Hello fello budget hunters
This post may come across as a bit of a rant but this is based on my experiences in Italy, France and Croatia in my 5 weeks away!
Now this is based on Catholic churches we visited, but most religions have a dress code for their places of worship and some are stricter than others. However I think a lot of tourists have no respect in a lot of churches – they see them as another tourist destination rather than a place of worship and blatantly ignore the signs outside. I have no religion and I am not slating religions at all or being the defender of all religions. I just think tourists should be respectful of peoples beliefs and customs.
Some of the things we saw were: –
People wearing hats inside the churches, basilicas and cathedrals. It’s just a sign of respect and there’s no point wearing them inside anyway!
The shortest shorts and crops tops, I know I did sometimes wear a vest top but I always had a scarf to cover my shoulders. However some people (usually teenage girls) have shorts that showed bum cheeks – that’s not respectful in the slightest and only 2 churches we went into actually had security turning people away for clothing.
Phones ringing, text alerts inside the buildings – it’s just common decency to switch the sound off. Same with artificial camera noises on the phone. I have a DSLR which makes noises as the lens focuses which I tried to limit in very quiet churches but noises while people are praying is just disrespectful.
Throwing coins into a tomb, this may have been part of a ritual but I think people had mistaken it with a wishing well!
There was also a lot of people putting their feet on the kneeling cushions for prayer (which you often see in UK churches) and the whole point of them is to make it comfortable and clean to pray. Instead people put their muddy/dusty feet on them.
There was a lot of other things, I’m not nit picking, these things generally happened in every church which was why I wanted to highlight this as an issue I think needs addressing.
Thanks for reading
The Great Ambini
x x x