Tourists

My former home, New Orleans, is a tourist city. It gets plenty of tourists at all times of the year except during the oppressive heat of its summer. Ironically, summer is the low tourist season in New Orleans. So I have been observing those tourists and the fewer here in Portland and have a few remarks about them. You and I are tourists too, but not all tourists fit the stereotypical ones. I'm more interested in the stereotypes though, since so many fit into that category.

First, I see the typical tourist as one who tries very hard to have fun while on a trip. They exhaust themselves, sit on planes and buses for endless hours, are herded in groups to venues that in some cases are more artificial than real (cities and towns often create or embellish their sites with fake sites than in some cases are nothing to do with the natural character of the place), and they take lots of pictures (I suspect that all Japanese tourists have their cameras sewn onto their bodies) so they can make people jealous about their trip after they get back home.

In many cases those tourists have more fun planning and or reviewing their trip with others than they had while on the trip itself. This shows that travel is as much or perhaps more a psychological journey than a physical one. They feel a need to "get away" to a new environment, even if they are physically exhausted by the process. The typical tourist is looking for some experience that often never exists and will a spend a fortune chasing it. If it does exist there are usually too many other tourists there to make it worthwhile anyway.

The fatal flaw to which some tourists succumb is an essential fact of life for all of us, tourist or not. That is, when you try too hard to have fun or try too hard make a desire happen, it usually doesn't. That's why most people have their best travel experiences when they are off the tour schedule and just stumble across something or some person accidentally. In most lives an accident creates more fun than a planned event.People who travel often want to travel even more. Like a drug, each trip, good or bad, seems to add to their desire for another. Some people are addicted to gambling or alcohol, but as many or more are addicted to travel. I think it is usually an addiction more positive than negative.

Happy travel!