To be mad at tourists?

[Laserbeam24]

AIBU to be mad at tourists? I live in a place that's popular with cruise ships. Which is fine, great for the local economy. My house it's is right at the end of the Main Street, cue lots of tourists holding maps and doing lots of pointing.

Today, the number of tourists have totalled to HALF of our population. That's a different gripe altogether, though.

I have two cats who enjoy sitting in the window and watching the world go by. I also have a six month old. The issue that I have, is that tourists are stopping to tap on my window (!!!!) to get a response from the cats. I could understand if this was a child once in a blue moon, but it's multiple times every day, and typically grown adults every time there's a liner in.

I've also had a good number of people look into my windows. Not just a sneaky glance as they walk past, but two hands on the window around their face so they can get a proper look in.

I've tried blinds. Someone knocking gave the cats such a fright they jumped and broke the blinds. I don't want to have to keep my curtains shut every day. I'm not going to scold my cats for being at the window, it's their house too! What do I even do?

I'm worried that my daughter is going to grow up thinking this is normal. It's also just incredibly infuriating. Where are people's manners! AIBU?

i know you say you are going with window film, but I would go with strategic landscaping first. Thick, prickly bushes, roses, or cacti under the window depending on climate. the kind of plants normally advised for deterring burglars.

People who can still use their brains and have retained basic skills use paper maps. People who want to see the layout in one go and not keep losing the signal. Many people use paper maps. What a stupid, patronising remark.

You have my sympathies.

I would try a sign, even just in one language might help.

We once had a tourist walk right up our drive holding her phone up to show her son (video call) our house and garden whilst she chatted to him.

We went out to talk to her and she was oblivious to our surprise, she didn’t for a second think this might be odd and said she’d just walk the rest of the garden and go. As if we were some kind of National Trust free to visit property.

You can download the map of a city on Google Maps when you have wifi. Then you can use it offline.

I'd put a sign up 'STAY AWAY - DO NOT TAP' plus some symbols 🚫👈🏻❌

No need for any drama, the window film will do the job.

This. And ditto for 'blimey do people still use cash' and 'I haven't used a landline for years'.

I'd like to see how they coped if the phone that they must rely on totally was lost, stolen, broken etc and they had no access to money, no way of contacting anyone and didn't know where they are.

But OP YANBU. It's just another example of how rude and selfish people have become.

I live in a seaside town. At this time of year,with the tourists, its a nightmare. Its like some people come away on holiday and treat the whole town like a "holiday village". It's like they forget that people actually live and work here at the same time as they are on their holidays. What really annoys me is the way people don't take any notice of roads, and walk down them like they are wide pavements or something...not just one or two people , huge, family groups who then look amazed and astounded if you ask them to please move out of the way! Then there's the people who think it is a proper laugh to feed the f*ing seagulls...then wonder why the get swooped on and their ice-creams snatched out of their babies hands. Grrr!
And Blue-badge holders who park on double yellows for 3 hours at a time...yes I know your allowed to ,My DH has one,...but double yellow lines are there for a reason...usually safety or because a road is narrow and can't take traffic up both sides of the road...but NO... a double yellow line is apparently a disabled parking space😏just carry on creating traffic -flow problems!
Then there's coach drivers who follow their sat-navs causing chaos down roads they shouldn't even be thinking of going down!
Don't get me wrong - I'm glad for local businesses when its busy, but , my goodness...have a little thought , holidaymakers, please!

The one way film will provide you with lots of entertainment in the future, rather than irritation. The amount of people that will do their hair or makeup in it, not knowing you're standing the other side.

Stand right behind the window and either knock loudly or turn the light on in the room and put on your most manic face and scare the life out of them.

I'd honestly have hours of entertainment out of it...!

I would assume OP doesn't have any place for plant given that tourist on the street can look through her window. Also any plant big enough would block out her window.

I live in a tourist hotspot and some of the behaviours enrage me.

There are lots of considerate and respectful tourists I must first say.

But. There are far too many who come to a beautiful place, with gorgeous walks and proceed to behave like animals. Leaving dirty nappies and wrapping from their picnics just on the moors or by the side of the road or in the car park five feet from a fucking bin. 🤬

I don't get it. They come here to enjoy how beautiful it is but they leave their figurative and literal shit everywhere. Do they enjoy seeing that when they come here? Oh let's drive up to X, there's beautiful reservoirs, woodland walks, hill hikes and if we're really lucky we might even see a shit filled pampers and some empty sandwich plastic containers. Who's got the camera? We can have the kids pose next to the fag packets and the empty cans of coke.

And don't get me started on the fucking twats who rock up with their disposable barbecues and just leave them when they're done. Thanks for the fire you dickheads.

YANBU about a minority of annoying Tourists.

I live just off a tourist driving route about 7 miles from the nearest village. We have two 4 foot high stone walls, either side of an entrance way with wrought iron gates, a postbox and a name plate. Our driveway is about 200mtrs long as it runs down between two fields and our house is in the field behind. You can’t see much of the house from the road due to the trees and shrubs but it’s blindingly obvious that the entrance and driveway is private property.

One day, I heard loud voices coming from the road and went to investigate. There were about half a dozen U.K. reg motorbikes, parked up along the drive, and several men urinating into the hedge with one man squatting doing you know what. 🤬

I remonstrated with them but because I was on my own, they basically ignored me. I was particularly pissed off because I didn’t have the dogs with me. They would’ve sent them packing (and maybe bitten his arse), but they were out with my DH.

Thankfully, that was a one off, but we do find various cans, bottles and sundry food wrappers and other rubbish chucked around the entranceway from time to time. Lazy fuckers!! However, at least we haven’t had camper vans parking here as some of my friends have had. Just normal tourists who think ‘Wild Camping’ means they can park up wherever they fancy. One friend had to put a rope with a notice attached saying “private property, no camping”, because it got so bad.

I think people are rude to do this and I wouldn't but if you choose a Main Street in a tourist area as somewhere to live you should expect heavy footfall and some people are nosy. Move or put a sign up.

Yanbu i live in a tourist town and honestly they act like complete assholes. The Spanish are the worst , their kids come here for a few weeks of the summer and you regularly find them sitting in the middle of the footpath at the side of the road. We've very narrow streets and they will just refuse to move and swear at you. Our whole town loves September when the tourists leave.

I hope OP when you go on holiday your behaviour is not like those you describe. The behaviour of many people from these shores when abroad is awful, as was shown in 2020 and 2021 when they were unable to go and had holidays in the UK.

I agree with the strategic plants suggestion.

Do you have a hose pipe?

You can rest assured I definitely do not behave in this way. Holidays are very rare for me, and they're typically spent visiting family.

Although, I do agree that Brits can be notoriously bad when abroad!

People do not "choose" to live in the places they were born in FFS!!

I swear some MNers live in a fantasy land where you can just snap your fingers and a cheap available house and new job just fall into your lap... and I guess those same MNers are NC with their families too, since they appear to think that leaving your entire family, all your friends, all your social networks, is not a big deal.

OP, what about a motion activated sprinkler?

YANBU. I live in a tourist town. Went out with my friend this morning and it was a nightmare for parking, getting a table at cafe etc. But weirdly the tourists just seemed ruder than usual and a bit grouchy. It just didn't have a good vibe about the place and I don't know why. The weather has been a bit mixed but people just seem grumpy and entitled.

@SkylarSpirit

Most of us have to be a bit more pragmatic than that. My husband and I moved away from London 35 years ago because it was unaffordable. No one has to stay where they were born and the OP doesn't actually say they originate from where they are now. It was difficult but we made a new life in another part of the country (in a tourist area) but on a quiet street well away from heavy footfall. We still keep in touch with family and friends up there and our adult children live near us so definitely not NC.

OP strongly implied that she's island-born by saying that moving to the mainland would mean leaving her family and "leaving everyone and everything I know."

London is a different matter. I'm a born and bred Londoner too and it's awful how we're being pushed out, but London is the capital city. There's really no comparison to being priced out of a major world city due to an increase in people moving there permanently resulting in an increase in property prices, and people feeling they have to give up their lovely houses that they already own because tourists who are just passing through for the day are acting like antisocial twats.

It's just ludicrous to suggest selling your house, changing jobs/careers, pulling your kids out of school, saying goodbye to your entire family and friendship circle and whole way of life, is a reasonable response to dealing with the annoyance of people tapping on your window.

Clearly it's not a reasonable suggestion, yet on MN people routinely say "just uproot your whole life and start again elsewhere!!" as the solution to even very minor or sometimes even temporary issues. It's just one of those dumb MN things.

Never mind being so polite.. I’d be leaving a sign saying “ fuck off nosey bastards “.

That would piss me off no end. I am immensely private .

Pictographs… A hand knocking on the window in a circle with a line through it. A picture of a crying baby and one of a gun?

Get a cute little crocheted sign that reads, 'piss off'?