to insist on ‘unsustainable debt’ and say banks need 10 bln eurosThe International Monetary Fund has again found that Greece’s debt is unsustainable under every scenario, according to the report the Executive Council will be discussing on Thursday to decide on the Fund’s participation in the Greek program, sources say.As things stand, we are probably heading for the worst combination, as Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said in May: that the IMF is heeded only in its demands for more austerity and not for debt relief.
Florence, Barcelona and some Greek islands like Santorini have suffered too, and it was perhaps Venice which experienced the problem first. Its population has been falling since the 1950s, effectively forced out by the hordes of cruise-ship visitors. For now, ideas like installing turnstiles on ancient squares and pedestrian traffic lights on crowded streets may sound rather fanciful.But if that tourist tide keeps rising they might start to seem a little more tempting.
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Topic: 16/07/17 (Read 1719 times)
