In the discussion of the phenomenon of San Marco’s never ending stream of tourists, Davis and Marvin quote one such tourist: “‘Venice must be a paradise’ for the flaneur,” followed by a romantic vision of a Venetian dandy. I was struck by this notion and wondered if Baudelaire had ever visited Venice, to observe the evening promenade of the city, finding anonymity in throngs of tourists, then as now. A couple pages later, the authors respond directly to my musings, claiming “participants in the traditional Venetian liston were very different from Baudelaire’s nineteenth-century flaneur, who by definition kept an ironic distance from the social and cultural world through which he strolled, “to take part in the bustle of the city in the security of his anonymous state.” Perhaps the public promenade performed by the Italians cannot be subject to the flaneur’s intrusive and inevitably foreign gaze, by why not the tourists themselves? Davis and Marvin write that there is no chance that a tourist might “adopt the pose of the flaneur and gaze upon those around them with bemused detachment, for all they will see in San Marco is a super-saturation of tourists all very much like themselves, equally there to see this ‘must see’ place.” I question this supposed inability for visitors to act as flaneur, but have not come to a conclusion. Will we be able to detach ourselves from the famous sights, the romantic vision, in order to gaze with skepticism, with amusement, at our fellow tourists? And because we too are tourists, does that prevent us from a cultural critique of other tourists? There is no doubt that we will be able to find ourselves anonymous, one of an immense crowd, amidst the bustle of San Marco, so why not strive for an objective observation of the city, and of the tourists, who in many ways have become the local population and everyday life of Venice?