Wednesday 23 May 2012

Travel Writing Cliches Part III


If a place is worth going to,  people will go there. And if they didn't, the hotels, resorts and airlines would go out of business and you'd have to stay at home. But travel writers spend a lot of time trying to find a destination unvisited by other people. Or is that the wrong sort of people? 

bustling (the bustling beaches of the Med) = crowded (but "bustling street markets" are OK)

tranquillity = emptiness. You can find tranquillity off the beaten track away from the tour buses.

chaos = crowds (the chaos of holiday season)

When tourist hordes descend on a place they “spoil” it, ditto “cruise-ship crowds”.

Molise has yet to be discovered, so it's a region worth visiting before tourist hordes descend. (about.com) ... avoids the tourist hordes that descend upon Moscow's Red Square. (wikitravel.org)

hordes of holidaymakers and sightseers teem through the streets. chinatravel.net

Try to avoid the hordes of day trippers who arrive about 10.30am on excursion boats from Rhodes… Web

Most travellers descend on popular regions (like Europe) during the summer months, as this often coincides with their own holiday periods. The result? Hordes of tourists descending on the attractions that you want to see, booking out the funky hotel that you wanted to stay in, and packing out the tables in that restaurant that you didn’t want to miss, all on the day you’re in that town that you wanted to visit because the pictures you saw made it seem so quiet, serene and delightful. Lonely Planet blog

More clichés:

Fishermen fish, local people hunt, farm etc “to fill their bellies”.

I never again want to read the words “the sun beat down

studded with Only use for things that could look like studs, like diamonds. Fishing nets, no.

Must you mention every cobbled street?

hills roll, grassland is lush, and anything can be colourful: roadside stalls, vegetable patches...

lash     what rain does to buildings (see buffet, pummel)

industrial wasteland = applied to any collection of industrial buildings busy employing people and producing widgets

More travel writing cliches here. 
And here.

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