Never eat Macca’s: The 13 most annoying middle-class takes on travel

There are many supposed truisms about travel trotted out by right-thinking people. These are often misguided. Among the more specious are the following:

1. Chain hotels are soulless, so to be avoided

No. Give me a clean room, a comfortable bed, a bath in the bathroom (Lord help us, not the bedroom), lighting I can understand, predictable standards – and I’ll supply all the soul that’s needed.

2. Always eat where the locals eat

Why? Even in Europe, locals will eat some appalling muck – or perhaps you’ve never tried Provençal pieds-et-paquets or Norwegian rakfisk? And following locals in, say, Hackney might very well lead to jellied eels. How Aussies will curse Cockneys for that bit of advice.

3. Keep off the beaten track

Wrong. The track is beaten because there’s something worthwhile at the end of it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be beaten. Stay off the beaten track and you’ll likely end up somewhere no-one wants to go: Chernobyl, North Korea, Rockhampton, that sort of place.

4. Airline meals are dreadful

Really? You’re moving at 800km/h, 10,000 metres above the ground… and you’re complaining about the state of the lasagne?

5. You mustn’t use knives and forks for Chinese food, or spaghetti

Oh yes, you must. Thin sticks are uniquely ill-designed for the eating of rice and noodles. Only a totalitarian society would insist on them. Meanwhile, the Italian requirement that spaghetti be not cut but twirled is just another of their ways – coffee invisible to the naked eye, Mario Balotelli, the Mafia – of annoying the world. Chop it up, for heaven’s sake – it tastes the same and doesn’t stain.

6. We got on marvellously, though we had no common language

No. You thought you got by with signs and smiles. You didn’t. As you expressed admiration for Volodymyr Zelensky, so they understood you were inviting them for a fortnight back in Geelong.

7. In France, you don’t order a well-done steak or a flat white in mid-afternoon

Yes you do, if you want to. You’re the customer, Gaspard is the waiter. He disapproves? So what? If he was so great, he’d be sitting where you are and you’d be serving him.

8. We’re not tourists, we’re travellers

No, you’re not. If you leave home for leisure, you’re a tourist. “Travellers” are merely tourists with ideas above their station and odd headgear. There’s no moral or qualitative hierarchy of holiday experiences. Flying to Bali is in no way inferior to flying to Papua New Guinea. It’s just a different departure gate.

9. We always try to soak up local culture

Dangerous. Flamenco is occasionally OK, as is tango in Buenos Aires. That said, fado in Lisbon, dirndl skirts in Bavaria and any folk dancing anywhere have the same effect on a holiday as a colonoscopy.

10. We never stoop to fast food outlets

Believe me, you would – if you saw the alternatives in some resorts I could mention. Put it this way: thank heavens for Macca’s in Nadi, Fiji.

11. We never fly Jetstar – they treat passengers like cattle

No, they don’t. Look around you again. It’s mainly the passengers who behave like cattle. Jetstar staff undoubtedly take vows of patience. Were I faced with shuffling hordes trying to cram a ton of hand luggage into the overhead locker and a gallon of wine or beer down their throats, I’d be roaring down the aisle, kicking travellers right and left towards the emergency exits. Which I’d open.

12. We don’t buy tourist tat

A pity. Gift shops, their owners and families depend on you buying a small cuckoo clock or plate featuring a bloke in lederhosen blowing an alpenhorn and emblazoned “Andenken aus Deutschland” [souvenir from Germany].

13. Sorry, but we don’t do lying-about-on-the-beach holidays

Yes, we get it; you’re way too cultivated for that, way too clever to relax with a book and your family and a glass of rosé and maybe some friends and maybe also a leisurely dip and laughter and a chance to educate the kids (“How do crabs have babies?” “Sideways”) and the sort of relaxation you always say you hanker for, don’t have time at home. Why waste time doing all that, when there’s a neo-Gothic chapel to explore?

The Telegraph, London
with Traveller