Amsterdam is one of those places that has wrestled with big questions about tourism for a while now, so it was a privilege to speak to politicians, activists, residents, restaurant owners, hotel owners, cannabis retailers and, yes, a prostitute for this story that I wrote about the city for The New York Times in March.
And then in April, I got to spend a dozen or so hours on the phone with people who spend their working hours thinking about how travel can do less harm and more good in the world. I learned a lot. And then I summed up the best and most useful lessons in this article, which ran on Earth Day in the NYT.
And then we got to May, and suddenly the opening-up news was all over the place. My editor asked me to write about Greece, which has already started welcoming vaccinated and Covid-negative tourists from the United States and a handful of other countries. Next week, Greece will extend the same terms to tourists from anywhere and everywhere. Tourism makes up more than one fifth of the Greek economy, so the past year has been really hard. But still, a lot of the people I spoke to had mixed feelings.
What do you think -- would you go to Greece this spring? Tempting, I know...
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