Warning: This is a rather grumpy post, written at the end of a rather grumpy day (or at least, a grumpy evening). Read at your own risk.
I'm supposed to be planning a two week trip to Alaska for next month (yikes!). Now I suppose any normal person would think that was great fun. But 1) I intensely dislike and find it very stressful to plan anything (I don't even pack lunches) and 2) I have serious doubts about the whole concept of tourism. It's a lot of work, a lot of money and a lot hassle and I don't really see the point. It's different if you're visiting friends or family, or if you have some connection to the place you're going, but to just go somewhere for the sake of experience seems kind of pointless. Living in a tourist town and working in a tourist restaurant I constantly hear people talking as if they knew Santa Fe after spending an afternoon looking at the jewelry for sale on the Plaza. You get to know a place by living there, not by running around frantically doing all the things the guidebooks tell you. To me, guidebooks have a knack of making everything seem horribly boring and unattractive. I guess it's because they reduce the real living experience of a city to a checklist of things that has to be "done" in a certain amount of days. With that kind of attitude it's really hard to get excited about a trip, or to plan anything. I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Paris for a week a few years ago and I had the same problem then. It was a wonderful trip, but in the weeks leading up to it I was looking to it with dread, seeing only the hassle, the packing, the desparate attempt to refresh my French and the exhausting flights. Even then the guidebooks were totally uninspiring, making the Lourve, Versailles and Notre Dame seem like cheap tourist traps. The problem with tourism, ultimately is that you can't see or get any real sense of a place in such a brief time, so you end up rushing from one experience to another, ending up totally exhausted, with a nice set of pictures to show for it (if you're lucky) and the smug pleasure of being able to say, "I've been there."
I'm supposed to be planning a two week trip to Alaska for next month (yikes!). Now I suppose any normal person would think that was great fun. But 1) I intensely dislike and find it very stressful to plan anything (I don't even pack lunches) and 2) I have serious doubts about the whole concept of tourism. It's a lot of work, a lot of money and a lot hassle and I don't really see the point. It's different if you're visiting friends or family, or if you have some connection to the place you're going, but to just go somewhere for the sake of experience seems kind of pointless. Living in a tourist town and working in a tourist restaurant I constantly hear people talking as if they knew Santa Fe after spending an afternoon looking at the jewelry for sale on the Plaza. You get to know a place by living there, not by running around frantically doing all the things the guidebooks tell you. To me, guidebooks have a knack of making everything seem horribly boring and unattractive. I guess it's because they reduce the real living experience of a city to a checklist of things that has to be "done" in a certain amount of days. With that kind of attitude it's really hard to get excited about a trip, or to plan anything. I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Paris for a week a few years ago and I had the same problem then. It was a wonderful trip, but in the weeks leading up to it I was looking to it with dread, seeing only the hassle, the packing, the desparate attempt to refresh my French and the exhausting flights. Even then the guidebooks were totally uninspiring, making the Lourve, Versailles and Notre Dame seem like cheap tourist traps. The problem with tourism, ultimately is that you can't see or get any real sense of a place in such a brief time, so you end up rushing from one experience to another, ending up totally exhausted, with a nice set of pictures to show for it (if you're lucky) and the smug pleasure of being able to say, "I've been there."
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