Well here we are again. The world is beginning to slowly re-enter the phases of slowing down their economies in hopes of slowing down the spread of Covid once again.
This morning, a family member of mine sent the CDC travel guidance for Italy, as I am supposed to be going there within a few weeks, which said that travelers should be cautious. After double-checking everything online, nothing seemed to be out of sorts, so I sent her a message back assuring her that there was no need to worry.
However, this got me thinking about our proposed second-leg of the trip: Amsterdam. I figured I would go and check out what their newest regulations were in order to ease my mind that we would be able to spend our trip doing whatever we found in town. I was not happy when I saw the search results.
Now I will go out and say that the word of the United States government alone would not keep me from going, but then I dug a little deeper and found even more depressing news.
I found this article about the measures being taken by the government in Amsterdam and we are right back to the dystopian measures employed this time last year. Though nightclubs closing is not the absolute end of the world, having social distancing back in place at the bars (bars that have to close at midnight with an implemented curfew), events being limited to seating only and live music being prohibited, Amsterdam does not currently sound like a travelers dream destination.
I want to make a disclaimer that the tone of this article should not be read as "oh this guy wants the world to open up for him so he can go see it, look how selfish he is", but rather "oh damn, here we go again".
It is believed that around 5.4% of the GDP of the Netherlands comes from tourism, so this is not as large as some other European nations (example would be Italy that in 2019 had over 13% of their GDP come from tourism, I discussed this in a recent article). This probably went into the thought process of lawmakers as they decided to begin reimplementing Covid guidances in the major city.
So let the flashbacks to last year begin. My traveling group and I are being mindful of new guidelines and are looking to re-plan our upcoming trip in order to stay safe and respect the rules of the nations that we will travel to. Hopefully things begin to level out around the world and we can begin traveling and experiencing our world without fear of having to deal with United airlines to get our flights refunded... Good luck to everyone and be sure to stay safe!
