You Know That Site You’ve Always Wanted To Visit? It’s Covered In Scaffolding Now.

Hey, so you know that travel landmark you’ve wanted to see for as long as you can remember? You know the one I’m talking about, the cathedral or sculpture or baroque fountain in a town square? It’s the thing you planned this whole trip around seeing, the one you flew thousands of miles, endured jetlag, a lost piece of luggage, and 6 days of non-solid bowel movements just to witness? It’s the place you woke up before dawn to come see early without the crowds, the place you bought a fancy new camera to take a picture of and show your friends back home? You know that place? Yeah, that place is now completely covered in a tarp and surrounded by wooden planks. Just like you always envisioned.

The timing is really serendipitous too. If you had come only 2 weeks ago you would have been able to see the church or ruin or ancient facade in all its historic glory. Oh also, the restoration is only going to take 3 weeks. So if you had just rearranged your plans slightly, you totally would have seen it. Of course that would have required there to be any way for you to know that the iconic building or monument you’ve been dreaming of seeing since childhood was covered in an gigantic painter’s smock. Which there isn’t. So here we are.

Here’s the thing though, the scaffolding that’s now completely obscuring the traditional architecture you ventured across the world to experience has been hastily painted to vaguely resemble the very wonder of engineering and culture that it’s sole purpose is to hide. It’s also a super simplistic illustration that doesn’t even get within earshot of realism, designed specifically to remind you what is under the scaffolding while also making you feel silly for wanting to see it in the first place. Imagine if you were really excited to see a movie in the theater, and were instead handed a pop-up book of the same story. That’s essentially the situation here, except with the famous site you spent hundreds of dollars and several vacation days to come visit.

So I guess you have some time to kill, you know, now that you won’t be spending the hours you originally had allocated toward soaking up the beauty of the ornate monastery or lost city you came to visit. Now you’ll have more time for a relaxing lunch, or maybe a quick day trip, or a nap or something. If you need any recommendations let me know. I’d tell you to spend some time planning a return visit so you can come back and see the site in all its splendor, but unfortunately by the time you go through the trouble it will be shut down to visitors indefinitely. Some political situation or security issue or viral outbreak or something like that. Oh you didn’t get trip insurance? That’s too bad. But don’t worry. It doesn’t cover this anyway.