10 Tourist Traps To Skip This Summer
With summer comes many changes — rainboots become flip flops, blazers become bikinis, and home turf gets left behind in search of new and exciting locales. Making the most out of this precious vacation time is paramount and travelers should have little patience with restaurants, bars, and cafés that aren't the cream of the crop. Instead of wasting the time you do have away from a cubicle or textbook at tourist trap restaurants — where the food is subpar and the story you'd bring home has already been told — skip these oft-written about dining establishments for more of what the locals really eat.
From intentionally rude waiters to overhyped "vibe dining" in a trendy club-bar-lounge, we promise if you heed our advice, you'll have more time to spend exploring the culinary landscape of Las Vegas instead of feeling like you were blacklisted from the VIP section. Use the time you would have spent convincing your friends that you did, in fact, eat at the original Ray's Pizza, dining at hidden gems privy to (and preferred by) New York City natives only.
We admit it — sometimes it's all about location. But why sacrifice service at a see-and-be-seen scene in Miami Beach when you could be soaking up the rays in your own tropical paradise? And what is less attractive than reeking of garlic when you're scheming to snag yourself a movie star in LA? (Unless werewolves really are your thing.)
Wave off the restaurants crammed with the fanny-packed and map-toting in favor of getting a real taste of your summer destination. Because stopping in at the Hard Rock Café in Times Square to catch a glimpse of one of James Brown's suits really does a number on your travel reputation.