American tourist slams over-crowded Italian travel hotspot: ‘It was complete chaos'
Las Vegas resident Regina Simmons, her husband and their two teenage daughters spent time earlier in the summer seeing the sights around the Southern European country — and evidently, they were far from the only ones who peeped Positano on social media.
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They visited Rome, Florence and Sorrento, but during a day trip to Positano, Simmons said she encountered crowds that were 'like a horror movie,' per The Mirror.
She said that on social media, the city looked positively idyllic, but once she set foot in the seaside town, it was an entirely different story.
'In the videos, you see everything looks completely empty and calm. In real life, there were far too many people.'
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'It was just bananas… We were overwhelmed by the amount of people,' she said. 'We had to look for a restaurant to hide in and make a game plan.'
'Positano is all these tight little streets and everyone is walking together. Half the people are going up and half are going down. It was complete chaos. Everyone was touching, shoulder to shoulder,' Simmons said.
3 Regina Simmons, 38, and her husband Dan Simmons, 46, were left shocked during their day trip.
Regina Simmons / SWNS
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She added that despite being a smaller town, almost everything was in English — so she didn't have the chance to use the Italian she learned for the trip — and the streets were flooded with other Americans.
3 Simmons said she preferred Sorrento over Positano and claimed it was much less crowded.
Regina Simmons / Instagram
3 The ticked-off tourist said she was 'shoulder to shoulder' with other travellers the entire time.
Regina Simmons / SWNS
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'If it's trendy on social media, everyone wants to do what everyone else is doing, myself included… Don't believe everything you see on social media,' she said.
Despite the crowds in Positano, Simmons seems to have enjoyed the rest of the family's Italian vacation.
The town, located along the Amalfi Coast, has long been a popular vacation spot, but this year's crowds have been particularly colossal. Southern Europe, in general, has suffered from overtourism, with Vatican City billed by Go2Africa as the top overcrowded travel destination of 2025.
Simmons' Southern European slip-up marks the latest in a long line of American antics across the pond this summer.
One mom was mercilessly mocked by Europeans after she posted a video to TikTok pointing out how different the culture around children and parenting is from the United States.
She was dining outside at a restaurant in Portugal, and noticed a group of multilingual kids playing soccer while their parents enjoyed a bottle of wine at the table.
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A Londoner also recently expressed frustration with the throngs of American tourists traipsing across the continent.
The Brit said that they had noticed an apparent pattern of Americans abbreviating destinations when speaking about them, which they proposed leads to confusion and delay in getting directions from locals.
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