To Travel

When I travel, I have a tendency to want to fit into the surroundings. I hate looking like a tourist. I find that I rarely will carry a camera or an awkward backpack or fanny pack that will give me away. I do enjoy seeing people who stick out like sore thumbs. They simply do not care who is around them and do what they want and could care less of what they think of them whether that be an entire family wearing Hawaiian shirts and kakis, a newlywed couple who can barely keep their hands off of each other or a solitary man with his fancy 40D Canon taking pictures of everything around him. Personally, I find my vacations to be so much fuller if I can just soak in what is around me through my eyes and not through a lens (I usually leave the photography to whomever I am with).

I love venturing to the parts of the city that most tourists do not tend to visit because there are not any “tourist attractions” there, at least not the big ones. I want to see what the people see, experience what they experience, and eat what they eat, to be one of them even if it is only for a day. Otherwise I do not feel like you will get to experience your trip to its entirety. I will go visit the main tourist sites to say that I have been there done that, but what I want more than that is to disappear into a café or a little hole in the wall restaurant and people watch and enjoy the fact that I am not obligated to do anything. I think this quote sums it up quite nicely.

"Travel pushes my boundaries. When you travel, you become invisible, if you want. I do want. I like to be the observer. What makes people who they are? Could I feel at home here? No one expects you to have the stack of papers back by Tuesday, or to check messages, or to fertilize the geraniums. When traveling, you have the delectable possibility of not understanding a word of what is said to you. Language becomes simply a musical background for watching bicycles zoom alongside a canal, calling for nothing from you. Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full of choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower. You open, as in childhood, and—for at time—receive this world. There’s the visceral aspect, too—the huntress who is free. Free to go, free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth."