Please bear with me here.
I spend many hours of the day scrolling through online chatter about anything at all, hours that I would prefer to be reading actual books, or swimming, or just contemplating my life.

I go down all kinds of rabbit holes; it's 6:55am here and already this morning I learned a tremendous amount about the bat population in Andalucia.
Before that, it was a deep dive into the various types of tomatoes available in spring on the coast of Cadiz.

When I read travel forums, I soften see people saying that they have "done" Barcelona and now they want to "do" Madrid.
Better yet, I've "done the main areas of Italy," so should I now consider a week at Butlin's Skegness Resort?

Does "do" mean visit? "I want to do Madrid?' What is your option of this word, in this sense? Should I continue to sneer inwardly at people who write like this, or do I need to realize that I am the one veering off into old-person-nerd territory?

You're not alone, though it's best to keep the inner grump inside, and leave the trip Nazis and surface-scratchers to their own devices. If it makes them happy, that's nobody else's business. If "doing" Madrid means they end up with Madrid doing them, well, it's a learning point.

But if you're looking for something to snicker up your sleeve at (yes, I ended with a preposition!), I was once told of a couple who were heard to plan a visit to a great cathedral with "I'll do the outside, you do the inside.

I don't "do" cities/sights.
I try to actively avoid them if I am honest. Most (but not all) museums bore me to tears within a very short time, and I can spend that time better on other things. Same with churches/cathedrals/stately homes and other overt expressions of obscene wealth.

I think it is actually quite and American thing - people have to "do" Europe, treating it as a single entity and ticking off all the usual subjects, and then the latest usual subjects thanks to social media.
Europeans I think are more likely to spend their main holiday relaxing, spending time together, with the occasional visit to some sight or other. City trips tend to be short long weekend type of thing, not the main aim of a holiday, though I know plenty of Europeans go to the US to visit a single city such as Las Vegas (why??), rather than exploring more of the country, but again that tends to be for a few days only.

I travel for new scenery, new food, new places to walk and cycle, hopefully better weather, and just to have a change from the daily grind.
I don't have a bucket list or any other sort of list of places I have to tick off. We just decide where we would like to spend a couple of weeks that is different scenery to home.
The way things are going we will be visiting places within cycling distance rather than what we had hoped to do this year.

There was once a popular song entitled "Do Me." I am sure there are plenty of people who think that "doing" a museum is just the greatest thing in the world and then there are those who feel the inside of any museum is as Heti above indicates: BORING. Does that make her "wrong" or worse? Not IMO,just not enthralled with the same things as others. It's like sex actually: different strokes, etc., etc.

Eks, love this thread and the responses too. Can absolutely relate to rabbit holes and such. But I can also relate to that verb 'to do' a location/city/thing.
Several years ago, I began to catch myself using that phrase and recoiled at its tackiness. Nowadays, I make every effort not to use it as it feels unseemly and seems to insult the veteran traveler in us all.

And LOL at 6:55am Andalucian bat studies! But given that breakfast is served at 7:00 sharp at that penitentiary, I'm surprised that you'd risk them running out of scrambled eggs.
I am done. the *tragically unhip hip

PS the Hip's late singer Gord Downie used to live close to us in Greektown; walked by his old house just yesterday en route to errands there

I think it is actually quite and American thing

Hey hey hey. What the heck? I'm sure there are people from many parts of the world who just do a day here and a day there and feel they are travelers. I hardly think being superficial is only an "American thing"

While I'm sure that heti -- who has always been one of the most fair-minded posters here -- didn't mean it the way she wrote it, I have to agree with suze. If that makes me defensive and/or provincial, so be it. The stereotyping of Americans gets a wee bit tiresome, esp. in light of the curious-but-conspicuous fact that very few posters here engage in the same stereotyping of other nationalities.

Zebec, I will have you know that one of my responses to your thread on :"another forum" has somehow convinced at least one person that I am a rabid Scientologist. Look, once you get done with "Represent Yourself for Murder One, 101?" and all the usual Mumia Abu-Jamal and Eldridge books, and try to get your hands on those rumored bootlegs of the poems of Donald DeFreeze.....we've still got time on our hands. And happily, there is almost an entire shelf of L.Ron Hubbard in here........what should I do? Read those, or take up needlepoint?

BTW; I have just discovered a very good voice, that of Theola Kilgore, who worked with Ed Townsend. Apropos of nothing here, but I have a rental car and for the first time ever, I can hook up music on my phone to the speakers (did this with the help of the nice people at Sixt). So I am trying to build up my library because as much as I adore Willy de Ville, I need some unsung R&B females..but I'm talking women before Beyonce was born......and hints will be greatly appreciated. I am trying to make "albums: on Amazon music.....ay, such travails.... x

I get the whole "rabbit hole" issue and am guilty of it myself. I didn't "do" Barcelona even though I've been there and have visited many places in Italy (some multiple times.) I would be delighted to have the chance to return to both Barcelona and Italy as I feel I've barely scratched the surface of all they have to offer.

I also dislike the word "hit" as in let's hit the Parthenon on our way to . . . etc.

Agree with Dukey that museums are like sex, but think they are much less sticky.

Nobody's mentioned the slangy, slightly-offensive-but-nevertheless-amusing, adolescent use of "do" as in "I'd do [insert name of currently popular celebrity to which the speaker would have zero possibility of access]."

I'd avoid Butlin's Skegness Resort myself.

Speaking of internet rabbit holes (which I also do), the origin of the word "do" as a function of travel dates back to the early 19th C. In that regard, the OP is not tragically unhip but tragically late to the semantic party.

The good news for the Eurocentric cultural supremacists among us is that it was first used by an American describing a visit to the falls of the Genesee River. "Do" quickly fled the US for the UK where Thomas Cook made travel, formerly a pursuit for the wealthy, into organized tours for Britain's aspirational middle class. Thackeray and Dickens used it to satirize the "box-ticking" tourists. From Vanity Fair:

"It is all very well to say that a man is ‘doing’ his Europe... but what does he see? He sees the outside of a hundred and fifty palaces; he looks at the outside of five hundred and fifty churches; and he knows as much about the people of the country as he does about the inhabitants of the moon."

Not to let "do" be culturally appropriated, Mark Twain soon used the term to mock Americans marching through Europe like a mechanical army.

"We have 'done' the Nile... we have 'done' Turkey... we have 'done' the Holy Land... and now we are ready to 'do' the rest of the world."

Down the rabbit hole: On cruise critic, I read trip reports of places I never thought of seeing, and suddenly there is a little light going off in my brain.

Fabulous!!

Cruise Critic, bat habits in Andalucia, the merits of Le Creuset and Staub. Hotel reviews of citites I will never visit. It never ends. I am thinking of stashing the laptop in the car overnight..

I seem to hear it used a lot, in person, when people discuss their travels, even if they've only been someplace for a few days. It grates on me for sure. What's wrong with "visited", among various other options?

In 1953, the British expedition climbed Everest (though the summit was reached by a Nepali and New Zealander). John Hunt, the leader, wrote the official book that he titled, The Ascent of Everest. When the book was released in America, the publisher changed the title to The Conquest of Everest, which annoyed Hunt. That title has also grated on me, like we've "done" Everest.

I prefer what Hillary said when he reached camp, "Well, we knocked the bastard off".

Ok, let's talk about the other unspoken issue: the fact that people who have been somewhere can honestly say they have "done" it and the folks who have never been there (and perhaps see no legit reason to ever go to wherever "there" happens to be) who cannot claim the so-called "bragging rights."

"Oh, you mean to say you "haven't DONE Mt Everest?" Poor Baby!

Soon we may be hearing, "Well they did such and such a place but they didn't do it like WE did so obviously we did it better.

Talk about going down rabbit holes and never actually coming back out.

For me, that whole process predates the internet by, oh, let's say 40 years.

Two things were in play. First, my parents succumbed to the high-pressure pitch of a traveling encyclopedia salesman, in whose wake a bookcase headboard behind my bed held 20-something World Book volumes.

Second, my mom was the secretary to the test pilots at Douglas Aircraft, several of whom became family friends. (Pop also worked at Douglas on hush-hush projects.) One of these pilots, a terrific guy who died after a midair collision over a school, gave me a framed giant wall map of Pan Am's routes circa 1955. It hung opposite the foot of my bed.

I'd see the name of some city on the map, turn around and grab the relevant volume, and start reading. I daresay I was the only kid in my middle school class who knew where Jakarta, Beirut, and Montevideo were located.

Those senses of wonder and connection have never waned.

Apologies people. What I meant is Americans, perhaps because they have so little vacation time, tend to tick off as much as they can in that time - you only have to look at some of the death marches planned over on the Europe forum to see what I mean. And they are always from Americans. I would need another week off to recover from some of the plans I read over there.

Even when retired some find it hard to get out of the "we only have x-number of days so we have to travel the length and breadth of the continent and see every thing in those days" mode, rather than, with no boss breathing down their neck any more, slowing down, taking longer and experiencing stuff, not just seeing it.

I invited a former colleague of DH, who was always really friendly with us, to stay for a few days when they are in Europe on a long not quite death march trip they are planning, but they have "done" the Netherlands (a weekend in Amsterdam) so turned down the offer.

I have lived in the Netherlands for 42 years and still haven't "done" it.

I think the phenomenon predates Americans & America. The English & The Grand Tour come to mind, though they no doubt got the concept from others before them. Romans maybe? In any case go ahead & blame us if you must. We're used to it.