Hearing about one of our recent adventures, John Pickett said, "You're not tourists, you're travelers." (Our friends John and Dana Pickett are the parents of our friend Tina Pickett Holmes.) Even without a lot of explanation, this compliment felt right, reflecting my attitude about seeing the world. (Last year, Terri described in more detail The Way We Travel.) Then, a few days ago, I read a Rick Steves column that fleshed out the distinction between the two:
I'm often asked about the difference between a tourist and a traveler. To me, a tourist visits all the big sights, sees spectacles on stage, and returns home unchanged, with a suitcase full of knickknacks. A traveler becomes a temporary local, engages with the culture, and comes home enriched, with a vivid collection of experiences and a broader perspective.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with being a tourist, I've been one myself quite a few times. Big sights are big sights for a reason, and knickknacks are difficult for many people to resist. But for me, being a traveler is more comfortable: I love going to lesser-known places, loitering and exploring, figuring out bus and train schedules, pondering a menu in an unknown language, and relishing the unplanned and unexpected. We'll never see most of the world but the places we do visit we'll get to know fairly well. So far, my only souvenirs are small pins from some of the places we've been, along with thousands of snapshots and memories.
Click on the image for a larger view and more details.
We've been traveling and touristing regularly since 1999, and I've been posting some of my favorite travel snaps since around 2008: Here's my Flickr travel sets.
All this talk of traveling makes me eager to stop writing and get back up in the air. Tomorrow we're off again, this time to northern Portugal, our 60th trip together, the 37th outside the United States. We'll fly into Porto, where we'll spend a few days, then venture out to Viseu and Coimbra.
