I Am usually identified as a Scandanavian in France, that is true, in a sense, but since our family left Norway in the 1840's, it is a bit strange. I do dress much better than most tourists, but that is for selfish reasons. I believe it gains me superior service/ treatment. Give it a try.

If you are American, they always know and I don't care. In fact, we are always over dressed compared to those around us.
We always look nice and would rather over than under dress. We don't wear athletic wear or shoes out. I do stick to darker colors because they are easier to mix and match for travel.
Be comfortable, don't worry about being a tourist (not a crime).

Enjoy your trip!

Hi D,

>>danon on Aug 2, 11 at 6:34pm

" they will know you are a tourist"?

Unless you try to speak the language
why would it be obvious?<

From the way you carry yourself, your clothes, the way you walk, hand motions, distance between you and other people....

Also the camera, map, travel wallet bulge, backpack....

If people do what you describe, I guess you have a point.

I dress the same way I do in the center of a big city where I live ( except for a bit more comfortable shoes).
I don't own a backpack,I have stopped taking pictures years ago. Don't know what a travel wallet is.
I walk exactly in the same way most people in Berlin or Paris do and don't motion with my hands unless I am trying to hail a cab.

<<f you are American, they always know and I don't care.>>

Well, I wouldn't care, either, but innumerable French people have been completely shocked to find out I am American...have even argued with me about it. Sometimes they think I'm Swiss, sometimes Belgian, most often French...so they don't always know.

In Paris, this June, here were my observations:

1. Everybody (tourists and locals alike) seemed nicely dressed. This surprised me. Just looking pulled together. Not much ratty clothing on anyone except tourist children.

2. The French pull it together better than anyone. Not always even expensive looking, but the right belt, the right scarf, bag.

3. Locals wear all sorts of athletic shoes. None I saw were white. I did not run into Kerouac.

4. No T-shirts with logos/writing on the front.

5. No one had hardware in their face.

6. I saw only one (1) tattoo, on the last day, on the back of one girl's neck.

Back in my city in 24 hours I was reminded why we are the slobbiest nation on the planet.

You won't go wrong dressed like this :

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com...urist.jpg.jpeg


Peter

One thing that identifies tourists no matter how they dress is that they do not walk with the same rhythm or purpose as the locals. As a tourist, I found it absolutely impossible to ever get in synch with the people of Tokyo or Hong Kong, so I can imagine what it is like in any big city for people who come from a small town.

Paris is a big city, and people wear essentially what they want. You will see all styles and attitudes in Paris. And it is impossible to blend in; you will be recognized as a tourist thanks to your body language, speech, and behavior, no matter how you dress.

Some giveaways for American women include short shorts, flip-flops, painted nails, stockings in warm weather or with pants, obesity prior to menopause, "all-in-one" outfits (bought directly from the store window at home), and extremely casual clothing.

Of course people who live in Europe wear tennis shoes - they have an entire closet of a wide variety of clothing and they can change into whatever they want depending on the day, etc.

When I travel, however, I don't bring my entire closet. I'm really not trying to "blend in" but I am limited in what I can bring and so I want to bring the least amount of items that will be appropriate for the biggest number of situations. If I am sightseeing all day in shorts and tennis shoes and see a nice place for dinner, then I will have to return to the hotel in order to change into appropriate clothing. If, on the other hand, I wear something that I can both walk around in AND sit down and have a nice meal, that works much better.

One other thing - while I very much appreciate the pictures of people in Paris I do take issue to everyone pointing out "see - they're wearing shorts, so I can too!". In at least one of the nice slideshows I watched from this board I looked at the 30 pics of people wearing shorts. The vast majority were either male or, if female, then they were young. I'll wear shorts when I'm running, biking or at the beach. But my summer skirts are cool & comfortable and, when worn with sandals (instead of my running shoes) will take me from sightseeing to dinner AND look good in pictures. If none of that is important to you then you're absolutely free to wear what you want.

Do NOT wear a burka as qwovadis suggested unless you want to pay a Fine!

Only the niqab or face covering is prohibited, as faces must be visible in public. The rest of the garment is fine, although why anyone would cover herself entirely in black in summer heat is a mystery to me (yes, I know that they aren't always black).

<<The rest of the garment is fine, although why anyone would cover herself entirely in black in summer heat is a mystery to me>>

It's hardly a mystery to scientists.

And exactly what do scientists say?

Black clothing absorbs sunlight and the heat radiating from your body, but if it is loose-fitting, and there is wind, the wind convects the heat away faster than it is absorbed. White clothing reflects sunlight, but also reflects internal heat back toward your body, so the net effect under identical conditions is less cooling than if you wear black.

If you travel in Africa and the Middle East it's quite noticeable that a lot of people have figured this out.

I like AtlTravelr's answer best. Exactly my reasoning, too.

~Liz

The wind will remove heat at the same rate no matter what color clothing is. Black garments absorb sunlight and heat up very rapidly; white garments reflect sunlight and heat up much more slowly. In late afternoon sunlight, standing in sunlight dressed in black means that you're absorbing about 1000 watts of heat, the equivalent of having a hair dryer blowing into your clothing. It's a fast ride to heat stroke.

Radiation losses directly from the body when fully clothed are insignificant.

I was born and raised in the desert, and I can assure you that wearing black at 115° F is a very, very bad idea.

If black is better for hot weather than white, then why do Arab men dress in white?

Amiram Shkolnik, C. Richard Taylor*, Virginia Finch* & Arieh Borut, Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
*Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138


Survival in hot deserts has always posed a problem for man; Moses had to solve it in order to lead the children of Israel through the wilderness of the Sinai—a formidable hot desert. It seems likely that the present inhabitants of the Sinai, the Bedouins, would have optimised their solutions for desert survival during their long tenure in this desert Yet, one may have doubts on first encountering Bedouins wearing black robes and herding black goats. We have therefore investigated whether black robes help the Bedouins to minimise solar heat loads in a hot desert. This seemed possible because experiments have shown that white hair on cattle and white feathers on pigeons permit greater penetration of short-wave radiation to the skin than black. In fact, more heat flowed inward through white pigeon plumage than through black when both were exposed to simulated solar radiation at wind speeds greater than 3 m s-1 (ref. 3). We report here that the amount of heat gained by a Bedouin exposed to the hot desert is the same whether he wears a black or a white robe. The additional heat absorbed by the black robe was lost before it reached the skin.

Another way to look at it is this its like having a FAN - The explanation I heard for this is that the clothes themselves are very loose (rather like Roman togas). The extra heat caused by the black colour causes increased upward convection of the air between the cloth and their body. This additional air circulation actually aids in evaporation of perspiration and thus results in better cooling.

Another scientist put it like this:

Darker clothes absorb more of the sun's energy, so this seems to make no sense, say David Halliday et al. in "Fundamentals of Physics." In fact, black robes have been found to be 6 Celsius degrees hotter than similar white robes. The Bedouin secret lies in the convection breeze set up when the warmer air inside a dark robe rises faster and escapes upward through the porous material, sucking in air from below. So a black robe winds up being no hotter, and its circulating air may even make things more comfortable.

Notice that a key element in this system working is the convection made possible by the escape of air through the porous material.

Thanks for the pix, kerouac. Those could have been taken in almost ANY big city~there were very smartly-dressed, fashionable folks, those who looked like they'd been featured on What Not to Wear, and those in between. Like suze, I have yet to find truely comfortable shoes that are fashionable. Unfortunately, the most comfortable pair of shoes I own are the ugly rubber clogs I wear to work.......

>And it is impossible to blend in; you will be recognized as a tourist thanks to your body language, speech, and behavior, no matter how you dress.<

That comment is as daft as Bertha Rochester. Who are you Grace Poole? A gaoler's mentality, no doubt.

This is another myth of Europe propogated by the court jesters of Fodorville. People in big cities all over the world are so busy, so driven, that they do NOT walk around wondering where you are from.

I am a European-born (London, England) American citizen. I have lived in the US since 1969, and never in all my travels to Continental Europe has anyone ever approached me speaking English. Never. Not in 20 years.

I get asked for directions all the time in Paris. The askers always speak to me in French. Train conductors in Switzerland always speak German-Swiss to me when asking to see my ticket.

In Berlin, I must have been asked 20 times to take someone's photograph. The askers all spoke German to me.

This past summer, a female train conductor on the Luzern to Zurich train was absolutely shocked that I was not Swiss. Shocked!!!!!!

If you are an American college student walzing around Rome in a Penn State sweatshirt yelling, "Dude, Rome is just soooooooooo cool and the babes are all over me," into your mobile then, yes, you will be pegged as a tourist.


I live in Philadelphia, which gets a lot of foreign tourists who come to see the City of Benjamin Franklin. I DO NOT walk to my job trying to peg where people are from. That is just nonsense.

P_P