Even accepting the consumption part as something reasonable that people should do, it still ignores the Time coordinate completely.

The first time I visited Prague, torrential rains had been falling for a while. Half of the city was flooding when I stepped off the bus. I had to wear flip-flops to cross some streets, which looked like shallow paved rivers, otherwise I would have ruined my sneakers. I stayed at my Czech girlfriend's place, a brutalist block built during Russian occupation which fortunately sat on an elevated piece of terrain. We then canoed the Ohře river with some of her friends (perhaps not the brightest idea, given the rains). We were so young.

I have visited Prague a couple more times after that. Each time, everything has been different. The city was no longer flooded. I was with different people. I did actual turism and everything. I ate different things. I was different, myself. I still don't feel I have "done" Prague. And the same goes for the rest of the world.

> “We did Prague.” “We did Barcelona.”

Charitably, the word "did" implies a more active interaction with a place and its inhabitants than "visited". The latter sounds like a tourist looking at a city like one might observe fish in a fish tank, where to "do" a place sounds like you're diving in and getting wet.

Saying "went to" conveys nothing about whether it was a destination or just a stop on the way.

"Do" doesn't have to be construed in the sense of consuming or aquisition. It's just a word and short old verbs in particularly have thousands of shades of meaning. I can do the laundry, my wife, a watercolor painting, my hair, a steak, and I assure you those are all quite different activities.

How an utterance is interpreted often reveals more about the listener than the speaker.

Uncharitably, "did" implies a box-ticking mindset: when you've "done" Barcelona, you've seen all that's worth seeing and can move onto the next. Even if all you actually did was eat tapas at some tourist trap on Las Ramblas and queue up for Sagrada Familia.

One thing you realize about travel as you get older is that you cannot, in fact, "do" a place: the rustic fishing village on the beach in Thailand you went to 20 years ago is now a rat warren of concrete hotels and package tours that bears no resemblance to what you once saw and experienced, and what's more, your experience now is quite different if you have a wife and kids in tow.

There’s an ad I see a lot for a travel company with a catch line that goes like ‘what do you think you’ll regret more when you’re old, [scene of production of perfume/couture ad in background] the things you didn’t buy [cut to generic-looking sandy beach] or the places you didn’t go?’

Every time I see it, I think ‘well obviously neither, that’s not what people regret’ and I guess I’m just worried that people believe the message of the ad.

What I hate is the implication that there is a correct way to "do" a particular city. It takes all the adventure and serendipity out of travel and reduces each city to a standard and usually bland set of experiences.