10 Places NOT to Go Swimming in Europe
10 Places NOT to Go Swimming in Europe
https://www.fodors.com/world/europe/experiences/news/photos/10-places-not-to-go-swimming-in-europe
Leave your swimsuit at home when you visit these European water attractions...
Every summer without fail, someone decides that a 700-year-old fountain, a working canal, or a UNESCO-protected harbor looks exactly like a great place to cool off. It doesn’t take long for the footage to end up online, and it certainly doesn’t take long for the fine to arrive either.
Europe’s most photographed bodies of water are, almost without exception, off limits to swimmers – whether that’s down to boat traffic, bacteria, heritage law or simply a city that has had enough of tourists treating its monuments like a lido.
While they might look beautifully refreshing (especially during the heatwaves the continent is currently suffering through), they’re unfortunately off-limits for dipping a toe – or more.
If you’re feeling unsure, here are ten spots where wading in will cost you considerably more than a dry-cleaning bill.
PHOTO: XANTANA
1 OF 10
The Trevi Fountain
WHERE: Rome, Italy
It’s the fountain every visitor to Rome wants a piece of, and every summer at least one of them decides a coin toss isn’t enough and climbs in for a proper soak.
This past year alone has brought a New Zealander diving in fully clothed to a chorus of boos, and a woman blaming a 30-degree heatwave for her impromptu paddle–both walked away with €500 fines.
Rome’s police patrol the Trevi constantly, and even the smaller stuff gets punished: wading, sitting on the basin edge, or touching the sculptures all carry fines starting at €450, with repeat offenders facing a lifetime ban from the site.
Since February 2026, there’s also a small entry fee just to reach the water’s edge: part of the city’s push to protect the monument from crowds. The water isn’t drinkable, isn’t clean, and isn’t going to make anyone’s holiday photos worth the paperwork that follows.
PHOTO: ANTON ALEKSENKO
2 OF 10
The Grand Canal
WHERE: Venice, Italy
Venice’s canals look impossibly inviting on a hot afternoon, and impossibly full of vaporetti, gondolas, and water taxis the moment you’re actually in them.
Swimming here is banned outright, and the city enforces it with real conviction: a British man and his girlfriend were fined €450 each and sent home within hours of arriving, after gondoliers spotted their dip near the Accademia bridge and called it in.
That’s far from an isolated case – Venice issues well over a thousand expulsion orders a year for bad tourist behavior, with canal swimming a regular offender among them, alongside stunts like diving off the Rialto Bridge or surfing down the Grand Canal on an electric board (yep, really).
Beyond the fines, there’s the water itself to consider: with no modern sewage system in the old city, a swim here means sharing the canal with centuries of waste. Just admire it from a vaporetto instead.
PHOTO: ADISA
3 OF 10
Amsterdam's Canals
WHERE: Netherlands
Amsterdam’s canal ring is one of the loveliest urban landscapes in Europe, and one of the least safe places to swim in it.
On paper, the canals are classified as shipping lanes, packed with tour boats, water taxis, and private vessels that have no realistic way of spotting a swimmer’s head bobbing near the surface.
Police issue fines of €140-170 for anyone caught taking a dip, particularly near bridges, locks, and busy commercial routes, and they’ve taken to reminding people bluntly on social media each summer.
It isn’t only about the fine either: around 18 people drown in Amsterdam’s canals every year, and heavy rain can send the sewage system overflowing straight into the water for days afterwards.
The city dreams of one day making its canals swimmable, but until then, head to Sloterplas or one of Amsterdam’s proper urban beaches for a legal, considerably safer dip.
PHOTO: MICHAEL MULKENS
4 OF 10
Piazza Santo Spirito Fountain
WHERE: Florence, Italy
Florence’s fountains have a habit of ending up on the news for the wrong reasons–most memorably when a tourist stripped off for a moonlit swim in the 15th-century fountain at Piazza Santo Spirito, laughing with friends and inviting bystanders to “come in” while locals looked on in disgust.
Under Italy’s cultural heritage laws, misusing or damaging a protected monument can mean a criminal charge as well as a fine that stretches into the thousands, and the city’s other great showpiece, the 16th-century Fountain of Neptune in Piazza della Signoria, has the receipts to prove it.
One tourist climbed it for a selfie and broke off a piece of marble, causing around €5,000 in damage; another, on a pre-wedding dare, clambered over the fence to touch the statue and left with a potential fine of tens of thousands of euros. The fountains are for looking, not for climbing, and certainly not for swimming.
PHOTO: ANYAIVANOVA
5 OF 10
Trafalgar Square Fountains
WHERE: London, England
London’s football fans have been jumping into the Trafalgar Square fountains to celebrate big wins for the best part of a century, ever since the two grand tulip-shaped basins replaced Sir Charles Barry’s originals in 1939.
But Westminster Council would very much like everyone else to stop copying them. It isn’t a criminal offence in quite the way that swimming in a Venetian canal is, but it’s firmly discouraged, signposted against on site, and can land you a fine under local by-laws if a warden or officer takes a dim view of your splashing about.
The fountains sit unguarded in one of the most photographed squares in the city, right beneath Nelson’s Column, which is exactly why the temptation proves too strong for so many on a warm afternoon or after one too many pints. The water is unfiltered, cools nobody down as well as it looks like it should, and is shared with a great many pigeons.
PHOTO: ANTON ALEKSENKO
6 OF 10
The Trocadéro Fountains (and the Seine, Off-Piste)
WHERE: Paris, France
During Paris heatwaves, the pools beneath the Eiffel Tower-facing Trocadéro terraces turn into the city’s unofficial swimming hole, packed with locals and tourists alike, phones out, cooling off with that view as a backdrop.
Officially, bathing in any Parisian fountain, pond, stream, or ornamental water feature is strictly forbidden. Regulations apply even during a heatwave, and endangering yourself in a waterway can bring a fine of up to €3,750. In practice, police have been known to look the other way when temperatures hit 100°F, though that’s a mood rather than any guarantee.
The Seine itself finally reopened to swimmers in 2025 after a century-long ban, with wooden bathing decks near the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame, lifeguards, and mandatory buoyancy aids for newcomers.
Step outside those marked, supervised zones, though, and the old rules, and the old fines, still very much apply–the river remains deep, fast-moving, and full of boat traffic beyond them.
PHOTO: F11PHOTO
7 OF 10
The Roman Baths
WHERE: Bath, England
The steaming, mineral-green water at the heart of this Roman spa town looks made for bathing, which is precisely why it’s been closed to swimmers since 1978, after a young visitor died from a rare, waterborne form of meningitis linked to an amoeba in the pool.
Until then, swimmers had bathed in the Great Bath once a year during the Bath Festival, a tradition that ended overnight.
The ban hasn’t stopped the occasional attention-seeker from hopping in anyway–a YouTuber livestreamed his dip to a modest audience in 2019, becoming the second person in a single week to be caught doing it, and was branded irresponsible by local councilors for good measure.
The water is untreated, unfiltered, and known to carry disease-causing organisms alongside toxic metals, so the risk runs more into a one-way hospital stay than a telling-off. For a legal soak in the same thermal spring water, the Thermae Bath Spa (literally next door) does the job properly.
PHOTO: EMICRISTEA
8 OF 10
Riomaggiore Harbor
WHERE: Cinque Terre, Italy
The postcard view of Riomaggiore’s fishing boats bobbing in their tiny stone harbor tempts almost everyone who sees it, and plenty of visitors do slip in for a swim regardless.
The marina is a working boat lane rather than a beach, though, with vessels coming and going all day, and swimming there sits outside the rules for exactly that reason – it’s a different matter from the sanctioned swimming coves at Manarola or the small pebble beaches tucked beside Vernazza and Monterosso, which are there precisely for a dip.
The wider national park takes its rules seriously across the board: rangers have cracked down hard on hikers tackling the cliffside Sentiero Azzurro in flip-flops or sandals after one too many rescues, with fines reaching €2,500 for the wrong footwear alone.
Between the boat traffic in the harbors and the steep, unforgiving trails above them, Cinque Terre rewards a bit of planning before you pack.
PHOTO: NEIRFY
9 OF 10
Palma's Ornamental Fountains
WHERE: Mallorca, Spain
Mallorca’s capital is full of handsome fountains built for looking at, not lounging in, and Palma’s city council has made that distinction a legal one.
Under the city’s Ordinance for the Promotion of Civic Coexistence, washing or bathing in any fountain, pond, or similar ornamental water feature is explicitly classed as a minor offence, carrying a fine of up to €750 for anyone caught treating a public square like their private pool during a heatwave.
The rule exists because these features simply aren’t built for bodies: they’re shallow, often unfiltered, and easily damaged, and officials are quick to point tourists toward the alternatives that actually exist for cooling off, from municipal pools to the island’s spectacular beaches.
With Balearic summers regularly climbing past 80 degrees, the temptation is real, but so is the four-figure fine waiting on the other side of that fountain’s edge.
PHOTO: BLUEJAYPHOTO
10 OF 10
The River Spree
WHERE: Berlin, Germany
Berlin’s river winds right past Museum Island and the TV Tower, looking every bit the spot for a summer dip, except swimming here has been illegal since May 1925, when industrial pollution made it a real health hazard.
The ban never lifted, even as the water quality improved dramatically over the past decade, and campaigners from the group Flussbad Berlin have spent years staging registered “swim protests” to make their point – one such demonstration in 2025 drew around 200 people into the water at once.
It hasn’t always gone smoothly: a smaller, unregistered dip by the same campaigners once ended with the water police pulling everyone out, checking IDs, and citing violations of Berlin’s Wassergesetz and national inland waterways rules.
City officials in the central Mitte district have talked about trialing legal swimming zones, but for now, the century-old ban stands, and unauthorized swimmers risk more than a soggy towel.
I Took My Opinionated 9-Year-Old to the Galapagos. She Had Notes (Literally)
https://www.fodors.com/world/south-america/ecuador/experiences/news/i-took-my-opinionated-9-year-old-to-the-galapagos-she-had-notes-literally
A man, a woman, and a child report on their trip to Ecuador.
Here are responsibilities that come with being the travel partner of a travel writer. For my husband and nine-year-old daughter, that meant they got to go to the Galapagos only if they kept copious travel journals and turned them over to me for comedic fodder. My daughter, Finley, did this with exuberance, because she is a besotted lover of language, and also I offered her twenty-five cents a word for anything that gets into this article.
A second factor in this story: my husband, Rob, and I had already been to the Galapagos. We took a nine-day cruise in 2014, a month before we got married, with the twelve- and fourteen-year-old boys who were about to become my stepsons. I was a 40-year-old single woman who was a little nervous to board a small boat for nine days with boys who were about to become my family, just as I was nervous to, you know, get a family. But our new-family home is decorated with pictures from that magical week–three manboys in a pile on the sand in front of three sea lions in an identical pile. I’ve yearned for the sea lions who swam up to our noses to gaze into our eyes, becoming the only creatures on Earth with whom I can make sustained eye contact, which is not a character flaw.
But our daughter wasn’t born yet, and twelve years later I was looking for a summer trip. She is a water baby, and loves animals. We are proudly “not cruise or tour people.” But I am a spontaneous wanderer, and Rob loves a multi-point travel plan … so we have also conceded that we have gotten along best when a third party is in charge of us. I tried to think of another trip that offered the same mix of animals, water fun, and marital tranquility and came up empty. There is nothing like the Galapagos.
I am someone whose dominant personality trait is managing expectations that, when not met, lead to an unreasonable amount of disappointment. It’s being addressed in both therapy and meditation sessions. Rob is a checker-off in terms of life and travel–and repeating a trip doesn’t help him check off a new location. Yet we chose to do a once-in-a-lifetime trip twice.
What could go wrong?!
We placed ourselves into the capable hands of Abercrombie & Kent for our adventure, which started in Quito, before heading to their Relais & Châteaux Galapagos ship.
When my younger stepson applied to college, one of his essays was about how when you live with storytellers, you never get to tell your own story. My husband rewrote it. So, to avoid mis-telling anyone’s story, the following is the report of how it went, from our three travel journals:
Courtesy of Kristin Newman
KRISTIN: We finally got to Quito at 4:30 in the morning. A&K put us in The Casa Gangotena, an elegant former mansion on the main old town plaza, and the “sixth best hotel in the world,” according to TripAdvisor.
FINLEY: I got a bed without wheels!
ROB: Our Abercrombie guide, Veronica, picked us up for our Quito tour, with a photographer! We had no idea where she was taking us.
KRISTIN: I love that we had no idea where she was taking us.
FINLEY: Veronica took us to the top of the church, and there was a drone filming us! We got to make chocolate and the sunset on the hotel roof was so pretty.
“We don’t have to figure out a single thing for ourselves. I feel like a Queen Baby.”
ROB: We have to get up early to go to the Galapagos. How early? Ecuador is all one time zone, the same as Chicago, except the Galapagos, which is 1 hour earlier–unless the U.S. is on Daylight Saving Time. I’m glad Veronica is getting us to the airport.
KRISTIN: We don’t have to figure out a single thing for ourselves. I feel like a Queen Baby.
ROB: We were nervous about who was going to be on our twenty-person boat for a week. We were praying for new friends, especially for our solo kid.
KRISTIN: Abercrombie sends orange bag tags to their guests, so on our flight from Quito to San Cristobal Island we were scanning for the tags. Both of us sadly zeroed in on one family as we exited the plane, and I knew they would be ours.
ROB: They looked awful. Three teens in golf shirts. Dad had finance guy hair.
“They looked awful. Three teens in golf shirts. Dad had finance guy hair.”
KRISTIN: A psychic said that I’m so intuitive that “with enough work,” I could be psychic. And, sure enough, once we got closer… orange tags. I knew it!
ROB: But there are three Ecoventura boats! We’re on Origin, they’re on Evolve! Suck it, Evolve!
FINLEY: We got three kids on our boat!!!! They are 10, 7, and 6 and are so fun.
KRISTIN: Thank God. And all our grownups seem lovely.
ROB: To our dismay, Finley had been telling her friends that she is spending a week on a “yacht.” But there’s no other word. Our craft is a 145-foot monohull Superyacht, made of Navy-grade steel. There’s a hot tub, the cabins have wall-to-wall windows, plus there’s a crane! I’m excited for the crane.
Courtesy of Kristin Newman
KRISTIN: It’s even nicer than the last boat. And the Jolie-Pitts took their kids on that one.
FINLEY: I thought the boat might tip over the first night, but Dad took me up to the deck, and we watched the stars, and then it wasn’t scary.
KRISTIN: There’s a hike or two per day, a snorkel or two per day. The weather is perfect, I saw a sea lion nursing underwater for the first time, and we’ve been surrounded by pods of hundreds of bottlenose dolphins.
“Are we ruining her?”
FINLEY: After snorkeling with sharks and rays and penguins, I rinsed off on the top deck, and the waiter handed me hot chocolate in the shower that I took into the jacuzzi for the sunset.
KRISTIN: Are we ruining her?
ROB: Where is all of the fresh water for all of these showers coming from? Do they desalinate?
KRISTIN: We spent a gorgeous afternoon on a huge sea lion-covered beach, with white silky sand.
FINLEY: The white sand is parrot fish poop! They eat coral and poop out like a million pounds a day and then it turns into a beach!
ROB: The captain told me the boat’s water comes from two reverse osmosis machines, which can put out between 3,000 and 10,000 gallons a day.
KRISTIN: The kids rolled in the clear water with sea lion pups as the sun set.
“The white sand is parrot fish poop!”
FINLEY: There was a humpback whale skeleton on the beach! The teenagers from the other boat were there, and these teenage girls kept screaming and running away from the sea lions. I’m so glad they aren’t on our boat. I’d have to teach them so much stuff.
ROB: When we were here with the boys, were WE the family everyone hoped wouldn’t be on their boat?
FINLEY: We went to the mountains to see the tortoises and two guys had to carry a giant tortoise out of the road. We learned tortoises don’t fight. One just stretches his neck as high as he can. If it’s higher than the other guy, he wins.
KRISTIN: I appreciate that the guide keeps saying things like, “This tortoise is very young. Maybe 40 or 50.”
ROB: Finley and Charley–the oldest brother–are having a lot of pinching wars.
FINLEY: My parents tell some jokes that aren’t appropriate sometimes. Like my mom told them my dad’s name was “Raw-butt” instead of Robert. And there are birds here called Boobies…
“We got invited to the kids’ table! The Boobie jokes clinched it.”
KRISTIN: The kids are from a polite Southern family, and the six-year-old said, “You’re the only funny family we’ve ever met.” I said, “Thank you, but I’m worried your parents don’t think we are a good influence.” The ten-year-old responded immediately: “Same.”
ROB: Kristin is working her ass off to be popular enough with the kids that Finley will let us sit at the kids’ table once.
KRISTIN: We got invited to the kids’ table! The Boobie jokes clinched it.
FINLEY: My mom just begged until finally we made an exception.
Courtesy of Kristin Newman
KRISTIN: The trip has been amazing, but I’m really craving seeing SOMETHING brand new. I’ve convinced Rob and Finley to add three days to explore the cloud and rain forest around Baños, an extreme sports tourist hub.
FINLEY: I love it here, but I really want to go home to organize my room.
ROB: I’ve never changed a plane ticket. I’m not sure where we’re staying or what we’re doing…
“We felt like oligarchs.”
KRISTIN: We said goodbye to our vacation friends at the airport. And then Abercrombie had a final treat–a trip to the “Middle of the World” monument at the equator. We climbed the tower, and then we were given dinner at sunset as everyone else left, and then we watched, astounded, as a montage of our trip photos, taken by the guides, was projected onto the tower. To “Til There Was You!”
FINLEY: Our family song!
ROB: They had trouble hooking up the sound system at first.
KRISTIN: We felt like oligarchs. Finley danced around in front of a five-story-high version of herself. There were some five-story-high underwater photos. I reminded myself I am young for a tortoise.
FINLEY: Then we went to Baños.
KRISTIN: It’s a backpacker town with thermal hot springs, and a fascinating church.
“Instead of religious scenes, they had paintings of historical extreme sports accidents and volcanic eruptions…”
ROB: Instead of religious scenes, they had paintings of historical extreme sports accidents and volcanic eruptions where the Virgin of Agua Santa saved the faithful. Very practical. And it turned out Baños was maybe the best part of the trip. Kristin found this beautiful hotel nestled into the mountains–Samari Spa Hotel— that was a 300-year-old former Jesuit retreat.
FINLEY: The hotel was like exactly like the house in Encanto–so, so beautiful.
KRISTIN: We ziplined across the biggest river gorge we’ve ever seen, strapped together horizontally like a superhero family. And we tried canyoning!
ROB: Canyoning down five waterfalls felt crazy with a nine-year-old. But she was awesome. And now we’ve checked off canyoning!
FINLEY: Walking up the hill in a wetsuit was awful. But the water felt so good, and the guide rappelled next to me, and the jumps weren’t as scary as I thought they’d be. It was one of my highlights. Tied with the chocolate massage at the hotel.
“…she was in a chocolate bath eating cake.”
KRISTIN: They covered her in sugar and chocolate. When I looked up from my massage, she was in a chocolate bath eating cake. This and sending her over a 40-foot cliff are making me feel like either the best or the worst parent in the world.
ROB: We agreed Kristin made the right call. She makes magic. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
KRISTIN: So should you do a once-in-a-lifetime trip twice? I’m glad we did. There was something calming about the sameness of the place when our lives had changed so much. But our spontaneous add-on days, with just the three of us arguing a bit as we found our own new experiences, were the part that made us feel the proudest of ourselves, and the most connected as a family.
And maybe the disagreements don’t matter. On our last day in the Galapagos, we climbed the same iconic hill we climbed twelve years ago, when we snapped a photo with our smiling teen boys, in my last month as a single non-mom. This time we went up that hill dragging an incredibly grumpy, complaining nine-year-old-of-my-womb.
FINLEY: It was the end of the day! Then they were like Who’s ready for a hike.
KRISTIN: But Rob reminded me that her then-teen brother, William, also climbed that same hill, grumbling that it wasn’t as big as the mountain he climbed on his surf club trip to Hawaii. It was a reminder that, in time, you just remember the smiles at the top of the volcano, or at the bottom of five waterfalls.
ROB: William sweetly picked us up from the airport when we got home. After Finley told him about jumping off a twenty-foot waterfall, he said twenty feet felt high to him, too… until he jumped off a sixty-footer… on his surf club trip to Hawaii.
KRISTIN: That actually happened.
Are You Geosexual? There’s One Way to Find Out
Travel can change how we experience romance, desire, and sexuality. Here's why some travelers feel freer to explore their sexual side on vacation.
Back in May, pop star Kesha appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, where she opened up about reclaiming her sexuality after long legal battles and years of public scrutiny. During the conversation, the “TikTok” singer revealed that she’s celibate.
“Except for when I’m in Italy,” she told host Alex Cooper.
That’s definitely amore, as Dean Martin might say.
Plenty of travelers recognize that feeling—when a destination seems to unlock entirely different versions of ourselves. Maybe it means saying yes to the sunrise hike, a local pub crawl, or the cooking class you’d quietly dismiss back home. Maybe it’s flirting with a stranger over aperitivos in Rome. Or maybe the dependable, buttoned-up version of you gives way to someone who’s suddenly curious about a threesome.
Or maybe you’ve witnessed vacation alter egos within your travel group. The shy friend who somehow collects phone numbers in Lisbon. The coworker who downloads Tinder the moment they land in Buenos Aires after swearing off dating apps for good. The happily partnered couple who become noticeably more adventurous the second they check into a boutique hotel.
“I’m only poly in Brazil,” confessed one commenter beneath a clip of the Kesha interview.
It might sound like a joke, but there’s a broader pattern here—one that Samantha Allen, an editor at Them, dubbed “geosexuality.” The term describes the way some people’s romantic or sexual behavior changes depending on their location.
In scholarly circles, “geosexual” has been used to describe the relationship between sexuality and geography. But it’s also useful shorthand to capture a phenomenon many travelers already recognize—that sometimes a change of scenery comes with a change of self, at least for a little while.
Travel Gives Desire Room to Breathe
Geosexuality also raises an interesting question. Does travel actually change us, or does it simply give us permission to become people we’ve secretly been all along?
“There’s this identity-based piece to it,” says Dr. Anna Elton, a Florida-based sexologist whose new book, The Formula of Desire, came out earlier this month. “Whenever you’re home, you’re more likely creating this identity of a partner, an employee, a parent. There’s no place for desire. It could be the last thing on the list, if it even makes the list at all.”
Travel interrupts that. When you’re in a new environment, there’s no laundry, no group chat about pickup schedules. Nobody needs anything from you. You’re eating meals you didn’t cook. You’re sleeping in crisp hotel sheets instead of the bed you associate with folding laundry. Suddenly there’s room in your head (and your body) for something other than errands.
That’s where novelty comes in. Novelty matters because it increases dopamine—the neurotransmitter associated with curiosity, motivation, and reward—making people more willing to step outside their comfort zones.
“When people travel, they have new experiences,” Elton says. “That releases dopamine, which makes people more energized, optimistic, curious, and willing to step outside their comfort zone.”
In other words, the vacation version of you isn’t necessarily wilder. It’s just operating under a different set of conditions.
Your Brain on Vacation
There’s also a physiological component.
Being away from home often means less chronic stress, which lowers cortisol, the hormone associated with diminished sexual desire when it’s persistently elevated.
When you’re stuck in the churn of deadlines, childcare, errands, and the thousand tiny obligations of everyday life, your brain is focused on getting through the day, not necessarily getting in the mood.
But vacation strips away that mental clutter. Someone else is making the bed. You’re not worrying about what’s in the fridge or whether you remembered to pay the electric bill. Even a few days away can create enough breathing room for desire to move back up the priority list.
That’s one reason travel romance can feel surprisingly effortless. Sometimes the sexiest thing about being on vacation isn’t the candlelit restaurant or the ocean view. It’s that, for the first time in a while, your brain has stopped treating everything else as more urgent.
A Destination Can Become Part of the Fantasy
Some places do part of the work for us.
Paris is practically trademarked as the City of Love. Santorini is the backdrop for countless engagements, while Ibiza is for hedonism. Las Vegas has built an empire around the idea that what happens there stays there. Even destinations without overtly romantic reputations can feel charged simply because we’ve spent decades absorbing stories about what happens there.
“When we think of Paris, we think of love,” Elton says. “When we think of Italy, you have the environment and the cultural narrative that this is the place where you connect romantically.”
Those expectations, she says, act as a kind of psychological priming, nudging us toward behaviors that fit the story we’ve already been telling ourselves.
Travel writer and Toronto Sun sex columnist Simone Paget decided to put one of those narratives to the test. While traveling in Italy, she set her Tinder to Passport Mode, which allows you to match with anyone in the world, to see whether dating there really felt different than it did back home.
Paget found that the experience wasn’t just the Italian men, it was more about Italian time. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry. Dates unfolded over languid meals and leisurely glasses of wine, conversation took precedence over rushing to the next thing, and the evening felt less like a transaction.
“It quickly became clear what was missing back home: the slow burn of romance,” she wrote. “In Italy, the men didn’t want more than my time, attention, and the shared joy of the moment–something that was surprisingly easy to give.”
The Freedom of Being Somewhere Nobody Knows You
Few people have a better vantage point on vacation alter egos than Catherine DeNoire, who manages a legal brothel in Western Europe (she keeps the exact location confidential for safety reasons).
DeNoire has watched thousands of tourists arrive with versions of themselves they’d rarely, if ever, introduce back home.
Her clientele ranges from curious solo travelers to bachelor parties that arrive with elaborate itineraries. Solo travelers tend to be motivated by curiosity. Then there are what the industry calls “mongers”: dedicated sex tourists who compare destinations, plan entire vacations around brothels, and later publish detailed reviews online.
What’s striking, DeNoire says, isn’t simply that people seek out sexual experiences while traveling. It’s how many insist they’d never consider doing the same thing at home.
Sometimes it’s fear of being recognized. Sometimes they have concerns about what a partner or colleague might think. Sometimes it’s simply that brothels are illegal or uncommon where they live. Abroad, those constraints evaporate.
“The risk feels much smaller,” she says.
Americans stand out in particular. Outside a handful of counties in Nevada, legal brothels are essentially nonexistent in the United States, while in other countries they’re highly visible and tightly regulated. For some visitors, the legality itself lowers psychological barriers. When an establishment is openly operating on the busiest street in town, it feels less taboo than seeking out something hidden.
But DeNoire thinks the bigger shift is psychological.
“When we travel, we lose some of the mundane protective filter that surrounds us in everyday life,” she says.
She compared it to souvenir shopping. At home, she walks past souvenir shops without a second glance. But on vacation, suddenly the postcard, the ridiculous T-shirt, and the overpriced mug all seem irresistible. People treat experiences the same way, she said.
Travel Doesn’t Create a New You. It Reveals One
Travel doesn’t magically turn us into different people. But, as DeNoire puts it, it can temporarily remove the filters that shape our everyday lives.
At home, you’re the reliable friend, the responsible coworker, the person who always orders the same drink. People know your habits. They know your routines. But on vacation, nobody knows that script. For some people, that shift opens the door to exploring parts of their sexuality they rarely have time or space to consider while answering emails and paying bills.
As DeNoire puts it, some people treat themselves with cocktails. Others splurge on expensive hotels. Others become curious about experiences they would never seek out at home.
Elton sees a similar pattern in her practice. One couple noticed that the husband reliably became more playful, flirtatious, and sexually engaged whenever they stayed in a hotel, even if it was only a short drive away. Eventually his wife started planning overnight getaways on purpose.
There was nothing magical about the destination itself. However, changing the setting was enough to interrupt years of routine and help them reconnect.
“Desire doesn’t disappear,” Elton says. “It just redirects.”
Maybe that’s why geosexuality resonates with so many travelers. The appeal isn’t necessarily becoming someone else. It’s embracing a version of yourself that routine, responsibility, and familiarity can bury.
Which brings us back to Kesha.
While the singer didn’t go into detail about her Italian exception to celibacy, she did talk about Italy’s role in helping her reconnect with her body and sense of self.
“I don’t hate my body anymore. I actually love my body,” she said. “I went to Italy, and I ate a lot of pasta, and I love it.”
DUHC&S | Strategic Hospitality Consulting & Advisory
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